5 ms·

Riak 1.1 Released

108 points by seancribbs 15y ago

davidcollantes 15y ago
For those, like me, who do not know what Riak is: "Riak is an open source, highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed database." Source: http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/ http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/
- Ixiaus 15y ago
  It's a distributed multi-node key-value store. They built it using Erlang (I almost consider that, alone, a "feature").
  - gry 15y ago
    Based off Amazon's Dynamo work (think S3).
    - CPlatypus 15y ago
      There's little relationship between Dynamo and S3. Riak is based on the former but not the latter.
      - argvzero 15y ago
        Correct. I've heard conflicting accounts on how much of the original Dynamo was/is used by S3. (Also, if you like S3, keep your eyes on Basho over the next few weeks).
  - firefoxman1 15y ago
    Yeah, it's important to note that it's a key-value store; that's what attracted me initially.
  - nirvana 15y ago
    If it claims to be distributed and its not written in erlang, don't use it. Well, that's the filter I use when looking at anything. If its not written in erlang I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how it isn't really actually a distributed system. Usually I find out that it isn't.
    - Ixiaus 15y ago
      While I generally agree with you, there are some applications out there that get distributed multi-node environments "right" without using Erlang. It's just much harder to do because those problems are (for the most part) solved BY Erlang for the programmer. If something says it is parallel this, or concurrent that, that is when I filter it - thus far Erlang's concurrency model has been unmatched (in my limited experience) by any other language I've used for efficacy and simplicity.
    - ericflo 15y ago
      That's an extremely crude filter. A lot of the best distributed system stuff is built on the JVM. Too many to name, but I'll name one anyway: Zookeeper
- ismarc 15y ago
  It also makes different trade-offs in usability of the software. It is (in my opinion) the most sysadmin friendly datastore, without hiding complexity, the tools are just pleasant to use. However, it has a larger curve for developers. We did a shootout to find a solution that would work for our needs and it came down to Mongo vs. Riak. We went with Mongo and are feeling the pain of getting everything automated and set up, but consider it a one-time cost rather than an "every time we get a new developer" cost.
  - wfarr 15y ago
    Having worked with some quite large Mongo setups, I think you'll find the administration of Mongo ends up being significantly more than a single upfront cost. Dealing with sharding + replica sets is an administrative nightmare with Mongo.
    - mrkurt 15y ago
      We (MongoHQ) do lots of sharding + replica set admin. Sharding is finicky, but we've found replica set admin to be really straightforward. Getting client apps configured properly is the hardest part of replica set use. It's only a one time problem though.
    - PanMan 15y ago
      Do you have some more insight into this? We currently run a hybrid Riak-MySQL setup, and are actively looking at Mongo to replace parts of it. In a few tests mongo 's speed seems to be all over the place: From REALLY fast to quite slow. And that is without the admin involved in a larger scale setup.
jsavimbi 15y ago
I'm very interested in seeing the new Admin console; is there a URL for that. Finding the docs a little light.
- cmeiklejohn 15y ago
  You can see a demo from Mark here: http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-Production-at-Posterous-Riak-Control-Preview/ http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-Productio...
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    Looks great. And reassuring. I just followed the instructions and restarted. https://github.com/basho/riak_control https://github.com/basho/riak_control
rb2k_ 15y ago
Oh yay, I wonder how enabling Snappy on LevelDB changes the performance characteristics. I really liked the introduction of Snappy to CouchDB, especially for EC2 machines with their usually slow IO
rb2k_ 15y ago
I love to go back to Riak every now and then and throw one of the bigger datasets I have sitting around at a single node using Ruby. It is one of the most interesting databases out there and it's a breeze to set up (especially when compared to Cassandra). It is kind of a shame though. Riak has awesome features, but some of them (e.g. secondary indexes) are hard to use and documentation is somewhat missing. If you look at the official clients page (http://wiki.basho.com/Client-Libraries.html#Ruby http://wiki.basho.com/Client-Libraries.html#Ruby), you can see ripple (https://github.com/seancribbs/ripple https://github.com/seancribbs/ripple) but the page doesn't mention riak-ruby-client (https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client) which was split from ripple some time ago. In theory, both of them support secondary indexes as far as I can tell, but you won't find that feature in either readme. There are some specs available that somehow describe parts of it though. I still don't see clearly how I could search secondary indexes from either library. The same goes for things like data vs raw_data and serializers (small discussion: https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client/pull/19 https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client/pull/19). While there is a very informative screencast in Seans blog, there is no mention in the readme file.
- nirvana 15y ago
  Wait, can't you fix the wiki? You're right that its an oversight, but one you can fix yourself.
  - rb2k_ 15y ago
    Sure, if I actually knew the correct solution... Seeing as Basho is backing Riak, I would assume that they would invest a little bit of time documenting what they actually did :)
- jbellis 15y ago
  Curious what you found so hard about setting up Cassandra. Counterpoint: http://www.screenr.com/5G6 http://www.screenr.com/5G6
  - tolitius 15y ago
nirvana 15y ago
Glad to see Basho putting out new releases at such a clip. I'm envious, frankly. It is really impressive how far Riak has come in the last year. I don't think anything compares to it, and I think it should have an order of magnitude more interest and users. (I think people just get scared off by "erlang", which is silly.)
- no-espam 15y ago
  how much does riak pay you?
ahi 15y ago
I want to love Riak, but the documentation is a mess. At least the 'Fast Track' is out of date and inconsistent: http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-Development-Environment.html http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-Development-Environment.htm...

108 points by seancribbs 15y ago

For those, like me, who do not know what Riak is: "Riak is an open source, highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed database." Source: http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/ http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/

Ixiaus 15y ago
It's a distributed multi-node key-value store. They built it using Erlang (I almost consider that, alone, a "feature").
- gry 15y ago
  Based off Amazon's Dynamo work (think S3).
  - CPlatypus 15y ago
    There's little relationship between Dynamo and S3. Riak is based on the former but not the latter.
    - argvzero 15y ago
      Correct. I've heard conflicting accounts on how much of the original Dynamo was/is used by S3. (Also, if you like S3, keep your eyes on Basho over the next few weeks).
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  Yeah, it's important to note that it's a key-value store; that's what attracted me initially.
- nirvana 15y ago
  If it claims to be distributed and its not written in erlang, don't use it. Well, that's the filter I use when looking at anything. If its not written in erlang I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how it isn't really actually a distributed system. Usually I find out that it isn't.
  - Ixiaus 15y ago
    While I generally agree with you, there are some applications out there that get distributed multi-node environments "right" without using Erlang. It's just much harder to do because those problems are (for the most part) solved BY Erlang for the programmer. If something says it is parallel this, or concurrent that, that is when I filter it - thus far Erlang's concurrency model has been unmatched (in my limited experience) by any other language I've used for efficacy and simplicity.
  - ericflo 15y ago
    That's an extremely crude filter. A lot of the best distributed system stuff is built on the JVM. Too many to name, but I'll name one anyway: Zookeeper
ismarc 15y ago
It also makes different trade-offs in usability of the software. It is (in my opinion) the most sysadmin friendly datastore, without hiding complexity, the tools are just pleasant to use. However, it has a larger curve for developers. We did a shootout to find a solution that would work for our needs and it came down to Mongo vs. Riak. We went with Mongo and are feeling the pain of getting everything automated and set up, but consider it a one-time cost rather than an "every time we get a new developer" cost.
- wfarr 15y ago
  Having worked with some quite large Mongo setups, I think you'll find the administration of Mongo ends up being significantly more than a single upfront cost. Dealing with sharding + replica sets is an administrative nightmare with Mongo.
  - mrkurt 15y ago
    We (MongoHQ) do lots of sharding + replica set admin. Sharding is finicky, but we've found replica set admin to be really straightforward. Getting client apps configured properly is the hardest part of replica set use. It's only a one time problem though.
  - PanMan 15y ago
    Do you have some more insight into this? We currently run a hybrid Riak-MySQL setup, and are actively looking at Mongo to replace parts of it. In a few tests mongo 's speed seems to be all over the place: From REALLY fast to quite slow. And that is without the admin involved in a larger scale setup.

jsavimbi 15y ago

I'm very interested in seeing the new Admin console; is there a URL for that. Finding the docs a little light.

cmeiklejohn 15y ago
You can see a demo from Mark here: http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-Production-at-Posterous-Riak-Control-Preview/ http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-Productio...
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  Looks great. And reassuring. I just followed the instructions and restarted. https://github.com/basho/riak_control https://github.com/basho/riak_control

rb2k_ 15y ago

Oh yay, I wonder how enabling Snappy on LevelDB changes the performance characteristics. I really liked the introduction of Snappy to CouchDB, especially for EC2 machines with their usually slow IO

rb2k_ 15y ago

I love to go back to Riak every now and then and throw one of the bigger datasets I have sitting around at a single node using Ruby. It is one of the most interesting databases out there and it's a breeze to set up (especially when compared to Cassandra). It is kind of a shame though. Riak has awesome features, but some of them (e.g. secondary indexes) are hard to use and documentation is somewhat missing. If you look at the official clients page (http://wiki.basho.com/Client-Libraries.html#Ruby http://wiki.basho.com/Client-Libraries.html#Ruby), you can see ripple (https://github.com/seancribbs/ripple https://github.com/seancribbs/ripple) but the page doesn't mention riak-ruby-client (https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client) which was split from ripple some time ago. In theory, both of them support secondary indexes as far as I can tell, but you won't find that feature in either readme. There are some specs available that somehow describe parts of it though. I still don't see clearly how I could search secondary indexes from either library. The same goes for things like data vs raw_data and serializers (small discussion: https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client/pull/19 https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client/pull/19). While there is a very informative screencast in Seans blog, there is no mention in the readme file.

nirvana 15y ago
Wait, can't you fix the wiki? You're right that its an oversight, but one you can fix yourself.
- rb2k_ 15y ago
  Sure, if I actually knew the correct solution... Seeing as Basho is backing Riak, I would assume that they would invest a little bit of time documenting what they actually did :)
jbellis 15y ago
Curious what you found so hard about setting up Cassandra. Counterpoint: http://www.screenr.com/5G6 http://www.screenr.com/5G6
- tolitius 15y ago

nirvana 15y ago

Glad to see Basho putting out new releases at such a clip. I'm envious, frankly. It is really impressive how far Riak has come in the last year. I don't think anything compares to it, and I think it should have an order of magnitude more interest and users. (I think people just get scared off by "erlang", which is silly.)

no-espam 15y ago
how much does riak pay you?

ahi 15y ago

I want to love Riak, but the documentation is a mess. At least the 'Fast Track' is out of date and inconsistent: http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-Development-Environment.html http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-Development-Environment.htm...