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PlanetScale Launches Neki, a Sharded PostgreSQL Offering, in Platform Preview
Key points
- Neki is a sharded PostgreSQL offering from PlanetScale.
- It is now available in platform preview.
- Neki scales Postgres beyond single-machine limits.
- It supports hundreds of millions of queries per second and petabytes of data.
- Neki uses a router, sidecars, and control plane with real PostgreSQL shards.
Introducing Neki for Scalable PostgreSQL
PlanetScale has launched Neki, a sharded PostgreSQL solution, which is now available in platform preview. This new offering aims to address the scaling limitations encountered by users of single-machine PostgreSQL databases.
Neki allows a PostgreSQL database to be scaled across multiple machines while maintaining standard PostgreSQL functionality on each shard. It is designed to handle large-scale workloads, supporting hundreds of millions of queries per second (QPS) and petabytes of data per database.
Overcoming Single-Machine Limits
PlanetScale observed that many customers using their Postgres service were reaching the upper limits of what a single machine could handle. While upgrading hardware provided temporary relief, a long-term solution for horizontal scaling was needed.
Neki was developed based on PlanetScale's eight years of experience running large sharded MySQL clusters, which power numerous production workloads with millions of queries per second.
How Neki Works
Neki integrates a router, sidecars, and a control plane with actual PostgreSQL shards. Applications connect to the Neki router using the standard PostgreSQL wire protocol, allowing existing drivers, ORMs, and connection strings to function without modification.
Each shard within the Neki system is a full PostgreSQL instance. This architecture enables scaling without requiring application rewrites or maintenance windows for rebalancing capacity or splitting hot shards.
Key Capabilities
Neki facilitates scaling PostgreSQL past single-machine limits to accommodate hundreds of millions of QPS and petabytes of data. It supports splitting hot shards as workloads grow, creating new target shards, catching them up with replication, and moving traffic through topology changes.
The system allows data to be moved to a new shard layout while the database remains online, ensuring zero downtime during rebalancing operations.
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How outlets covered it
PlanetScale has released Neki, a sharded PostgreSQL solution, into platform preview. Neki enables PostgreSQL to scale beyond single-machine limits to handle hundreds of millions of queries per second and petabytes of data without downtime, by adding a router, sidecars, and a control plane to real PostgreSQL shards.
PlanetScale has released Neki, a sharded PostgreSQL offering, in platform preview to address scaling limitations of single-machine Postgres databases. Neki allows users to scale a PostgreSQL database across multiple machines while maintaining standard Postgres functionality on each shard, providing a solution for growing databases that encounter performance ceilings.