039 Peter Zaitsev
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Michael: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Postgres fm. We've got a slightly different episode for you this week, unfortunately, to do some conflicting schedules and then internet issues. We didn't manage to record a regular episode, but we hope to be back with that next week. In the meantime, I have edited a recent interview, Nikola I did with Peter Zeev.

For Postgres tv. , they talk about MySQL versus Postgres. Perona success over the years. Open source licenses, databases on Kubernetes quite a lot, and actually they do get a bit passionate at some points and there's a little bit of swearing. So if you are around sensitive ears, please be mindful of that, but otherwise, over to Peter and Nikolai. Enjoy!

Nikolay: This is Nikola from Postgres tv, and today we have interview with great guest Peter Zeer from Perona PERS founder. Hi Peter. Thank you for coming.

Peter: Hey, thanks, Nikola.

Pleasure to be here.

Nikolay: I think, we met, 15 years ago. right?

Peter: Yes. it's been a while.

Nikolay: several, eras already passed and I remember [00:01:00] also like seven or eight years ago, I made a joke asking when Perona will provide positive support, remember? And then Yes, yes. Yeah, . And then few years later, actually five years ago at, in Santa Clara Perona Life Conference. You announced it was 2018, you announced POS support. So it was not a joke anymore. then I gave you five years to realize how POCUS works and all details. So, question to you right now. What do you think the biggest problem of poss is And like what biggest difficulties compared to other database systems?

Oh,

Peter: you are asking me as if I, would. deep, technologists, right? And I think, my relationship with Postgres will be, different than it was with My Square, where I was Canal consult for many years, right? And by the time we started to provide, support, right?

Per corner was already a business with more than 200 people, which well did [00:02:00] not really permit me so much time and need to get indefinat, right? So with that in mind, What I think, the difficulties is in my opinion is not so much they're, technical, but in certain cases, I would say like organizational, right?

And, maybe kind of, having a need to evolve, with, times, while Postgre Square, was not ever, you know, controlled by single entity as Right. Or Myco of Oracle, right? That is still controlled by, small group of unelected people. , right?

Which are kind of, benevolent dictators for life, if you will, And, I think that is a, a problem If you look at particular things, Post Greco is probably where only really big project out there, which, does, Not have a, bugs or defects database, It all goes in, let's say some mainly list. And that is not helpful for users, right? Because as a [00:03:00] user, you want to know, Hey, here is a bug. It was introduced in this version. Right? Hopefully. So if I'm below that, I don't need to upgrade, right? And, and it click on that version if I'm afterwards,

Nikolay: I don't need You're talking upgrade, talking. You're talking about some registry of, issues, tasks bugs and so on.

Peter: Well, well, yes. Flight cycle tracked, right? That's right. Yes. And if you look at, other, database projects tend to have it. you know, Paul Greco doesn't, I think also if you look at their, process for development progress, right?

Look, of course, there is this reliance on a mean Microsoft owned GitHub, right? Or other nasty venture funded GitLab, right? But look, that is a developer experience, Which we all like those days, right? We want to operate with, pool requests right now, just, you know, send some code, in the mailing list, So that is I think to, yeah.

Nikolay: I'm a hundred percent agree with you. And, we actually on [00:04:00] this channel, Paul tv, we talk quite a lot about these problems and we, I actually created a, browser extension, which allows you to, in one click to extract patch from many list and quickly develop and check it in GI Port using GitLab and also vice versa from me, quest, can generate the patch to send it to Les. But don't you think this, conservative approach with mailing, maybe it's a part of success of Postgres? No.

Peter: Well, you know, I think it's just kind of very interesting, right? And general Phil philosophical discussion and in many cases it is very hard to say, well, is somebody kind of, successful because, or despite.

Is somebody successful because he spent 20 years in jail and that was fantastic education. Oh, well, you know what? Many people die Doing that . Or become kind of slightly abnormal. And this guy, while still was successful, So that is I think a comparison I would, have here, yes, of course Paul Square is successful.

That is, not a question. It is fantastic. [00:05:00] it's, fastest growing, database, right? but I think there are opportunities for po gr to be, even more successful, I also think what we all what or vote for every project and every technology company out where we need to make sure it does not sit on its flowers, right, if you will.

And Postgre Square folks should remember that. I think for years, for many years, bog GR Square was kind of a distant second to my square in adoption. Now it's in many cases caught up and overcome, right? Especially in the momentum for venue project.

But that does not mean what something else cannot come and become a more popular solution in the future if a Postgre Square community doesn't have all the time. I think evolving is a name of average technology venture.

Nikolay: Right. And I understand that you don't have HandsOn experience with pk, but I still think it's interesting to hear some opinions from you. For example, my SQL has viz and [00:06:00] anding, right? Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. Oh, oh, Let's go technology if you want that. Let's little bit, a little bit.

Dive into that. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert. I still have high level. Right. Yep. Well one thing in this case, I think a solution for distributed database, you name that. Mm-hmm. , right? I think modern developers may expect with database which is a horizontally scalable and a clustering, Also, which is built in, Not what you have to build a cluster from a different wonderful components, I think that is one thing out there. Now you may also picked on built in encryption, Transparent encryption, that is another pet piece of mine, right? Which is, I found Pulin what seems to be over years number of efforts in this case, right? But none of them really. Made it in in a Postgre square, mainline while again, kind. That is something which most databases out there they provide.

And many enterprise companies may expect that to be in a database. Yes. They may be stupid morons and don't understand what [00:07:00] the file system in subscription is just as good. But that's what you want

Nikolay: Right. You you're talking about an encryption for, data in place. Like not on, trans, because twice, that's right.

Peter: data trust, or what

Nikolay: about compression? Like some, some people say like I recently had a discussion on Twitter with C of Victorian metrics. He was poking like, oh, I forgot PGOs doesn't have encryption or doesn't have compression. And we talked about okay, 1 billion rows, how many of gigabytes is that?

Usually we, with PGOs, we got used to one, billion rows is one terabyte. Mm-hmm. , With Teys is like click house. It's much, much less. So based on your experience with all TP systems like MySQL, or do you think it should be implemented better than, like in terms of compression in o TP system, or it's just purely should be in allop systems or analytical database

Peter: databases and so on?

Well, think that is one thing what you cover I think is very interesting, right? I think if you look at compress. Either your [00:08:00] column store systems like click House or like special purpose systems like Victoria Metrics, if time's serious. Yes. They allow for some, great compression, right?

I mean

Nikolay: like hundred techs. Very impressive numbers. Not, maybe not thousand techs, but sometimes hundred

Peter: depending on data. Of course. Yes, yes. I mean that's right, that is typically not what we get with O L T P focused database. But look, I think in this case it is good if such options exist, here is, I would go in a little bit, kind of different direction. What was interesting in Postgre Square, comparing that to a My Square, right? I'm obviously very familiar with Is what in a certain level, Postgre Square allow for huge number of extensibility. In other cases it is rather restricted.

And that is your storage system, and that's kind of goes to the transparent data encryption as well, as well as compression. I think there have been efforts in a postgre scale space to play with that. Right? There was Z heap, Which was project going for [00:09:00] a few years. I haven't heard, updates about that for quite a while, but obviously didn't quite get to production. I think we also have neon, Also doing some things on changing the storage architecture in a postgre square. But all of that goes into kind of like a Rav.

Severe and intrusive postgre scale forks, if you will. Not some sort of like extension,

Nikolay: right? But there is storage api there, there is some already progress to allow different storage engines. So, so, but, but there are no well established com storage engines yet, but there is some extensibility already in place.

Important.

Peter: Well that's right. But I think that is something what allows you to play, it. Because if you think about saying, oh, I will just use the same storage engine and I apply compression to that, well, that may not be quite a good idea. At least like if you think about what we saw in in the DV in my square, well that is not very.

Right. What we see in this case is l SM based storage, like based [00:10:00] on miros that typically can offer substantially better compression, but they have also a lot of other difference in how we store data compared to your, conventional B3 based database storage.

Nikolay: So bottom line compression topics should be considered together with storage engine topic, right?

They should come together.

Peter: I think that's right. And look, I think there is another question here, I've seen number of people talking about getting that light compression with Iranian post on a file system, which support compress.

It's like zest, you mean like Z zest? first and foremost, And if you need a compression it and performance is less of a concern that is a possible solution.

Nikolay: Yeah, makes sense. It limits the number of use cases because many people on managed services, but, it makes sense.

Yes. So back to success question and what's behind it, and the less technical question when Perona was founded, like in thousand six, right?

Peter: 2006. That's right. Right. And

Nikolay: how many people does Perona

Peter: have right now? I think it's somewhere [00:11:00] between three 50 and 400 people. Somewhere in that range.

Yeah.

Nikolay: That's impressive. What do you is behind success? Like what defines success

Peter: here? Well, I mean wiper Corner has grown to the size Well I think there's like a couple of things, And some of that I would attribute to lack and kind of be in the right place in the right time because about the time we started, we had sun acquiring minus 12 and Oracle acquiring Sun that had a lot of digestion processes uh, if you like, right?

Which really allowed us to get some good market share.

Nikolay: It was in 2000, or roughly 2010, 2011, as I remember these acquisitions happened,

Peter: 2009. Right, but where, where was It was, I think like early, it was like an Oracle w would buy in the gb. Right. Which you get always kind of like extra tension, So there was a lot of, I would say challenges in that market, And, and I think for us other important thing was a unpromised customer focus saying, Hey, you know what? We just want to go ahead and do what's [00:12:00] right for a customer.

Nikolay: from my perspective, from like how looking outside at how it started. I remember my SQL performance block or something like, oh

Peter: yes, yes, yes. As well. That's right. Yes. You need Luke. Yeah. You,

Nikolay: you, you and Vadim your co-founder were very active there, and do you think blogging helped?

Peter: Well, yes, I think especially at that time, I think that's e everything has to be looked at. like a time lens. Right. I started my school performance blog, And actually it was even like a blog on a live draw first before going on my own, right?

Mm-hmm. At that time, I already had some sort of people who respect me in the industry, right? I was also around the conferences, right? On my school behalf of, so then I left on my own. That was very good in generating initial. because when I left my square, I didn't have long runway, I had just my second child, right, who was she was like a six [00:13:00] months who just moved to the new country. So for me it was like, Hey, you know what make this thing work or go hungry, right. And actually to my surprise, I think we got like a, pretty. Busy schedule in just, you know, one month, even though we don't, didn't have a, even have a corporate website at that point.

Right. I just little have, like, we do my skill consultant on our website and I think that is for me is probably like a learning experience. Hey, you know what, if you want to do it kind of a hard way, you know, trace capital, you want to kind of boots strap, make sure you have some sort of following.

Some people you actually have a reach who can even become your customers or maybe spread the wall To help you to get those customers What kind of

Nikolay: tasks? general database support, performance tuning,

Peter: or what that's right.

Now remember that was before the cloud, before database as a service, And what that means is if you want to have like a, you know, simple RUPLE powered website, [00:14:00] for example, And you want to make sure it is a highly available, you need my scale set up for you if replication, backups, and so on and so forth, And that typically would be some sort of manual work, That's what you would do, Also a lot of consultant Actually, that is there. I think we did a lot of good in terms of finding our niche because one thing is if you look at the larger companies, typically they come with relatively.

Like a heavy process to set up consulting. You figure out your statement of work, right? And probably that's going to be

Nikolay: master service agreement first, then

Peter: statement. Yes, yes. I had msa, right? And whatever, right? We would bill in 15 minutes increments, And we would be pretty easy to do, Hey, you know what?

You essentially have like a napkin kind of agreement with us and we'll do what you tell us. And that means for startups. That was a very easy, I just need little help here. Hey, you know what? Maybe you know, tune my. Basic settings, Hey, I don't know what to do with a query. Boom.

And that was very inexpensive for, customers and providing them a lot of [00:15:00] great

Nikolay: outcomes. That's super interesting. So, tiny contracts like long flow of them. Yeah. That's super

Peter: interesting. And another thing, what we did, which you later actually stop doing right as we launch support is also emergency consultant.

You actually could call, and that was my number. You could call me in the middle of the night and I will wake up And will pretend I was not sleeping. Or

Nikolay: you don't, you don't sleep anyway because of second child, right?

Peter: So yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I'll go and you know, fix your database, right?

And we, we would essentially charge you for two hours minimum, right? Or something like that, which was a very good deal for customers, Who run Into trouble and they don't know where to do with their database.

Nikolay: Yeah. Interesting. And then you said you abandoned this idea while the company has grown, right?

Peter: So, well yes. I mean, things change, And I think this is also what is important to, to understand. I think as you scale the company, the things, what you are going to do as a kind of sole entrepreneur Are not what your employees would do. And for many [00:16:00] reasons, it's not just kind of a hard work, I. Jumping on the call, I can promise anything I like, and in many cases, like people say, well, we need help with this. I'll say, oh shit, they're asking me to also write some code in the language.

I don't know. I say yes, because you know, I'll actually call a friend and he will help me. Well, you know what, if you have a sales per salesperson, right, you're probably not going to be comfortable obligating the company, what that company doesn't do, right? After that company has scaled, And that means is as a company grows, you get typically in much more defined proposition of your services, what you do what you done, And also we transitioned upmarket. And I think that's a good thing we did because I've seen so many companies, which have been operating with us earlier on. They sort of disappeared after cloud moved on. because you know what, the same dudes who would need like a little dr of website, well, they now can just, you know, positive akre right?

To get a whole thing. Or if they want a [00:17:00] separate thing, we'll probably can use r d s on Amazon and not have me to come and set a database for them. Right.

Nikolay: So demand decreased

Peter: and in for well demand changed. In this case, I think at the same time we see a lot more of a large enterprise adopting open source database technologies.

So when when my common customer early on would be a small businesses, And now a lot of them are a large enterprises.

Nikolay: I also wanted to ask you why open source? I, I've noticed at some point only few years ago actually, that you preferring open source everywhere, like have strong focus on open source and why,

Peter: Well there is like a multiple reasons for that. Some of that is their ecosystem. I sort of grown into right, but I also truly believe is from a customer point of view, That the open source is best for you because that gives you a lot of choice, And I think well open source. So maybe using that other free [00:18:00] software and thinking about free as a freedom. In this case, it's very important for me personally, I mean, if you think about, for example, why did I start my own business, Well, one thing is I absolutely despise authority, right? I hate taking orders, so what that means If that is kind of more important for you, maybe than amount of dollars you make, well then I think a, having your own business and b, doing that around the open source is the best you can do.

Because using open source, I don't need to go to any, you know, like a large vendor and say, well, dear Oracle, I want to do business with you. Please love me. Oh, you have a partnership agreement. I need to sign. No, I can go out there and say, did you guys know Oracle doesn't have customers? Oracle has hostages.

I love it.

Nikolay: Well a couple of more questions about Perona. Uh, Perona still is consulting company.

Peter: Well, I mean, I wouldn't call it this way, right?

I think this is something what [00:19:00] people want to kind of define that. And maybe from the early days, right? uh, I believe what we are in a software business, We produce software. It is just product, product software like pmm, right?

Product like pmm, like you know, per corner distribution for ous, as we speak here, right? It just happened to be what our products are open source. Interesting. But, but I think what is important to understand right, is what they open source. That doesn't mean you cannot charge for it.

Mm-hmm.

we have a customers which may buy support, And then we can cover both per corner version as well as in, you know, upstream. Let's say if you choose to run Postgris Square, which you downloaded from Postgris Square dot org, We also have. Also, or, or rds. Yes. We cover that as well though. I would say in r d s we recognize our help is a little bit more limited because we cannot look at the source code. Or even what the hell is going on in the instance. But in many cases, we can help Or we also provide their subscription to their, corner Which we are building [00:20:00] some other additional things beyond support, which actually kind of like always existed. we have a knowledge base, each customers can do self-service. in pmm, we have some additional advisors, which are available to

Nikolay: subscribers, paid version.

So there is differentiation and functionality there. Right?

Peter: that's right. I think if you look from a per corner standpoint, where I see importance for value proposition. even though we are now hundreds of people, right? It's not, you know, just myself and couple of friends, we are tiny company compared to their gus in the market, And in this case, what that means, I don't want to say, oh, you know what we are providing you know, like an other proper reversion of pauses just like enterprises. And our version is just slightly crappy and slightly cheaper, it's not really. Differentiating enough, And for me, what I want to make sure is what offering provides that really big delta, which is for me, what open source brings in a practical way is avoiding vendor [00:21:00] locking when you run through corner products, Hey, you know what, if you don't like us, If you don't like because we suck or because we are too expensive, hey, you know what? You can keep running our product and go get help somewhere else, We're not going to require you to, toif any software out. Yeah, that's

Nikolay: interesting, this, in this point o obviously it's interesting to discuss open source versus cloud. What do you think what's happening right now in 2023? And what's the nearest future of this? Because obviously we had a recent case. It's not from database world, but it's from front end code world.

There is a case when. Some Russian Denise push carry off as lawyer rock and his library court js which he maintains for many years alone. And basically like half of internet is running on this library. You know this problem, right? Mm-hmm. , and he's complaining that he cannot make money and he cannot continue, and so on and so on.

What do you think about open source versus cloud?

Peter: Well I think what the problem we have here, is [00:22:00] just because how ubiquitous software engineering and open source has become, right? It's not about open source so far, but about, doing things you can afford. The wrong reasons. Right? Because if you're saying, well, you know what, I go ahead and Do the open source right under open source license, well, that means, well, you are essentially thinking like, well, I want to get a, good for world.

Right? And I am not expecting to pay anything bad. Look, it's not just about the open source, right? You can release your son in public domain, right? And then say like, how hell nobody's paying me. Well, look, you chose to do that. If you wanted to only restricted, well, you could have done it.

Maybe nobody would have heard about it in this case. But that is with choice you make, right?

Nikolay: It's like, it's open source is not a business model, right? This is, this is what,

Peter: that's all. Well, the open source is not a business model, right? But I think right now, You see when the thing shifts, well if you look at from a music industry, I think you had [00:23:00] like, as a we moved from let's say CD to streamings, You also had a lot of people bitching about how hard will life is and now they make no money what they believe should be paid for their art, That is, kind of natural right?

In this case. Now, look, I would say, if you look at from my standpoint, I wish. They're cloud vendors and actually many other commercial companies which rely on open source, would choose to contribute more to that, I think that is something what we will gradually long, And I like pc seeing people like that. I like more people say, you know, fuck it, I do not want to maintain my library anymore, Because what you want those cloud and corporations to understand, that's kind of your, you know, use supply chain. If you are not fair to somebody in your supply chain, you know, like sooner or later they're going to say, fuck you, I'm not going to supply you.

Nikolay: MongoDB and Elastic, right? Similar [00:24:00] thing, they changed licenses and so on,

Peter: case

I

Nikolay: would actions from a Ws

Peter: basically. Well, I mean I don't see it that well, Frankly. Right? I think actually if you look at a VC funded open source, that is a different story, A lot of those people privately, and I think what I like about MongoDB, they are actually very public, right? They have no freaking shame. They say the publicly, well, you know what? We did not open source to get help. We open source as a marketing. So they approach us saying, Hey, we'll call this thin open source to get you know, as many customers as possible.

Right? And then it doesn't serve us anymore. We say, you know what? Screw you time to change. Now.

Nikolay: ITAR be similar thing happened, right? Swift cock.

Peter: That's right. it's not like reserve to cloud and open source. You know, think about somebody like Uber.

Uber was subsidizing every dumb ride until all the taxes were dead. And then they can say, well, fantastic. You know what? We are not going to get more adoption by using the low prices. Now [00:25:00] let's make people pay more, Not just Uber, right? They're the same strategy as you can see with somebody like Amazon, Very often people will say, well, you know what? We got used to things being really cheap on Amazon 10 years ago. Well, Not any longer because guess what, we got maximum adoption people kind of get hooked on

Nikolay: that. Free databases on hero free databases, which is no more. Right.

And free databases on new and so on, right?

Peter: Yeah. So I think that's right. Yeah. And I think that that's right. The open source is a part of premium strategy, right? As a first dose of heroin is for free. But you know what, if you get that first dose of heroin for free, that doesn't mean would, or you would, you know, continue getting it right.

So I think, I think that in terms of Mongo's Elastic, I think that was deliberate strategy land for number of years, right? And then they came with that as a SOAP story, not what, like, Hey, we are greedy bastards. Our market cap is X and we want that to be five x. But well, we are [00:26:00] UNFI unfairly, you know, treated by the cloud vendors and they're fighting for our survival, yada, yada.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. .

Nikolay: And this considerations probably should define the license you choose. For example, if you start some new database system or some add-on, like we have a bunch of new projects like open source snowflake built, on pos, open source, Firebase built on pos, and so many who have like at least five, maybe very noticeable projects right now.

what license would you choose

Peter: Well I think that is a very good point, And I think that of course depends a lot on the path you are looking to change, And also how honest? you want to be with yourself, right? Actually, kind of this path what we see proven as a working very well in VC companies saying, Hey, you know, go with permissive license. Get adoption. Then scream bloody murder. How life is, toughed, right? And change your license.

Look at large extent that is successful. Is it honest? [00:27:00] I don't think so. It's like, right. I mean But you know what, maybe as a founder, you don't give a shit, you know, say, Hey, you know, I, I have my cool billion in the bank, and, you know, fuck you all like in the open source contributors, right?

Who help that to happen. Well, you know, why not? That is a, you know, position, which uh, ,

Nikolay: so would you choose uh, bsd or, or like POS license in this case and then change it later?

Peter: Well, yeah, I, well, first of all, I think what is happening right now is what G P L is dead. because it's kind of useless less than the left in the middle.

Right. And we can see including a

Nikolay: gpl or,

Peter: or no? I think mostly a gpl. Right? Because the thing about the monk, it was a gpl, And what I think that is something, what I heard out there is what they find out what A G P L does not work, Well, maybe if you go through that, all the legal process, And in 10 years later it'll be, discovered, What's, [00:28:00] well, you actually breach of ad license, but by that time it's kind of, well and why

Nikolay: doesn't, doesn't it work?

Peter: well, look, I'm not a legal person, what I want, to say is there have been number of companies, you know, think about Object rocket, think about, compose io who were providing MongoDB as a servers.

then it was a G P L and MON couldn't make shit out. They just could not stop it. Well, I don't think we had bad lawyers. I think in practice it didn't quite work. But as soon as they changed the license to S S P L, everybody compliance. And what I heard in this case is because while A G B L leaves certain things to interpretation, Their S S B L is much more black and white in this regard, right? What you cannot cannot do certain things.

Nikolay: So bottom line, what would you choose?

Peter: in my opinion, right, if your goal is maximizing adoption, When some sort [00:29:00] of permissive license is your best choice.

The choice of a license, I think here depends on the community a lot, right? Like for example, if you look at the cloud native Kubernetes stuff, They all do Apache, it's better to just comply that. So your customer look at the license, they don't have to, you know, they have lawyers, right?

Which understand that APA sheet's already approved, right? If they're uh, Iranian, Kubernetes, Don't make it more complicated for them, If you're using the ecosystem, which is based on, you know, either license, maybe you want to embrace that, so that is what I would say,

Nikolay: Yeah makes sense. And there's a project called Fer db, which is kind of MongoDB open source MongoDB on pos built on pos, right? Can you? Yes, that's right. I, I noticed it also has APA 2.0.

Peter: Well that's right. Yes. So the FER DB is the project I helped to start, because after MongoDB went property, right, it was clear what, where is a need for open source [00:30:00] Mongo be alternative, And we discussed four fork with number of parties, but, you know, there was not a lot of appetite. And we knew like, as a, you know, per corner to really do a fork would not be workable, right? So, well few years later I'd seen what we are not really getting a lot of stuff happening in that ecosystem, right?

I have to put the, put the team together. Yeah. And then we've been building you know, monk. Compatible replacement by using Postgres as a backend for last year or so.

Nikolay: Interesting. in my opinion, I have quite, established opinion on, on monk criticism of relational databases like two things.

And both I, agree, are reasonable. First is so-called webscale, so lack of charting, right? Mm-hmm. . And second is the difficulties of schema maintenance changes testing of it and so on. Like schal less so webscale and skim less twos. How does Fair DB going to address these

Peter: challenges? Well I think that is a very good question.

So if you look [00:31:00] from a Schuls standpoint, well, in this case, afer DB behaves exactly like, Mon db risque has a pretty. Powerful Jason capabilities, right? And that's what Feb leverages. If you look at the at the web scale I see what that is a problem to be solved by Postgris Square or surrounding ecosystem I already know what both gigabytes and Coro GB has written about using Fair DB Fair Solution as a backend which is fantastic, And fair DB team probably also look at whatever it's feasible to work at CTO or other more native Postgre square solutions as well.

Interesting for me, like as a person comes from business side versus engineers, Engineers like to solve a complicated problem. I remember talking to our guys and let's say, well, we need the backup. I say, well, but what about how it's going to work with a, you know, a hundred terabyte database if a million of tables right?

And you know what the answer may [00:32:00] be, it won't, but it doesn't matter, Because from a business standpoint, you need to be looking at the glass half full. And if a market is large enough and you only can serve 10% of a market, that is wonderful, stop engineering and start selling, And then you can , you know, grow about 10% to 1115, and wherever, right? So that is how I, approach it. So is it going to be solution for everyone on day one? No. It's even not going to be solution for everybody, at any point in the future. Right. But I think it has enough market, where it's can be very successful.

Right. And we've already seen that.

Nikolay: Yeah. That's great. Advice I think some of our previous guests also would benefit from, so thank you for . It, it sounds obvious, but like you are telling this great, I mean like, thank you. Okay. So I think maybe that's it. Or maybe a few more words about the future of clouds and Kubernetes and so on.

Will

Peter: Kubernetes cloud, I've been [00:33:00] talking a lot right, about what is going on in the cloud those days. And I think what is very interesting, right? With open source in general, You can see some of the proprietary innovation often goes a lot faster, Then you can see some of open source kind of slowly and inevitably kind of catches up, right? And what really excites me is what's going on right now with the cloud native ecosystem, And the. Base solution, right, which are getting more and more features, more and more innovation, We have like if you look at the stats from data on Kubernetes community, for example, you can see the database on Kubernetes is one of the fastest growing workloads. It grown like I think by about 50% last year along, And I think more and more we can use a cloud in a way where that is essentially commodity infrastructure provided.

Same as, we use, for example, a cell phone providers right now, right? You know what? We just don't particularly care, All the carriers are, about the same, right? And if Kubernetes cloud native open source, we [00:34:00] can get to pretty much the same thing with the cloud providers. Of course, cloud providers don't like it.

They often would like to pretend it's not possible, If you go and think about, well, how you have to behave to be, you know, build well architected Amazon application, Or something like that. Of course that's not a way they're going to do, but hey, you know what was Microsoft advising you to go open source in, you know, late nineties or early two?

Of course we didn't, you know, companies advertise not typically right? not what's good for you, but what's good for their wallet. but despite that, I think it open sort will take a big dent of a cloud workloads in the near future.

Nikolay: Couple of weeks ago uh, Nikita of this year of neon mm-hmm.

Which builds neon database bottomless and so on and so on. So we mentioned then on Twitter that neon is, has Kubernetes Separat Separator. So they use Kubernetes and it engineers hate it. Mm-hmm. And it feels like overwhelming to maintain. It's like too [00:35:00] much stuff and so on.

And they can see their hash corpse uh, no. So, and I, I tweeted just one word in my Twitter and LinkedIn also, just one word, Kubernetes. And in both places, I've got a lot of likes, obviously a lot of engineers, obviously they do hate Kubernetes. Do you think Kubernetes already won or maybe is winning are there any alternatives?

Is this the only path we have in the context of databases, I would

Peter: like to say. Yeah. Look what I would say we observe this kind of Kubernetes community for number of years, right? And I remember there was let's say folks with what is a Apache, like a messes. Hey, you know, we are much better.

There's like a Docker swarm. We are much easier, There was Rancher, The Red Hat's, OpenShift version one. This was not based on Kubernetes, right? There was a lot of folks out there, which are doing different stuff, But look the Kubernetes uh, won at large extent in the [00:36:00] mind share, Is that the best technology? maybe not, but reality is what best technology does not always win. In this case, we have to be looking and mine and I think right now Kubernetes is pretty much as ahead compared to different variants as Linux ahead of, free bsd, net BD and never, right, and again, like I, you can probably find a bunch of free BSG people out there, which will explain to you why free SB technology is ahead of a Linux. Yeah, maybe, right? But, well,

Nikolay: this reminds me also another story. My sequel was considered not as the best open source database, but uh, imposs had a lot of benefits and it was losing initially, like 15 years ago. And we both remember it, but eventually. Pogs became number one choice for startups as it

Peter: right as it is right now.

Yes. Yeah. Well, that's right. But,

Nikolay: So Linux versus FreeBSD, my versus pogs are different stories. Well,

Peter: That's right. But look from my opinion at per corner and [00:37:00] the other businesses, right? What I'm involved with, we typically are taking a practical step, And not trying to guess too much in the future because frankly technology changes so quickly. Some of the stuff with the may imagine, you know, five years ahead, may not exist, right? Like, think about this like a cha G B T for example, which came almost out of nowhere, It's like we always had like a AI gloom, you know, self-driving cars not happening. They promised that 10 years ago, nothing. And that's like boom. You know, cha G B T, which is kind of a lot better than kind of anything we've seen So we are focusing a lot on about like what exists right now, what companies are thinking to adopt right now, And if you think about an enterprise space Kubernetes is pretty much ubiquitous now, right? In including for database compared to other frameworks. now if you think about using Hash Corp approach, what say it's called noma, as I remember Noma, so think about this, right?

If that does not [00:38:00] make it, that choice for qui, because if your role is saying, Hey, I want to run my database as a server, right? My Then using whatever solution your folks are comfortable with is totally cool, right? Mm-hmm. , and maybe that is where you want something which is more simple.

Maybe the code you can understand, something you can hack and customize and so on and so forth. Now, if you are as companies like your corner say, Hey, you know, we want to empower solutions for thousands and thousands of customers, you have to be mindful about what kind of expertise that customers have.

What they want. And look, in this case, nomad may be awesome, but reality is nobody is asking for normal. No, not here. Maybe we will, but for now, it's not fair. Right. And there is probably, you know, like one outta hundred experts In this case maybe. Yeah. That's how we see it.

Nikolay: Yeah. Maybe last question in this area, as I hear [00:39:00] Kubernetes is like becoming definitely maybe already became even for databases right. Like the most popular choice. But today we live in some kind of crisis again. And recently Becom, C D H published a good report that they have a lot of like, mm.

Right. So, so do you think it's possible that Kubernetes will be a solution to go out of cloud? For example, we just get our bare metal colocation rent servers, so we install some lightweight Kubernetes. As a k threes io is such.

Peter: Yeah, totally like K threes Yeah.

Nikolay: Of clouds in this case, when people start analyzing their budget reports

Peter: spending on, well I think what you are right at large extent, The clouds are expensive, I think over the last, now I think it was like a 10 years, if a capital being so cheap, a lot of companies were saying, Hey, you know what? [00:40:00] We want to grow. We want to do fast. It doesn't. really matter what that growth is not very cost effective.

And that is, I think, how many of them would do a mindless spend o on the cloud as well as bunch of other kind of mindless spends, right? I mean, I mean, you can see a lot of you know, particular venture funded companies, right? But also begin enterprises tightening their belts in other ways too, right?

last several months. now we are getting to a point where you say, well, you know what we actually need not only to grow fast, but we want to. Find a way how to make it efficient, And that is where either abandoning I would say their property services, which can be a huge premium, Like think about how much more expensive, let's say, is Aurora compare to how much infrastructure costs to, to run it, That's probably is going to be like a three times difference, or something like that, right? And then all the way going to be able to utilize either your own service, Or let's say some of other clouds less expensive cloud [00:41:00] infrastructure providers, think about this, right? The fact what Amazon Web Services was really the profit driver for Amazon, For years now, That means what their margins are obscene. , compared to your zero Like if you look at you know, Dell's super micro service for them, margins are this, And if cloud is commodity, you would expect relatively to see relatively thin margins for them, right? And that is one way or arrive we are going to to drive them. And I think few things will happen as we have a guys, like d hh at Basecamp c t o, right?

Saying, Hey guys, you can actually escape a cloud. There is a way to go back on prem. It is not so hard. because we have Kubernetes, right? Because we have you know, Kubernetes, right? Then it'll re force the clouds kind of to come to to their sensors and cloud will become less expensive, cheaper.

Mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. So that is, I think is a wonderful thing. In many cases, [00:42:00] it doesn't require a hundred percent to move, It's important to the, the way to be shown and some people to having discussions. Hey dudes, we have a choice. We don't only have to sit there, right? for things to become, more cost effective.

Right.

Nikolay: That's interesting. I, and this relates in my my own thoughts as well, I, I think definitely we should pay attention to those numerous Kubernetes separators for PGOs and,

Peter: Yeah. Yes, yes. Especially one from Perona. Right, of

Nikolay: course. But you fucked it, right? You forked it from Sal Salon? No, initially.

Peter: No, no, no. Well initially we forked that from Crunch. Okay. that's right. But we got, you know, bunch of our huge competition development out

Nikolay: there as well. Huge competition, and that's good also. And this is open source style, like Bazaar and so on, not Cathedral. So, great. Okay. Thank you, Peter. I enjoyed it a lot. I learned also myself. I hope our viewers also did. Thank you so much. I hope we will chat sometime soon as well at conferences or somewhere else. Thank you. Have a [00:43:00] good weekend.

Peter: Okay. Sounds great. That's was a pleasure.

Nikolay: Yeah, and those who achieve this point definitely should put like, and subscribe and share with people who are interested sustainable source databases and so on. It was great conversation. Enjoy. Thank you. Bye bye.

Peter: Bye.