Since our inception in 2015, Cockroach Labs has been at the forefront of the distributed SQL revolution, relentlessly pushing the boundaries of what's possible in modern data infrastructure. With our customers' needs guiding every step of our journey, RoachFest was born three years ago to foster collaboration, learning, and innovation among the developers, DevOps engineers, and architects who rely on CockroachDB to power their most critical applications.
This year’s RoachFest has been our most exciting yet. We expanded the show to reach more customers in Menlo Park and London, and during RoachFest NYC we unveiled new product capabilities to meet the evolving challenges of the data landscape – as industries move towards more cloud and AI-driven solutions.
CockroachDB 24.2: The emergence of a converged, resilient database for AI-driven applications
Gartner®predicts that “by 2026, more than 30% of enterprises will have adopted vector databases, which is a significant increase from fewer than 2% today.”1 At Cockroach Labs, we see the importance of integrating AI-powered solutions mindfully into our existing offerings so that our users can take advantage of vector databases, while still leveraging the foundation of our distributed SQL industry leadership: resilience, scale, and data domiciling.
Today, we are proud to share new capabilities that will enable customers to deploy CockroachDB as a platform and consolidate new workloads, such as GenAI, sustainably while optimizing performance and operational efficiency.
In CockroachDB 24.2, we are announcing:
Vector Search (
pgvector-compatible) so that organizations can future-proof their database investment with a resilient database solution that supports AI-driven needs now and in the near future.Generic Query Plans which lower query latency and reduce hardware expenses from data-intensive applications.
Innovation Releases which allow customers to upgrade more frequently to increase innovation.
Vector Search: Enable AI using modern applications and data infrastructure
With Vector Search, customers can now use CockroachDB to manage their operational data using AI-based applications combined with a single, horizontally scalable solution using CockroachDB. Our implementation is compatible with PostgreSQL’s pgvector API, and we have chosen to leverage pgvector as it is one of the most widely used extensions for AI applications. Our support for the pgvector API provides a more streamlined way to use existing AI tools such as Langchain and utilize CockroachDB as part of a robust backend solution for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and large language models (LLMs). With Vector Search support CockroachDB users can now deploy new AI-driven use cases such as running similarity searches across vectors and building recommendation systems as part of a broader eCommerce solution.
Generic Query Plans: Cost-effective query processing
Organizations are often concerned about higher hardware costs, high latency, and meeting performance goals. To help organizations lower query latency and cost of ownership, without sacrificing the resiliency, we are introducing Generic Query Plans. This feature helps significantly reduce latency associated with query planning, especially for complex queries, which in turn, reduces hardware expenses.
With CockroachDB's Generic Query Plans now in preview, we’re excited about the potential to significantly reduce complex query latency and operational costs while maintaining the resilience we rely on. By optimizing query plans once and caching them for reuse, we can eliminate the need for re-optimization, lowering CPU usage, especially for complex JOINs and index lookups. This efficiency gain in 24.2 will help us scale faster and more cost-effectively.
– James Lupolt, Database Engineer, Hard Rock Digital
Innovation Releases: Build faster with quarterly updates
Speed isn't everything, but in 2024, the pressure to build and innovate quickly has never been higher. At Cockroach Labs, we understand the need to deliver new features without delay. That's why we're excited to introduce an improved quarterly release cycle, aptly named Innovation Releases. This accelerated cadence ensures that you can access the latest distributed SQL advancements even faster, helping you stay ahead in a competitive environment. For those who prefer to maintain a more gradual pace, our traditional 6-month release cycle will still be available, giving you the flexibility to choose the path that best fits your operational needs.
Learn more about CockroachDB 24.2 on our site, and read all about the technical details in our release notes.
CockroachDB Cloud: An enterprise cloud platform with a tier-based model
It has been 5 years since we released our first cloud offering of CockroachDB: CockroachDB Dedicated. Since then, it has been incredible seeing what our customers have built – as they took advantage of a fully managed database platform to enable resilient applications. From storage layers for authentication platforms and digital payment systems, to load testing applications and secure order management platforms, we are inspired by what our customers do every day using our cloud offerings.
As part of our newly updated CockroachDB Cloud platform, we are announcing a new Standard plan. The new Standard plan is specifically designed for applications where CockroachDB Dedicated, now renamed CockroachDB Advanced, might be too expensive, and CockroachDB Serverless, now renamed CockroachDB Basic, doesn’t provide quite enough features for enterprise customers. Standard strikes the perfect balance by offering a highly efficient, resource-conscious solution that provides the optimal mix of performance and cost savings. This plan allows you to leverage the power of CockroachDB while maintaining flexibility and scalability. Some of the features include provisioned capacity, enhanced security, observability and cost efficiencies especially when deploying across multiple cloud regions.
Try CockroachDB Cloud now
Today, we are offering $400 in free credits for new CockroachDB Cloud organizations. These credits allow you to easily get started with CockroachDB. For example, you can try deploying multi-region Standard clusters with up to 12vCPUs for 10 days, or with up to 4vCPUs for the full 30 days. Stay tuned to see what else we are building, and hope to see you next year for RoachFest ‘25!
Get started at https://cockroachlabs.cloud/signup.
Gartner, Innovation Insight: Vector Databases, September 2023. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
