MariaDB is taking advantage of the full availability of SkySQL announced in the DBaaS model at the end of March. Before that, you must rely on the supplier’s quotation to access the multi-engine SQL database for cloud storage. Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google provide open source versions of this DBMS in their catalogs.
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SkySQL is the commercial version of this database, managed directly by MariaDB. It took nearly two years to develop and it was only recently available for private beta testing (users can sign up for a trial). SkySQL is based on the X4 platform, which is the latest version of the enterprise platform launched in January 2020.
Google Cloud and ServiceNow support MariaDB
The Redwood-based publisher is establishing partnerships with Google Cloud and ServiceNow. The first is GCP, which will ensure that SkySQL is hosted on GKE in the four cloud regions. MariaDB explains this choice through the desire of its main contributors to obtain “the best support for Kubernetes.” Publishers use Docker containers to place MariaDB TX (transaction) and AX (analysis) servers that contain data. MariaDB decided to separate the nodes from the replicas (2 to 5) deployed in different GCP regions. Kubernetes Orchestrator is associated with a persistent SSD that is mainly used for analyzing workloads.
“For any DBMS publisher who wants to survive, having a reliable product in the cloud is essential.”
Merv AdrianGartner
“For any DBMS publisher who wants to survive, it is vital to provide reliable quotes in the cloud: 70% growth has been in existence for three years. MariaDB has been smart to align with Google. Gartner data and Merv Adrian, vice president of analytical research, said that it is in this participant that radical growth may occur in the next two years.
In fact, the service will first join the AWS catalog, and then join Microsoft. MariaDB Europe, Middle East and Africa vice president Mickael Carney said: “This requires technical transformation of the managed services of Kubernetes EKS and AKS, but support for these technologies is already provided.”
The second is ServiceNow, which is responsible for the white label management of the SkySQL Portal control plane that will be hosted in its own cloud architecture. In this way, the database is separated from the management. If one of these two components fails, the other component will not be affected. The control plane orchestrated by ServiceNow allows you to manage inventory, configure and analyze workloads.
Regarding the observability of the hosted DBMS, MariaDB relies on open source tools. The publisher has set up a Prometheus agent for real-time monitoring. Grafana is the associated visualization layer.
Reproduce the achievements of the X4 platform in the cloud
“Before that, the cloud has always been a great DevOps environment, but some customers came to us and told us that they were not necessarily satisfied due to the availability of certain aspects and lack of supportive responsiveness. This is not to criticize the cloud provider : This is not their specialty. This provides us with an opportunity to provide our own DbaaS and bring our proprietary technology to the market,” Mickael Carney said.
“This is our binary file, our optimization and the support we include in SkySQL.”
Mickael CarneyMaria Database
Therefore, MariaDB defends its expertise, which is one of its main advantages of DbaaS. “This is our binary file, our optimization, and the support we include in SkySQL. The Vice President EMEA has all that the DbaaS publisher can provide. For areas that cannot be automated, the publisher intends to launch its SkyDBA service, the service Enterprise and Platinum customers can be given access to database “expert” administrators, who are said to have limited MySQL/MariaDB expertise.
Like the X4 platform, SkySQL has a MaxScale layer, and the agent must ensure the resiliency, security, and high availability of MariaDB Enterprise Server (paid version). The publisher associates automatic failover technology with it. “If a failure occurs, Maxscale can replay the current transaction on the new machine, and the application will not even detect a TCP signal interruption,” Mickael Carney said. The agent also supports routing of transaction or analysis requests to appropriate processing. This is the focus of the HTAP (hybrid transaction processing/analytic processing) structure that supports row and column storage and the combination of the two.
For this reason, SkySQL only supports InnoDB and MariaDB ColumnStore storage engines, which must be paired with the Galera replication system. Similarly, object storage or block storage can be used through Google Cloud Storage. Please note, however, that the hosting service does not support a customized version of the database.
The database has also become resilient
“A lot of customers have passed the testing phase, and a certain number of customers will go directly into production,” said fuzzy Mickael Carney. He explained: “In Europe, the most famous company that uses SkySQL is Telefonica, and it will be in production soon.”
“Our preliminary tests show that the performance of using SkySQL on Google Cloud Platform is better than expected.” Paul Greaves, head of O2 Enterprise’s corporate department and engineering director of Wifi Telefonica UK Limited, said in a press release.
In the near future, MariaDB hopes to allow customers to use multi-cloud capabilities. This is not about migrating from one cloud to another, but about having multiple vendor instances at the same time to replicate or improve performance. In addition, you can synchronize local instances with instances in the cloud. Customers should also benefit from automatic management (automatic expansion) of database flexibility. Finally, MariaDB will add ClustrixDB engine functionality to its DBaaS to support the parallelization of large-scale data processing.
“they [MariaDB] We will definitely face competition from cloud providers: this is the main challenge for all future DBMS editors.”
Merv AdrianGartner
“MariaDB has released a very reliable early version, and has proven its agility and ability to fulfill its promises in the past two years. Gartner analysts said that I hope that any gaps will be filled soon.
On its own, MariaDB’s statement is not really innovative in the market. MongoDB adopted this DBaaS approach two years ago, followed by DataStax in December 2019, and Couchbase released a similar product in February 2020. This confirms a trend: Open source publishers want to prove to customers that they are interested in paying attention to them for better services than those provided by “cloud providers.”
“they [MariaDB] Merv Adrian predicts: “This will definitely face competition from cloud providers: this is the main challenge for all future DBMS editors.”
However, companies should use relevant business models with caution. In the case of using SkySQL, payment is made on a monthly basis, but the bill may vary according to tax and cloud area. According to the publisher’s documentation, if billing is based on actual consumption, the DBaaS interface only displays cost estimates.
