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My guess is that this is on-demand DynamoDB wrapped with a Cassandra-compatible frontend. Just based on the pricing and stated characteristics. It would be real

My guess is that this is on-demand DynamoDB wrapped with a Cassandra-compatible frontend. Just based on the pricing and stated characteristics. It would be really hard to provide on-demand capacity for compute and storage using anything remotely similar to off-the-shelf Cassandra. The pricing looks like DynamoDB on-demand + a bit extra to cover the cost of operating the frontend. EDIT: confirmed by an AWS employee here https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1201924979647905792 https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1201924979647905792

bklyn11201 7y ago
This explanation does make a lot of sense. But why not just add a Cassandra interface to DynamoDB the way they added a Postgres interface to Aurora RDS?
- enitihas 7y ago
  Aurora RDS is a meta product name though, you can't use it without specifying the engine, MySQL or PostgreSQL. What you are saying would be more like adding a postgres frontend to mysql.
- scarface74 7y ago
  They didn’t add a Postgres front end to RDS. They took the Postgres open source code and (grossly simplified) changed the storage layer and added more AWS specific features. Aurora/MySQL and Aurora/Postgres or more or less AWS specific forks of the respective projects.
_msw_ 7y ago
Disclosure: I work for AWS Off-the-shelf Cassandra has a fair amount of flexibility in its architecture. Open Source Cassandra is the thing that is in the front end. And the team is excited about the idea of collaborating with the development community around some of the generally useful abstractions needed to build this managed database experience. More at https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassandra-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassand...
- enitihas 7y ago
  If you don't mind, can you please elaborate about the backend too.
- sg47 7y ago
  Has Amazon ever contributed anything meaningful back to open source?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Quite a lot: https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/ https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/
    - sg47 7y ago
      Do you have a list of open source committees accessible somewhere?
      - manigandham 7y ago
        What do you mean by committees?
        sg47 7y ago
        Sorry, I meant committers. I'm asking since the link you posted talks about open source events and has some job postings. I was looking for actual contributions by Amazon employees.
        manigandham 7y ago
        There's far more listed there including entire projects, repos, videos and several blog posts detailing their contributions, including one describing what they're doing for Cassandra: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassandra-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassand... Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM and others are all major contributors to open-source software.
evdev 7y ago
I think what the tweet is saying is the engine is actually Cassandra but the node management is shared with DynamoDB?
senderista 7y ago
That's a remarkable level of openness for Amazon. When Kinesis launched we were explicitly told we couldn't say anything publicly about the implementation (I don't know if the NDA has expired since).
- ec109685 7y ago
  They are way more open now. Before, it was a strong advantage of Google that you could hear from their engineers. AWS seems to have definitely pivoted on that since then.

bklyn11201 7y ago

This explanation does make a lot of sense. But why not just add a Cassandra interface to DynamoDB the way they added a Postgres interface to Aurora RDS?

enitihas 7y ago
Aurora RDS is a meta product name though, you can't use it without specifying the engine, MySQL or PostgreSQL. What you are saying would be more like adding a postgres frontend to mysql.
scarface74 7y ago
They didn’t add a Postgres front end to RDS. They took the Postgres open source code and (grossly simplified) changed the storage layer and added more AWS specific features. Aurora/MySQL and Aurora/Postgres or more or less AWS specific forks of the respective projects.

_msw_ 7y ago

Disclosure: I work for AWS Off-the-shelf Cassandra has a fair amount of flexibility in its architecture. Open Source Cassandra is the thing that is in the front end. And the team is excited about the idea of collaborating with the development community around some of the generally useful abstractions needed to build this managed database experience. More at https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassandra-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassand...

enitihas 7y ago
If you don't mind, can you please elaborate about the backend too.
sg47 7y ago
Has Amazon ever contributed anything meaningful back to open source?
- manigandham 7y ago
  Quite a lot: https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/ https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/
  - sg47 7y ago
    Do you have a list of open source committees accessible somewhere?
    - manigandham 7y ago
      What do you mean by committees?
      - sg47 7y ago
        Sorry, I meant committers. I'm asking since the link you posted talks about open source events and has some job postings. I was looking for actual contributions by Amazon employees.
        manigandham 7y ago
        There's far more listed there including entire projects, repos, videos and several blog posts detailing their contributions, including one describing what they're doing for Cassandra: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassandra-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/contributing-cassand... Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM and others are all major contributors to open-source software.

evdev 7y ago

I think what the tweet is saying is the engine is actually Cassandra but the node management is shared with DynamoDB?

senderista 7y ago

That's a remarkable level of openness for Amazon. When Kinesis launched we were explicitly told we couldn't say anything publicly about the implementation (I don't know if the NDA has expired since).

ec109685 7y ago
They are way more open now. Before, it was a strong advantage of Google that you could hear from their engineers. AWS seems to have definitely pivoted on that since then.