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Comment by simianwords

9 months ago

I don't buy this! Startups do need high availability. If you start having replicas you are already in distributed territory!

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simianwords

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sreekanth850  9 months ago

>Startups do need high availability.

HA is important. But Postgres and MySQL both support HA and replication setups without needing to jump straight into a distributed SQL (In this context of using cockroach). We use MySQL Innodb cluster + MySQL router with auto failover on single primary mode.

> If you start having replicas you are already in distributed territory.

But it’s not the same as a distributed database with quorum writes, global consensus, and cross-region latencies. Those systems are built for horizontal write scaling, that come with added complexity and cost, which most apps don’t need.

  • simianwords  9 months ago

    do you still not need quorum writes?

    • sreekanth850  9 months ago

      That depends. You don’t need quorum writes with traditional Postgres or MySQL HA setups. In most cases, writes go to a single primary, and replication to standbys is asynchronous or semi-synchronous, depending on your tolerance for potential data loss.

      It’s all about finding the right balance. With modern vertically scalable hardware and fast SSDs, a single-node setup can handle quite a lot of load before hitting real limits with a failover setups.

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