Legacy database systems are far from perfect and that’s why enterprises aim to find different solutions to keep their applications running smoothly. That’s why Google announced on May 11 at their event Google I/O, a preview of AlloyDB for PostgreSQL. Organizations can now leverage this PostgreSQL-compatible database service to innovate their most used enterprise database workloads.
According to the tests that were performed, AlloyDB was four times faster than the standard PostgreSQL when used for transactional workloads and over a hundred times much faster when used for analytical queries. This speed and reliability make AlloyDB a compatible substitute for legacy database engines.
What Makes AlloyDB Special?
Switching from legacy products to an open-source database poses a lot of challenges in the terms of performance tuning, application availability management, and interruptions caused by vacuuming. AlloyDB intends to address these issues with its security, availability, manageability, and AI/ML-powered management that complies with PostgreSQL compatibilities and reliable storage.
AlloyDB allows you to scale without sacrificing performance. Thanks to its sophisticated database-optimized storage service tailored for PostgreSQL that uses similar building blocks to worldwide services such as Youtube and Gmail, it can disaggregate storage and compute at multiple layers and provide help with scaling.
Google teams have equipped AlloyDB with enough power and capabilities including automatic tiering of data and analytical acceleration so that it can handle almost any workload with little management overhead. Even if you have existing applications on PostgreSQL, you can migrate them with nearly no changes since AlloyDB supports the latest version of PostgreSQL.
Increased Scale and Performance
AlloyDB is guaranteed to bring a high level of performance with its multiple layers of caching that are automatically tiered according to workload patterns. Since the AlloyDB service is much faster than Amazon’s comparable PostgreSQL-compatible service (2x) and the standard PostgreSQL (4x) it makes sense for it to provide an enhanced experience and facilitated scaling.
Provides Transparent and Predictable Pricing
Pricing often becomes a major hurdle in adopting new database services. This is not an issue with AlloyDB as it comes with predictable and transparent pricing based on charging customers only for the services they use. There are no extra costs for read replicas or vague I/O charges. Storage is continuously provisioned on autopilot and the lighting-fast cache aids further in achieving an optimized relationship between price and performance.
Superior Availability in the Industry
Ryuzo Yamamoto, a software engineer at Mercari (Souzoh, Inc.) states that “AlloyDB will bring more scalability and availability with no application changes.” AlloyDB is able to identify and quickly recover from database failures no matter the load or size of the database. The stellar architecture handles perfectly instance resizing and is adapted for non-disruptive database maintenance. Now customers have access to a functional and reliable database that rarely turns unavailable.
Delivers Business Insights in Real-Time
We’ve already given you a hint about the speed at which AllobyDB operates and this makes it an excellent option for hybrid transactional and analytical workloads (HTAP), reporting, and business intelligence. With the ability to deliver analytical queries 100 times faster than PostgreSQL, thanks to a vectorized columnar accelerator, AlloyDB provides faster aggregations and scans that speed up the delivery time. The data is stored in an optimized columnar format in memory which makes access easier.
Improved Insights and ML Backed Up Management
AlloyDB comes with several capabilities that ease the work of developers and DBAs. Surely, it includes all the basic services that are expected from most database services such as scaling, replication, database patching and backups, and much more.
The advanced adaptive algorithms and machine learning intelligently organize your data and help in analytical acceleration, PostgreSQL vacuum management, and storage management. Let’s also not forget about the built-in integration with Google Cloud’s artificial intelligence platform, Vertex AI, that guarantees low latency, and high throughput without extra effort in writing additional code.
Closing Thoughts
It’s about time data workers and organizations escape the risks of vendor lock-in that come from legacy databases and embrace the capabilities of AlloyDB. With much more freedom than before, AlloyDB allows you to provide your customers with an enhanced experience. At Blue Orange Digital we specialize in providing data-driven solutions to maximize the revenue you get from your data infrastructure. Learn more about our services by scheduling a call today.
