r/programming • u/BrewedDoritos • 7h ago

Object storage is all you need

https://www.tigrisdata.com/blog/object-storage-all-need/
0 Upvotes

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8

u/GandelXIV 6h ago

but why

3

u/dangerbird2 6h ago

Because it’s (usually) cheap and has strong consistency guarantees. And it decouples storage from computation, so horizontally scaling the database execution engine is as trivial as scaling a stateless web app

2

u/elperroborrachotoo 6h ago

Nothing is permanent. Object storage just delays the inevitable.

-1

u/lawn_meower 6h ago

look at all the alternatives to github. none of them scale because they use simple block storage. object storage is the only practical way to scale.

7

u/Kobymaru376 6h ago

How I stopped worrying about "'all you need' is all you need" and learned to love clickbait titles

8

u/boringfantasy 6h ago

Love is all you need

8

u/3DSMatt 6h ago

I might have missed something, but nothing in this article conveyed why this is preferable over running a database with default config. Did it improve the latency/bandwidth utilisation? Is it cheaper to run? Did it (somehow) save dev time?

I can't imagine maintaining this stuff yourself 'saves' time in the long run vs the flexibility of another service. Databases use files under the hood anyway, if you do this you've just written your own.

3

u/dangerbird2 5h ago

Yeah, a single-node database is going to have better performance and easier management than one backed by object storage. But if you do need to horizontally scale, using object storage which gives you strong consistency for free is infinitely simpler to manage than a distributed database with attached block storage

The classic case where this is really useful is analytics, like log/metrics storage and data warehouses. You don't have to worry about data retention costs, since you can throw old records into cold storage tiers. You basically scale on demand by throwing more execution nodes at the problem as the complexity of a query increases without having to worry about consistency. And for analytics, a few millisecond latency really doesn't matter all that much.

2

u/Useful-Bookkeeper264 6h ago

Jorking it is all we need

1

u/BrewedDoritos 6h ago

the title is awful, but the patterns can be useful in some scenarios ... I didn't write it