RethinkDB is updating its solution to support an automatic failover feature, enabling clusters to automatically select a substitute machine if one fails giving enterprise-class reliability to mitigate downtime and production errors.
RethinkDB is described by the company as an open source, scalable JSON database built for the real-time web. Central to its new automatic failover feature is the Raft consensus protocol, which RethinkDB took the last year to implement. Developed at Stanford University in 2013, Raft’s influence is growing quickly in distributed computing and related fields. In RethinkDB 2.1, Raft provides the underlying logic that enables replicas to elect an acting primary. It is one of the most popular and robust consensus protocols, providing a failsafe automatic failover mechanism, making it possible to eliminate downtime.
In RethinkDB 2.1, Raft provides the underlying logic that enables replicas to elect an acting primary, providing a failsafe automatic failover mechanism, making it possible to eliminate downtime and the need for human intervention.
“This feature is super important to our customers because we are trying to ensure uptime for their websites without any interaction from them, even in the face of failing hardware,” said Slava Akhmechet, CEO and Co-founder of RethinkDB.
Along with including automatic failover, RethinkDB 2.1 now allows users to add and remove nodes without any interruption in service. This gives users the capability to elastically add and remove machines to the cluster without any downtime.
A variety of users will benefit from this update, according to Akhmechet. “Hardware or network failure is the kind of thing every single infrastructure or use case experiences,” Akhmechet said. “We’ve all experienced what happens when we don’t have an internet connection.”
Akhmechet said plans are in the works for more real-time functionality and tighter security to be added in the future. “We’re also doing a lot of enhancements for bigger customers,” Akhmechet said. “There’s tons of stuff coming down the pipeline. The community has been absolutely incredible in finding issues, helping us fix them and adding features. We’re very grateful for our open source community for how wonderful they’ve been.”
For more information about the RethinkDB 2.1 update, go to http://rethinkdb.com.