Neki is sharded Postgres by PlanetScale

summary

PlanetScale has launched Neki, a sharded Postgres solution that allows databases to scale horizontally to hundreds of millions of queries per second and petabytes of data. The system uses a router, sidecars, and a control plane to manage multiple real Postgres shards. This architecture enables growth without downtime, allowing users to split hot shards and rebalance data as workloads increase. It provides the as-the-single-endpoint experience while maintaining the power of standard Postgres.

key points

1. Neki uses a router and control plane to distribute queries across multiple real Postgres shards, allowing the database to scale past the limits of a single machine.
2. The platform supports zero-downtime operations, including shard splitting, resharding, and schema changes, by using coordinated workflows and replication.
3. Administrative tasks like version upgrades and data imports are handled through a migration model that replicates data to new groups before cutting over traffic.

who should read it

Database administrators and software engineers who need to scale Postgres to extreme volumes of data and queries without sacrificing availability.

discussion mixed