AWS Unveils Two New Database Services for Low-Latency Data Processing
AWS today announced two new database services aimed at providing low-latency data processing that can support transactions anywhere on the globe. The new services, including the Postgres-flavored Aurora DSQL and DynamoDB global tables, put AWS in head-to-head competition with Google Cloud’s Spanner, which also uses atomic clocks to ensure that far-flung transactions don’t get out of order.
The Challenge of Distributed Databases
For years, Google Cloud has been the dominant force in a small but important niche of the relational database market that requires low latency as well as transactional consistency for database operations that take place anywhere on the planet (or off of it). The tough architectural challenge has always been how to account for the time lag between nodes in a globally distributed database. While the speed of light–nearly 300 million meters per second–is definitely fast, it’s not fast enough to support distributed nodes in a database in the manner that is required.
AWS’s Solution: Aurora DSQL and DynamoDB Global Tables
For certain use cases, such as banking, companies have gotten around the physical limits by using clever mechanisms to ensure that the order of database transactions get out of synch. Google Cloud famously uses atomic clocks, which other databases, such as CockroachDB and YugabyteDB, have used software, such as the Raft consensus algorithm, to guarantee consistency.
AWS has adopted new technologies and techniques to overcome the twin challenges of distributed databases: how to achieve strong consistency with low latency in geographically distinct nodes, and syncing servers with microsecond accuracy around the globe. The company explains:
“To achieve multi-Region strong consistency with low latency, Aurora DSQL decouples transaction processing from storage to overcome the limitations of the current approaches, which were constrained by information being passed back and forth multiple times at the speed of light,” the company says in its press release.
“To overcome this, Aurora DSQL only checks each transaction at commit time and, on commit, parallelizes all the writes across all regions to provide a multi-Region database with strong consistency and fast writes,” it continues. “To ensure each Region sees every database operation in the exact order they occurred, Aurora DSQL uses Amazon Time Sync Service, which added hardware reference clocks on every [EC2] instance, synchronizing them to satellite-connected atomic clocks to provide microseconds level accurate time within anywhere in the world.”
Aurora DSQL and DynamoDB Global Tables: Key Features
Aurora DSQL is a serverless offering, which requires minimal operational overhead for customers. AWS says it provides 99.999% availability across multiple regions, virtually limitless scalability, and compatibility with existing applications that use a Postgres database.
AWS rolled out a similar capability with DynamoDB, its popular NoSQL database.
“It turns out that relational databases are not the only ones that benefit from multi-region, strongly consistent, low latency capabilities,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said during today’s keynote address. “So I’m also pleased to announce that we’re adding the same multi-region, strong consistency to DynamoDB global tables. So now whether you’re running SQL or NoSQL, you get the best of all worlds—active-active, multi-region databases.”
Comparison with Google Cloud’s Spanner
AWS pitted Aurora DSQL against Google’s Spanner to see how it compares. The company says that, for a basic 10-transaction SQL statement, Aurora DSQL was able to deliver 4x the throughput for both reads and writes. It will be interesting to see how the two databases compete in more complex workloads in the future.
Conclusion
AWS’s new database services, Aurora DSQL and DynamoDB global tables, provide a powerful solution for low-latency data processing and transactional consistency across multiple regions. With its focus on serverless architecture and compatibility with existing applications, Aurora DSQL is a compelling option for customers looking for a scalable and highly available database solution.
FAQs
Q: What is Aurora DSQL?
A: Aurora DSQL is a serverless, Postgres-flavored database service that provides low-latency data processing and transactional consistency across multiple regions.
Q: What is DynamoDB global tables?
A: DynamoDB global tables is a feature of AWS’s popular NoSQL database service that provides multi-region, strongly consistent, low-latency capabilities.
Q: How does Aurora DSQL compare to Google Cloud’s Spanner?
A: According to AWS, Aurora DSQL delivers 4x the throughput for both reads and writes compared to Google Cloud’s Spanner for a basic 10-transaction SQL statement.
Q: What are the key features of Aurora DSQL?
A: Aurora DSQL provides 99.999% availability across multiple regions, virtually limitless scalability, and compatibility with existing applications that use a Postgres database.
