One of the most critical aspects of software projects is managing its data. Managing the operational concerns for your database can be complex and expensive, especially if you need to scale to large volumes of data, high traffic, or geographically distributed usage. Planetscale is a serverless option for your MySQL workloads that lets you focus on your applications without having to worry about managing the database or fight with differences between development and production. In this episode Nick van Wiggeren explains how the Planetscale platform is implemented, their strategies for balancing maintenance and improvements of the underlying Vitess project with their business goals, and how you can start using it today to free up the time you spend on database administration.
Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Nick van Wiggeren about Planetscale, a serverless and globally distributed MySQL database as a service
Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you describe what Planetscale is and the story behind it?
What are the core problems that you are solving with the Planetscale platform?
How might an engineering team address those challenges in the absence of Planetscale/Vitess?
Can you describe how Planetscale is implemented?
What are some of the addons that you have had to build on top of Vitess to make Planetscale
What are the impacts that a serverless database has on the way teams approach their application/platform design and development?
metrics exposed to help users optimize their usage
What is your policy/philosophy for determining what capabilities to include in Vitess and what belongs in the Planetscale platform?
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Planetscale/Vitess used?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Planetscale?
When is Planetscale the wrong choice?
What do you have planned for the future of Planetscale?
@nickvanwig) on Twitter
nickvanw) on GitHub
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