Cockroach Labs, the company behind the cloud-native distributed SQL database CockroachDB, has announced a significant achievement in its mission to provide customers with a seamless experience of operating a distributed database anywhere. CockroachDB-as-a-service is now available on all three main cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, with the addition of Microsoft Azure.
The new offering enables users to access and write data across numerous geographically dispersed regions, providing operational efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness for organizations of all sizes. By paying only for the precise quantity of data stored and its utilization on the serverless CockroachDB platform, businesses can substantially reduce the cost of operating global business operations and obtain access to data-intensive, multi-regional applications.
The availability of CockroachDB on Microsoft Azure provides numerous benefits to organizations. It enables uncomplicated resilience, scalability, and deployments across multiple regions to support local performance and data conformance. In addition, CockroachDB integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft ecosystem, enabling users to leverage the platform’s capabilities within their preferred cloud provider.
Kevin Holditch, Head of Platform at Form3, explained the significance of CockroachDB’s platform, stating, “The concept behind our platform is to be able to withstand a cloud vendor outage, so we won’t be dependent on any cloud vendor. We will have a Kubernetes cluster for each cloud provider – Azure, AWS, and GCP – and operate CockroachDB on all three.”
Public Cloud and Private Cloud
The deployment of enterprise operations in cloud infrastructure and platform services is expected to reach 40% by 2023, up from 20% in 2020, according to Gartner research. Despite this growing trend, up to 80% of transactional workloads have not yet migrated to the cloud, according to surveys. Nonetheless, as organizations reevaluate their technology platforms, there is an emphasis on cloud-based storage of vital data. This market transition could indicate a decline in the dominance of legacy databases like Oracle and IBM.
CockroachDB was designed to operate across multiple cloud providers and private cloud infrastructures while preserving the consistency and scalability of conventional relational databases. As a cloud-independent, distributed SQL database with a high level of flexibility and operational control, CockroachDB claims to be ideally positioned to meet the evolving needs of data and analytics leaders.
Cockroach Labs has introduced multi-region capabilities for CockroachDB serverless, its consumption-based, auto-scaling solution, to further enhance its offerings. This update would enable users to distribute data across multiple cloud regions while functioning as a single logical database, providing “cost-effective and simplified operations” for businesses seeking to serve globally dispersed users.
In addition, Cockroach Labs has improved CockroachDB MOLT (Migrate Off Legacy Technology) to make migrations from legacy databases such as Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server simpler. The MOLT Verify feature assures accurate replication and a more seamless syntax conversion, in addition to providing enhanced authentication and more intuitive workflows.
Spencer Kimball, CEO and co-founder of Cockroach Labs, highlighted the significance of the latest release by stating, “While the move of transactional data to the cloud is accelerating, many data leaders are still at the beginning of their cloud journey and are discovering that legacy solutions do not meet their needs, especially for their mission-critical applications. This release represents the realization of the vision we established eight years ago. We provide genuine flexibility and resiliency and will meet you wherever you are on your cloud journey – now and in the future.”
Additional feature updates would include the following:
- Distributed User-Defined-Functions (UDFs) – Enable developers to insert UDFs into the database without scaling limitations. Distributed UDFs improve developer and application productivity and make migrations from legacy databases simpler.
- Terraform provider in General Availability – Use the Terraform provider to orchestrate CockroachDB dedicated and serverless provisioning and administration.
- Address the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 – With a new FIPS-ready binary for CockroachDB self-hosted, FIPS 140-2 is a cryptography standard required for many government agencies and organizations that work with such agencies.
