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🔧 Vitess

Vitess

Scalable. Reliable. MySQL-compatible. Cloud-native.

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Overview

Vitess is an open-source database solution that combines important MySQL features with the scalability of a NoSQL database. It allows you to shard a MySQL database horizontally while making the cluster of shards appear as a single, monolithic database to your application. It was created at YouTube to manage their massive database traffic and is now a CNCF graduated project.

✨ Key Features

  • Horizontal Sharding for MySQL
  • Connection Pooling
  • Query Routing and Rewriting
  • Online Schema Migrations (non-blocking)
  • Topology Management
  • Automatic Failover and Repair
  • Performance Monitoring

🎯 Key Differentiators

  • Proven at massive scale (YouTube)
  • Transparently shards standard MySQL
  • Advanced connection pooling and query protection features

Unique Value: Allows applications to scale MySQL horizontally to virtually limitless capacity without requiring complex sharding logic in the application code.

🎯 Use Cases (4)

Massively scaling MySQL-backed applications Applications requiring online schema changes without downtime Cloud-native applications running on Kubernetes Multi-tenant SaaS platforms

✅ Best For

  • Scaling the backend of large web properties like YouTube, Slack, and GitHub
  • Migrating from a single large MySQL instance to a sharded cluster

💡 Check With Vendor

Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:

  • Small applications that do not require horizontal scaling
  • Applications that are not MySQL-based

🏆 Alternatives

Application-level sharding CockroachDB TiDB Amazon Aurora

Provides a more robust and manageable solution than manual, application-level sharding. Unlike distributed SQL databases like CockroachDB or TiDB, it uses standard MySQL instances for storage, which can be an advantage for existing MySQL users.

💻 Platforms

Self-hosted (Linux, Kubernetes) Cloud (as the engine behind PlanetScale)

🔌 Integrations

Kubernetes gRPC Prometheus MySQL-compatible drivers and ORMs

🛟 Support Options

  • ✓ Live Chat
  • ✓ Dedicated Support (N/A (Community support via Slack) tier)

💰 Pricing

Contact for pricing
Free Tier Available

Free tier: Vitess is free and open-source software.

Visit Vitess Website →

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