8 ms·

Consus: Fast Geo-Replicated Transactions

108 points by deepanchor 10y ago

deepanchor 10y ago
For those that are not familiar with Hyperdex[1], it is an open-source, performant, ACID compliant key-value store with commercial support[2] for fully distributed transactions. It seems that Robert Escriva (creator of Hyperdex) is now working on a new database called Consus with the following key differences[3]: “Consus has two (three) differences from HyperDex that I believe will make it more appealing in the long run: 1. Consus doesn't separate the implementations of transactions and the regular code. Once we have a paper public on the topic and I have clearance to release the code, all of the code will be available under the same license, with no commercial fork. 2. Consus provides wide-area, geo-replicated transactions with much lower latency than is possible in any other system I know with the same consistency that Consus provides. 3. I’m still actively working on Consus; I'm not actively working on HyperDex." [1] http://hyperdex.org/ http://hyperdex.org/ [2] http://hyperdex.org/warp/ http://hyperdex.org/warp/ [3] https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 *edit: should have linked to the project's homepage (http://consus.io/ http://consus.io/) which contains more details, if mods could change the link that would be great ;)
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  HyperDex is pretty interesting. I evaluated it for a project last year, but decided not to use it. One reason was that at the time, the project seemed to have been abandoned; the author did not respond to issues or pull requests. Another was that based on Google searches, there seemed to be no one else actually using it in production; so even considering getting the commercial ACID support seemed like a big gamble, never mind that I couldn't find any info on how it performed in large clusters, and so on. That said, it seemed technically brilliant, and fast. If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as something I would consider using. That said, I'm wary of anyone who just abandons projects like that, without telling anyone about it.
  - deepanchor 10y ago
    > If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as something I would consider using. Totally agree. I feel like there's a big void in the open-source world for this type of technology that has yet to be filled. There used to be FoundationDB and, well, we all know what happened there. CockroachDB is probably the only other active, open-source project right now that claims to have strong ACID guarantees for multi-database transactions. However, the team is not wholly focused on performance at this stage of development (which some of their early benchmarks demonstrate). If Consus can retain some of the performance characteristics of Hyperdex while providing completely open source distributed transactions, it will be an absolute game changer.
    - lobster_johnson 10y ago
      It's promising, at least. I think a system like this would be the most useful if you're able to layer a query language on top of it, and apparently even FoundationDB (which had an SQL layer on top of a K/V store) didn't perform all that well. The Cockroach guys claim to have found a performant way of doing SQL on top of K/V, if I remember correctly, but we'll see. But having transactions in a distributed K/V store is certainly useful.
      - spullara 10y ago
        If you are willing to optimize for a KV store with distributed transactions you can do a lot better than putting a SQL layer on top of it.
        lobster_johnson 10y ago
        Not sure what you mean by that. Consus seems to be directly inspired by Google's Spanner, which famously has an SQL layer, F1, on top.
        spullara 10y ago
webmaven 10y ago
No README?
espeed 10y ago
Consus technical report... Consus: Taming the Paxi https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457 https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457
dantiberian 10y ago
There's also a blog post announcement here: http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus/ http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus/ Reading through the post about active development on the predecessor HyperDex: https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 > I've stopped developing the project for non-public reasons that aren't technically related to the project. Along with this line in the blog post: > not one in which a company with profit motives releases a half-open product, but one in which those interested in Consus can come together to build something better. It seems like there was some friction around the commercial nature of Hyperdex.
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the link from the GitHub project: https://github.com/rescrv/Consus https://github.com/rescrv/Consus.
buremba 10y ago
so what happened to hyperdex? it looks like the project is no longer maintained. could you please share why the project is dead?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
slantedview 10y ago
All I see is consensus, misspelled. Too much time in the trenches.
- shawn-butler 10y ago
  In Roman times, grain was essential to life and Consus served as the protector of grain; through its similarity to the word consilium, Consus became associated with secret conferences. So there you go.
  - rescrv 10y ago
    "... In Modern times, Consus is very similar to the word consensus; not coincidentally the former uses the latter to serve as the protector of data."
quinthar 10y ago
Cool! Also, you might take a look at http://bedrockdb.com http://bedrockdb.com for a geo-replicated, ACID, SQL database (basically a replication layer atop SQLite).
lobo_tuerto 10y ago
Let's call Aphyr ;) https://aphyr.com/about https://aphyr.com/about
- Royalaid 10y ago
  Jepsen or it isn't ACID?
  - rescrv 10y ago
    I'd ask you to please read the discussion section of the paper on Consus before calling Aphyr.

108 points by deepanchor 10y ago

For those that are not familiar with Hyperdex[1], it is an open-source, performant, ACID compliant key-value store with commercial support[2] for fully distributed transactions. It seems that Robert Escriva (creator of Hyperdex) is now working on a new database called Consus with the following key differences[3]: “Consus has two (three) differences from HyperDex that I believe will make it more appealing in the long run: 1. Consus doesn't separate the implementations of transactions and the regular code. Once we have a paper public on the topic and I have clearance to release the code, all of the code will be available under the same license, with no commercial fork. 2. Consus provides wide-area, geo-replicated transactions with much lower latency than is possible in any other system I know with the same consistency that Consus provides. 3. I’m still actively working on Consus; I'm not actively working on HyperDex." [1] http://hyperdex.org/ http://hyperdex.org/ [2] http://hyperdex.org/warp/ http://hyperdex.org/warp/ [3] https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 *edit: should have linked to the project's homepage (http://consus.io/ http://consus.io/) which contains more details, if mods could change the link that would be great ;)

lobster_johnson 10y ago
HyperDex is pretty interesting. I evaluated it for a project last year, but decided not to use it. One reason was that at the time, the project seemed to have been abandoned; the author did not respond to issues or pull requests. Another was that based on Google searches, there seemed to be no one else actually using it in production; so even considering getting the commercial ACID support seemed like a big gamble, never mind that I couldn't find any info on how it performed in large clusters, and so on. That said, it seemed technically brilliant, and fast. If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as something I would consider using. That said, I'm wary of anyone who just abandons projects like that, without telling anyone about it.
- deepanchor 10y ago
  > If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as something I would consider using. Totally agree. I feel like there's a big void in the open-source world for this type of technology that has yet to be filled. There used to be FoundationDB and, well, we all know what happened there. CockroachDB is probably the only other active, open-source project right now that claims to have strong ACID guarantees for multi-database transactions. However, the team is not wholly focused on performance at this stage of development (which some of their early benchmarks demonstrate). If Consus can retain some of the performance characteristics of Hyperdex while providing completely open source distributed transactions, it will be an absolute game changer.
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    It's promising, at least. I think a system like this would be the most useful if you're able to layer a query language on top of it, and apparently even FoundationDB (which had an SQL layer on top of a K/V store) didn't perform all that well. The Cockroach guys claim to have found a performant way of doing SQL on top of K/V, if I remember correctly, but we'll see. But having transactions in a distributed K/V store is certainly useful.
    - spullara 10y ago
      If you are willing to optimize for a KV store with distributed transactions you can do a lot better than putting a SQL layer on top of it.
      - lobster_johnson 10y ago
        Not sure what you mean by that. Consus seems to be directly inspired by Google's Spanner, which famously has an SQL layer, F1, on top.
        spullara 10y ago

webmaven 10y ago

No README?

espeed 10y ago

Consus technical report... Consus: Taming the Paxi https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457 https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457

dantiberian 10y ago

There's also a blog post announcement here: http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus/ http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus/ Reading through the post about active development on the predecessor HyperDex: https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233 > I've stopped developing the project for non-public reasons that aren't technically related to the project. Along with this line in the blog post: > not one in which a company with profit motives releases a half-open product, but one in which those interested in Consus can come together to build something better. It seems like there was some friction around the commercial nature of Hyperdex.

sctb 10y ago
Thanks, we've updated the link from the GitHub project: https://github.com/rescrv/Consus https://github.com/rescrv/Consus.

buremba 10y ago

so what happened to hyperdex? it looks like the project is no longer maintained. could you please share why the project is dead?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

slantedview 10y ago

All I see is consensus, misspelled. Too much time in the trenches.

shawn-butler 10y ago
In Roman times, grain was essential to life and Consus served as the protector of grain; through its similarity to the word consilium, Consus became associated with secret conferences. So there you go.
- rescrv 10y ago
  "... In Modern times, Consus is very similar to the word consensus; not coincidentally the former uses the latter to serve as the protector of data."

quinthar 10y ago

Cool! Also, you might take a look at http://bedrockdb.com http://bedrockdb.com for a geo-replicated, ACID, SQL database (basically a replication layer atop SQLite).

lobo_tuerto 10y ago

Let's call Aphyr ;) https://aphyr.com/about https://aphyr.com/about

Royalaid 10y ago
Jepsen or it isn't ACID?
- rescrv 10y ago
  I'd ask you to please read the discussion section of the paper on Consus before calling Aphyr.