Why we build CockroachDB on top of RocksDB (2019) - an insightful post from the CockroachDB team about how they use RocksDB as the storage layer for single nodes. RocksDB is a embedded KV-store in the vein of LevelDB, Sqlite etc. which uses LSM storage. For me itβs also interesting how this separation seems to be more-and-more common. Use a well known storage layer, and build only the value-added thing on top of it. Especially since said storage layer would deal with platform idiosyncrasies like fsync
bugs etc. MySQL and even Postgres have been used this way, but theyβre obviously more heavyweight.
Exploring distributed systems theory: availability and consistency (2019) - a nice read overall for linking the abstract (and fuzzy) nature of the CAP theorem with the real systems youβll see. The best part was the discussion of a βCPβ system like etcd/ZooKeeper and how trading off Availability just means not being able to have βperfectβ availability - responding to every query with some sort of success data. But not going into βstupidββ availability - like not responding to any query. Systems like that usually are deployed in groups of 3
or 5
. And when a partition occurs, theyβre designed to choose consistency. So the nodes outside the quorum wonβt be able to handle writes - hence they wonβt be available. But the system as a whole is still in a decent functioning state of reduced availability.
The end of the beginning #youtube (2018) - a presentation by Benedict Evans from Andreessen Horowitz on the βfutureβ of tech startups (as they know them at least). The main idea is that while IT has managed to affect a great deal of fields - with the biggest winners being in ecommerce and advertising - we havenβt even scratched the surface of what could be done. The hard part only comes from here in fact, but thereβs the potential of affecting the whole global economy, from agriculture to logistics and medicine.
Kubernetes in 5 mins #youtube (2017) - what it says on the box. A short guide for what is useful about K8s.
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