I am studying how to deploy CockroachDB and YugaByteDB, and learning some basic information about them. I am testing these databases as part of my school application to find a suitable database for our applications. Currently, I am using PostgreSQL, however, I want to try some distributed databases for testing purposes.
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Positive Experience switching PostgreSQL to CockroachDB
What do you like best about the product?
We integrated CockroachDB into our existing analytics service stack, which relies on PostgreSQL connections, without encountering any issues. Everything worked immediately without needing any code modifications, workarounds, or special configurations.
What do you dislike about the product?
Based on our experience to date using it for our analytics platform, we haven't identified any dislikes
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We were able to launch our analytics service into production quickly and without initial cost using CockroachDB, which was a major advantage.
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An amazing distributed sql db
What do you like best about the product?
The ease of use offered by the cloud options and the capabilities of the self hosted option.
What do you dislike about the product?
Maybe I lack experience with concurrent use of the DB, but sometimes the default config causes me trouble and I need to change it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Currently we have a few products and cockroachdb is the default solution for db we use.
Get out of the way and let me work!
What do you like best about the product?
CockroachDB does what a database should do. Just sit there and hold my data reliably without me having to babysit. No worrying about partitioning. I don't care about servers going up or down or load balancers. I don't care if a new version is available. I just keep my schema up to date. Perform my CRUD operations and get on with building my business.
And did I mention the support? Recently I had an issue where backups to an S3 compatible bucket stopped working. Within 24 hours I was on a call with a product manager talking through the issue to understand exactly what happened and what my recommended path forward would be. Yes, by running a serverless database in the cloud as a non-enterprise I am giving up some level of control, which is what happened here when they upgraded to the latest AWS S3 SDK that had some incompatible headers, but the tradeoff is that I have zero operational headaches to deal with.
The last feature that works perfectly with my business model is the pay-as-you-go model where I can spin up as many clusters and databases as I like without getting nailed for every instance. I am in early days and I'm constantly spinning up new clusters for testing or very small customers. When I can create an isolated cluster for a customer and it only costs me a few dollars a month that's a huge win.
And did I mention the support? Recently I had an issue where backups to an S3 compatible bucket stopped working. Within 24 hours I was on a call with a product manager talking through the issue to understand exactly what happened and what my recommended path forward would be. Yes, by running a serverless database in the cloud as a non-enterprise I am giving up some level of control, which is what happened here when they upgraded to the latest AWS S3 SDK that had some incompatible headers, but the tradeoff is that I have zero operational headaches to deal with.
The last feature that works perfectly with my business model is the pay-as-you-go model where I can spin up as many clusters and databases as I like without getting nailed for every instance. I am in early days and I'm constantly spinning up new clusters for testing or very small customers. When I can create an isolated cluster for a customer and it only costs me a few dollars a month that's a huge win.
What do you dislike about the product?
The mot difficult thing about working with CockroachDB is learning how to think differently about the operational aspects. You have to accept that you are going to lose some level of control if you want to the Serverless cost effective model. Another challenge I've faced is that although there is a high level of Postgres protocol compatibility there are enough differences that you can't assume a zero effort lift and shift.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It provides a reliable database with no operational responsibilities for me.
Geo-replication benefits with distributed setup and a helpful AI support chatbot
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is that CockroachDB is a distributed database, which can deploy nodes running in different regions. Geo-replication capabilities are also important for production applications. Having database servers close to my customers, for example, in the US or UK, would improve performance.
What needs improvement?
I would like CockroachDB to have more compatibility with PostgreSQL, especially with the connection string and technical integrations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been studying and testing CockroachDB and YugaByteDB for about six months.
How are customer service and support?
I did not contact the technical support by CockroachDB. However, their website has an AI chatbot, which I found to be very useful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Currently, I am using PostgreSQL. I want to try some distributed databases for testing purposes.
What about the implementation team?
I deployed a three-node database in a local system using Docker. I have successfully deployed a secure cluster.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not very familiar with the pricing as I am now only in the experimental phase.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am also studying and testing YugaByteDB alongside CockroachDB.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Has in-built auto geo partitioning and doesn't require serves in separate regions
What is most valuable?
What I like best is its ability to solve data residency issues. The main advantage is auto geo partitioning, built into the product. This means we don't have to spin up separate servers in each region, which would be much more costly.
Performance-wise, it's great once you know how to use it properly. The key benefit is that data sits on the edge closest to the user, regardless of their location. This leads to improved speed.
However, there's a downside - if you don't understand how it works, your queries might run everywhere. You need to fine-tune your queries to avoid this issue.
What needs improvement?
I think the engine itself could be improved. If you miss a partition key, it should be able to be modeled. This is where AI could be really helpful. For example, if a user is from Australia, the system should know to look for their data there first instead of searching in the US or another continent.
For how long have I used the solution?
We went into production four months ago. We have been doing a proof of concept for the last eight months, so I have used it for less than a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had some issues with stability. They don't thoroughly test all their patches for all use cases. Given the complexity, I'm not sure how they could do that anyway. Some of their patch releases have burned us. We had to do rollbacks and fix things ad hoc. I rate it a seven point five out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool has auto-scaling features. It can adjust automatically in the background.
How are customer service and support?
The support team is not as responsive as we'd like. Their support is not as robust as that of some other providers. It's kind of hit or miss, depending on who you get to help you.
How was the initial setup?
We had to migrate from PostgreSQL. It was very complex. Depending on your current model, it can be complicated. But if everything is somewhat similar to what CockroachDB expects, then it's not too bad.
What about the implementation team?
We did the tool's deployment in-house.
What was our ROI?
The solution is worth its money if you use case fits. I've seen value and impact from this tool. Cost-wise, it's quite good compared to setting up a dedicated environment at each location. It leverages cloud providers like Google and AWS, using their servers, which makes it much cheaper. This makes it well worth it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's pricing is not cheap. However, the good thing is that customers are willing to pay for it if they want it.
What other advice do I have?
There is a learning curve with this tool. People who are coming from traditional databases and coders need to adjust. You have to know how to do distributed database calls. So, there's a learning curve for those who manage it and write code against it.
I would recommend CockroachDB to others, especially if they need an SQL database with solid transaction capabilities. For advice, understand each database's strengths and match them to your use case. There is a learning curve, so always try to learn what problems the database solves and how it fits your needs.
I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.
A resilient distributed database that offers resiliency features and geo-partitioning capabilities
What is our primary use case?
My company uses CockroachDB since it is a resilient distributed database.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are its resiliency features and the geo-partitioning capabilities.
What needs improvement?
CockroachDB's automatic failover capability is an area of concern where improvements are required.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using CockroachDB for two years. My company previously had a partnership with CockroachDB, but now we are just customers.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.
More than 100 people in my company use the solution.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase was difficult since you need to follow certain standards set by CockroachDB. The product's initial setup process was cumbersome.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
The time to deploy the solution varies depending on what you want to do.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product's price depends on the user's company and the contract model they enter into with CockroachDB. Depending on the contract model one enters into with CockroachDB, the product may or may not be expensive.
What other advice do I have?
CockroachDB is the best relational database and also a cloud-native database.
I rate the overall tool an eight and a half out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
An easily scalable product that enables organizations to keep their nodes in different locations and isolate their data
What is our primary use case?
We have a legal and compliance team. We have a compliance request that the personal data from the EU must stay in the EU, and the data from Singapore must stay in Singapore. CockroachDB is a distributed database system. It exactly fits our requirement to keep the data isolated. At the same time, we can have multiple instances globally. We cannot keep the nodes in different locations in a relational database like Oracle or MySQL.
What is most valuable?
The distributed nature of CockroachDB helps us isolate the data when required. We also have some application logic that determines where the data must go. The best feature of CockroachDB is the ability to keep the nodes in different locations. It solves many problems.
What needs improvement?
The product is not an enterprise-level solution. The product must improve its disaster recovery features. It must also improve on support, logging, and backup restore.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for almost three to three and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't encountered many problems with the tool’s stability. It is pretty stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is easily scalable. One of the reasons we chose it is its scalability. If a CPU hits 80%, by default, it can spin off new instances and provide quick support. Overall, we have 1000 people using the solution in our organization. We have 200 concurrent users. We plan to use it more in the future.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support team is getting better. The support is pretty good. The team wants good customer feedback and takes the product to the next level. Initially, we had some issues getting support 24/7. Over time, the support has improved. I rate the technical support a seven or eight out of ten. We need to pay a little if we want enterprise-level support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using MySQL. We had difficulties in isolating the data, so we switched to CockroachDB. CockroachDB is an open-source tool. The support is pretty good, and the support fee is much lower than the competitors. There were only three to four products in the market at that time.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is simple and straightforward. The default out-of-the-box solution comes with the basic setup. We can set it up quickly. We need some technical knowledge for disaster recovery and backup restorations, but it is not that complex.
What was our ROI?
The solution is worth the money.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated another product, but it was very expensive compared to CockroachDB.
What other advice do I have?
I will advise people to use the product. It will be beneficial in the long run. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Reliable operational database with an easy setup process
What is our primary use case?
We use CockroachDB as the main database to handle the high-velocity data and ensure real-time processing for a music platform. It enables the processing of a large volume of credit scoring records online within a limited timeframe. It helps us distribute the workload among nodes and create a cluster to improve performance and scalability. It is useful for applications that don't require Postgres-specific features. Also, its compatibility with Postgres makes switching between the databases easier.
What is most valuable?
The product has valuable security features. It is easy to set up SSL certificates for communication between nodes. It has a user-friendly observability feature in terms of UI, helping us monitor login performance, identify slow queries, and view latency between the nodes. It is very adaptable, allowing us to tune specific details easily. It is based on a distributed architecture that determines and manages the number of nodes. It has an automatic rebalancing feature to manage the scenarios where nodes go offline and return online. It provides good performance if used for the right use case. Additionally, its compatibility with Postgres is a valuable feature as well.
What needs improvement?
The platform could be more extensible. At the moment, I have to use Postgres for extension issues. There needs to be better integration features. Additionally, the product’s Change Data Capture Integrations with tools such as Kafka needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using CockroachDB for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is very stable. Sometimes, queries overuse the memory, leading to downtime. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable. Its scalability is a nine or ten out of ten. The number of users depends on the client’s organization and ranges from a few thousand to millions of users.
How are customer service and support?
While learning its functionality, I contacted the product’s technical support team regarding extensibility issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used Postgres, I switched because I needed a distributed version with Postgres-like functionality and high resilience.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was quite easy for me. The process of security setting and certificate generation may be complicated. It requires experience and knowledge of using the Linux administration system.
What about the implementation team?
In-house
What was our ROI?
The product generates a return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The platform is affordable even for the enterprise version. It provides value for investment in terms of performance.
What other advice do I have?
I rate CockroachDB a nine out of ten. It is a reliable and best operational database product for higher use cases.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Open source with extensive documentation and a University for training
What is our primary use case?
Cockroach nodes were installed in the following:
1. Single host, triple nodes (containers): for evaluation on a low-end PC.
2. Single host, triple nodes (process): to test applications against a ~500GB database in-house.
3. Serverless: hosted in Google Cloud Platform (the main database).
A number of Python scripts and some Java applications are happily reading and writing to the database.
The solution allows for scaling in cases where a PostgreSQL server (unless you use sophisticated partitioning across some machines) would not be enough to handle the load. This kind of database is particularly used for backtests.
How has it helped my organization?
I am a freelancer. A client of mine wanted a solution that would allow them to scale yet not abandon the familiar PostgreSQL front-end (and rewrite a part of their source code).
Scalability aside, CockroachDB is a fine way forward from PostgreSQL and is not changing the client source code part of the system. If you are lucky and you do not use newer features from recent versions of PostgreSQL or PostgreSQL extensions, it's fine.
There are nice-to-have features for big organizations like regional tables. At the moment, my client simply does not use these. However, the serverless offer from CockroachDB is reacting well as data grows.
What is most valuable?
The main aspects that are valuable include:
- It is compatible with the wire protocol of PostgreSQL. All applications did not need to be modified. DBeaver and SquirrelSQL worked with the normal PostgreSQL JDBC drivers. Libraries for other languages (C++, Go) also worked.
- The subset of SQL that my client is using is completely supported.
- The Cockroach documentation is extensive.
- Cockroach University is a very good starting point to learn.
- The availability of the open source offer, no strings attached, allows a full evaluation of the product.
What needs improvement?
I find the serverless offer a bit confusing. The price is a function of the maximum database size.
A single SELECT can use a number of request units, for example. If the throughput is high enough, you could run out of request units and be throttled if you do not pay attention to how your database is used.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution since 2020.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have never had a crash for the workload I experimented with. However, this is not useful information, since you may always hit a bug or a daunting workload according to your necessities.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very good, considering that it is a relational database.
How are customer service and support?
I have no experience with technical support at the moment.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
CockroachDB is a big data substitute for PostgreSQL.
I have used a number of databases in my professional activity, and every tool has its drawbacks. For example, for certain kinds of jobs, when you do not need relations among tables, Apache Cassandra is a better choice for big data.
How was the initial setup?
You have just to follow the instructions. Of course, installing and configuring all by yourself requires a skilled administrator.
What about the implementation team?
I handled the setup in-house. The serverless solution is the one offered by Cockroach on Google Cloud Platform.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is good. At the moment the serverless solution is affordable according to the given workload.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For their use case, my client wanted a "certified" version that they would forget to administrate, and so, for the main database, they chose the serverless offer.
For experimenting in-house they like to use the freely downloadable open source version, which is very easy to install. The price is irresistible, and if some crash happens there is a reliable backup in the cloud.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have evaluated TimescaleDB and Amazon RedShift. However, I chose CockroachDB as I had produced an experimental application some years ago using an older version and found it very easy to use.
What other advice do I have?
It is a complex database under the hood. It scales using big data techniques, synchronizing among nodes using Raft and continually compacting.
The integrated web console makes it apparently easy to use. But be prepared to study and spend some quality time with Cockroach University and the documentation. This will be useful when performing optimizations on throughput.
Also, if you can distribute the load on multiple nodes (possibly more than three), you will gain in scalability. There are some little formulas that bind the replication factor to the number of nodes to use.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Completes node syncing in short time
What is our primary use case?
CockroachDB helped us sync the nodes in a short time.
What is most valuable?
The tool's most valuable feature is node syncing, which takes only 0.54 milliseconds.
What needs improvement?
CockroachDB needs to improve store processes.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
CockroachDB is scalable. We have more than 35 million records.
How are customer service and support?
CockroachDB's support is good, though they take some time to reply.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
If you do it for the first time, the tool's deployment is complex. Once you get an overview, it is easy.
What other advice do I have?
I rate CockroachDB an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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