Blog
Product
Top Three Reasons Behind Database Migrations
I recently moved into a new house. Boxes are everywhere. Little pieces of styrofoam surprise me everywhere I go. There are many noises I don’t recognize or understand. And the drill I’d forgotten I even owned now occupies a prime spot on my kitchen counter. I use it daily. I didn’t move to a new house because I thought moving would be fun, or even easy. I knew it would be a lot of work. I moved because my family needed more space. Which is just one of many reasons someone might decide to endure the pain of moving: Cost. Quality of life. Proximity to the people/places that are important to you.
Adam Storm
January 24, 2024
Product
RPO and RTO: getting to zero downtime and zero data loss
Companies are increasingly chasing zero-RPO and zero-RTO solutions to ensure that their applications remain online no matter what. And it’s easy to see why: according to 2020 research from Gartner the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute.
Diana Hsieh
January 5, 2024
Product
8 database lessons you can learn from "Star Trek: TNG"
Star Trek: The Next Generation may have stopped airing in 1994, but it’s a series that’s always rewarding to return to. Arguably the most cerebral of the various Star Trek film and television series, the best episodes of TNG are just as thought-provoking today as they were when they were first televised.
Charlie Custer
December 21, 2023
Product
How to change your database schema with no downtime
Just the thought of updating the database schema is enough to give some developers and architects a headache. Designing a good schema is hard enough. Updating it once it’s in production? That has to be a nightmare. Right? Well, historically it certainly has been! But it doesn’t have to be. Let’s take a look at the options for dealing with database schema, and learn how live schema changes solve challenges with both traditional relational databases and NoSQL document-store alternatives.
Rob Reid
December 8, 2023
Product
The history of databases at Netflix: From Cassandra to CockroachDB
In 2008, after Netflix pivoted from DVD-by-mail to streaming, they were running the streaming service on premise and suffered a 3-day outage. That was the beginning of their move to the cloud. First they moved to AWS. Then, in 2014, they adopted (and popularized!) Cassandra to support their need for global replication. In this two-part presentation, Netflix Senior Software Engineers Shengwei Wang and Shahar Zimmerman explain why Netflix has adopted CockroachDB and how they’re deploying it.
Dan Kelly
November 27, 2023
Product
What is a serverless database?
Before we define what a serverless database is, perhaps we should talk about what serverless means more broadly, and why there seems to be building momentum behind this general paradigm.
Jim Walker
November 2, 2023
Product
RoachFest23 Recap: DoorDash, City Storage Systems, Booking.com, Santander, and more shared their CockroachDB journeys
More than 500 attendees from around the globe recently swarmed into New York for RoachFest23, the annual user conference for CockroachDB customers. The two day event featured thirty speakers from some of the world’s leading enterprise companies including engineering leads and directors at Santander, DoorDash, City Storage Systems (also known as Cloud Kitchens), Booking.com, Fortinet, and many more. The Cockroach Labs co-founders also led sessions, shared the future of CockroachDB, and released new features and capabilities now available in CockroachDB.
Michelle Gienow
October 19, 2023
Product
High CPU usage in Postgres: how to detect it, and how to fix it
High CPU usage can bring your database – and with it, your application – grinding to a halt. This is, unfortunately, a fairly common problem. But it also can be a relatively easy fix. Let’s take a look at how to check CPU usage in Postgres, and how to troubleshoot for some of the most common causes of high CPU usage.
Charlie Custer
October 16, 2023
Product
What is a distributed database and how do they work?
The cloud is, by definition, a distributed system. Distributed application architecture is mainstream in the world of software — you wouldn’t build any other way. For more than a decade, though, the database has lagged behind. The architecture of traditional relational databases frequently conflicts with the architectural needs of modern cloud applications: horizontal scale, elasticity, and microservices.
Charlie Custer
October 9, 2023