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Interesting. My initial instinct is to compare them to MongoDB which IPO'd about a year ago. They seem to be doing quite well since, but then again, who hasn't

Interesting. My initial instinct is to compare them to MongoDB which IPO'd about a year ago. They seem to be doing quite well since, but then again, who hasn't in the tech sector? I will say I very much enjoy Elastic's suite of products, I can't say the same for MonogoDB.

d4l3k 8y ago
To be fair, both MongoDB and Elasticsearch have had serious issues as pointed out via the Jepsen tests. https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/323-jepsen-elasticsearch-1-5-0 https://aphyr.com/posts/323-jepsen-elasticsearch-1-5-0 Though, all those issues have been fixed for both MongoDB and Elasticsearch so it's not necessarily fair to judge them based off past performance. https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/resiliency/current/index.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/resiliency/cur... https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.4-passes-jepsen-test https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.4-passes-jepsen-test
- xaranke 8y ago
  The results for ElasticSearch are from 2015, curious to see how relevant they are now especially given that the team has been working on addressing these issues in the interim.
  - tschellenbach 8y ago
    Also elastic back then was used as a place where you copy your data, not your main data store. (Their positioning changed later) MongoDB was supposed to be used for your primary data store.
- Fiahil 8y ago
  These jepsen tests cover elasticsearch 1.5, a large number of issues have been progressively fixed. We're now at ES 6
  - aisofteng 8y ago
    Note that 3 and 4 were skipped; ES 2 was followed by ES 6.
    - Argorak 8y ago
      ES 2 was followed by ES 5.
- Thaxll 8y ago
  Those Jepsen are not that useful, I can point to you Postgres issues where it would corrupt the DB, does it means you shoudn't use Postgres?
  - baq 8y ago
    They're very useful - these posts compare actual functionality with the project's documentation.
hendzen 8y ago
There are key differences between MongoDB and Elastic. MongoDB (the company), has been very strategic about defending themselves from Amazon. Likely due to the AGPL licensing on MongoDB (the database), Amazon doesn't offer a hosted MongoDB - you have to buy MongoDB Atlas which runs on multiple cloud providers, including AWS, GCP and Azure. Coincidentally, Atlas subscriptions are the fastest growing part of MongoDB Inc's revenue, which is why investors are bullish on the company. Elastic (Apache licensed) has actually had their lunch eaten by Amazon to a much larger degree. Many businesses are purchasing hosted ES instances directly from Amazon via Amazon Elasticsearch service. The problem is bad enough that Elastic Inc had to write a marketing blog post about it [0]. Say what you will about MongoDB (the database), but MongoDB Inc. is the most successful open source software-based company since Red Hat. You can see it in the outperformance of $MDB compared to similarly timed open-source IPOs such as Hortonworks ($HDP) and Cloudera ($CLDR). [0] - https://www.elastic.co/blog/hosted-elasticsearch-services-roundup-elastic-cloud-and-amazon-elasticsearch-service https://www.elastic.co/blog/hosted-elasticsearch-services-ro...
- mooreds 8y ago
  I can't speak for others, but I was looking to set up a quick elastic search cluster and Elastic's hosted offering beat the pants off of AWS ElasticSearch in terms of usability, polish, ease of getting started and security-by-default. Now, I don't have a lot of data in the cluster, so we'll see how performance is when that happens, but would definitely recommend Elastic's offering.
  - FridgeSeal 8y ago
    We recently moved our stuff at work from AWS to Elastic Cloud and it’s excellent. Performance is miles and above better, there’s actual security options on the clusters and there’s way more features.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Huh? Elastic Cloud runs in either AWS or GCP. You get to choose but it's just between those. Unless you mean you were using AWS's ElasticSearch service... which is known to not be all that great. You could build ES clusters on AWS directly on EC2 and it would be cheaper than Cloud, unless what you're really looking for is that support contract. I spent a few months of my life learning ES inside and out and would choose this option every time. One of the best tech investments I've ever made.

d4l3k 8y ago

To be fair, both MongoDB and Elasticsearch have had serious issues as pointed out via the Jepsen tests. https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/323-jepsen-elasticsearch-1-5-0 https://aphyr.com/posts/323-jepsen-elasticsearch-1-5-0 Though, all those issues have been fixed for both MongoDB and Elasticsearch so it's not necessarily fair to judge them based off past performance. https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/resiliency/current/index.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/resiliency/cur... https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.4-passes-jepsen-test https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.4-passes-jepsen-test

xaranke 8y ago
The results for ElasticSearch are from 2015, curious to see how relevant they are now especially given that the team has been working on addressing these issues in the interim.
- tschellenbach 8y ago
  Also elastic back then was used as a place where you copy your data, not your main data store. (Their positioning changed later) MongoDB was supposed to be used for your primary data store.
Fiahil 8y ago
These jepsen tests cover elasticsearch 1.5, a large number of issues have been progressively fixed. We're now at ES 6
- aisofteng 8y ago
  Note that 3 and 4 were skipped; ES 2 was followed by ES 6.
  - Argorak 8y ago
    ES 2 was followed by ES 5.
Thaxll 8y ago
Those Jepsen are not that useful, I can point to you Postgres issues where it would corrupt the DB, does it means you shoudn't use Postgres?
- baq 8y ago
  They're very useful - these posts compare actual functionality with the project's documentation.

hendzen 8y ago

There are key differences between MongoDB and Elastic. MongoDB (the company), has been very strategic about defending themselves from Amazon. Likely due to the AGPL licensing on MongoDB (the database), Amazon doesn't offer a hosted MongoDB - you have to buy MongoDB Atlas which runs on multiple cloud providers, including AWS, GCP and Azure. Coincidentally, Atlas subscriptions are the fastest growing part of MongoDB Inc's revenue, which is why investors are bullish on the company. Elastic (Apache licensed) has actually had their lunch eaten by Amazon to a much larger degree. Many businesses are purchasing hosted ES instances directly from Amazon via Amazon Elasticsearch service. The problem is bad enough that Elastic Inc had to write a marketing blog post about it [0]. Say what you will about MongoDB (the database), but MongoDB Inc. is the most successful open source software-based company since Red Hat. You can see it in the outperformance of $MDB compared to similarly timed open-source IPOs such as Hortonworks ($HDP) and Cloudera ($CLDR). [0] - https://www.elastic.co/blog/hosted-elasticsearch-services-roundup-elastic-cloud-and-amazon-elasticsearch-service https://www.elastic.co/blog/hosted-elasticsearch-services-ro...

mooreds 8y ago
I can't speak for others, but I was looking to set up a quick elastic search cluster and Elastic's hosted offering beat the pants off of AWS ElasticSearch in terms of usability, polish, ease of getting started and security-by-default. Now, I don't have a lot of data in the cluster, so we'll see how performance is when that happens, but would definitely recommend Elastic's offering.
- FridgeSeal 8y ago
  We recently moved our stuff at work from AWS to Elastic Cloud and it’s excellent. Performance is miles and above better, there’s actual security options on the clusters and there’s way more features.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Huh? Elastic Cloud runs in either AWS or GCP. You get to choose but it's just between those. Unless you mean you were using AWS's ElasticSearch service... which is known to not be all that great. You could build ES clusters on AWS directly on EC2 and it would be cheaper than Cloud, unless what you're really looking for is that support contract. I spent a few months of my life learning ES inside and out and would choose this option every time. One of the best tech investments I've ever made.