Blog
Product
CockroachDB on Kubernetes simplifies cloud-native deployments
CockroachDB on Kubernetes is now in general availability, providing users with a Kubernetes database and a custom, open source Operator [available on GitHub and in the RedHat Marketplace] that automates deployment, management, and maintenance. This release enables teams at any skill level to run a relational database on Kubernetes. More organizations are shifting to a cloud native architecture that makes use of containerized apps and services [read: How does Bose use Kubernetes & CockroachDB?], and they are looking for strong, proven platforms. Kubernetes enables organizations to automate the deployment and management of container-based services, providing huge value for organizations operating in the cloud.
Meagan Goldman
July 15, 2021
Case Studies
Choosing a MySQL alternative to build HA product inventory
AllSaints is a 27-year-old global fashion retail business headquartered in the UK. We have brick and mortar locations all over the world and historically the business has depended massively on brick and mortar sales. And so it came as a surprise and relief to me that our customers were so willing to shift their behaviors during the pandemic and shop online, which helped us maintain healthy revenue numbers.
Andy Dean
July 15, 2021
Kubernetes
How to run a database in Kubernetes
About 75 percent of container orchestration is done in Kubernetes. But the popularity of the k8s platform doesn’t mean it’s easy to use in all scenarios. Kubernetes can have a steep learning curve, especially when it comes to managing state and storage. In a recent episode of “The Cockroach Hour”, Director of Product Marketing Jim Walker sat down with Keith McClellan, one of Cockroach’s Solutions Engineers, to chat about the storage and data challenges that you’ll encounter deploying Kubernetes, and how running it with CockroachDB can simplify those challenges.
Charlotte Dillon
July 15, 2021
Community
CockroachDB fundamentals for Node.js developers
In two hours (the same amount of time it takes to binge two episodes of The Witcher) you will build a ride-sharing application with Node.js and CockroachDB. That’s the beauty of this Node.js and CockroachDB fundamentals course just released by Cockroach University: You get real-life, hands on experience with the tools you need to build modern applications. Experience with modern application architectures, and with distributed databases in particular, is becoming a regular requirement for open roles at great companies like Roblox, Accenture, Netflix, Apple, and others. This Node.js course is a quick way to gain the requisite experience so that you can demonstrate your distributed systems skills in an interview.
Dan Kelly
July 14, 2021
Engineering
What developers need to know about Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that allows you to automate running and orchestrating container workloads. It is a powerful tool that offers a huge ecosystem of tools — package managers, service meshes, source plugins, monitoring tools, and more — as an abstraction layer for deploying standardized, full-stack applications across an ever-increasing range of platforms. Kubernetes is often referred to as “K8s.”
Michelle Gienow
July 14, 2021
Product
DBmarlin helps CockroachDB customers optimize performance
When the performance of your SQL database drops suddenly, do you know why? Tracking performance and linking cause to effect can be tricky with real-world database systems. DBAs, architects, and SREs are often working with multiple database systems, each with multiple databases in various states of development, testing, and production. These systems are often mixed between one or more cloud providers and self-hosted servers. On top of that, the performance of each database is influenced by auto-scaling, constantly-shifting workloads, engineering changes and updates, and more!
Russell Luke
July 6, 2021
Product
Don’t sell your soul to Amazon: Cloud applications and architectures for retail
If you’re a retail business, your current reality may best be described as “challenging” — even as a flood of pent up post-pandemic consumer spending is unleashed. Thanks to Amazon, customers expect abundant product availability, personalized recommendations, competitive pricing, and fast delivery. Mega retailers like Target and Walmart are fighting back by offering expanded online shopping, in-store shopping services with curbside pickup, and local delivery options — some even same-day.
Michelle Gienow
June 25, 2021
Company
Brazil's Nubank uses CockroachDB for application resiliency and scale
Nubank, a leading Brazilian financial technology company valued at more than $45 billion dollars, needed a scalable SQL database for its critical credit card authorization service. The company initially stored data for this service on-prem using an in-memory data store, but as the business rapidly grew (from 12 million customers in 2019 to 40 million customers in 2021), it needed a more scalable solution that would not rely so much on memory and enable Nubank to keep growing. Nubank’s Authorizer team chose CockroachDB due to its ultra-resilience, simple scalability, strong consistency, and easy maintenance. They set up on-prem CockroachDB deployments and migrated their credit card authorization application.
Meagan Goldman
June 25, 2021
Engineering
How to encrypt specific database tables with CockroachDB
A few days ago, we (Artem and Chris) were working with two different customers that had the same requirement: they needed to encrypt certain tables in their databases. This is not uncommon. Encryption comes with a slight performance penalty, so many companies prefer not to encrypt their entire database. Instead, the best practice is to encrypt only the tables that contain sensitive information, so less-sensitive data can be accessed without the overhead the encryption creates.
Artem Ervits
June 23, 2021