Introduction: Lead the continuous innovation of cloud raw database technology

In recent years, cloud native has become another label of Ali Cloud, not only the earliest layout of cloud native technology, with a large number of customer practices, but also to create a rich family of cloud native products. Especially the database product line, has entered the cloud native 2.0 stage, through the full link of technical support capacity, to the farther sea of stars.

Cloud native databases enter the 2.0 era

In a broad sense, cloud native refers to the full use of cloud services to build software; In the narrow sense, cloud native refers to the construction of applications through container, microservice, Serverless and other new technologies. It not only affects the computing architecture, development and deployment mode, but also is a test of the entire infrastructure and platform capabilities.

Therefore, the path of database cloud origin generally starts from the cloud of IT infrastructure and the Internet of core scenes. This is also the cloud native database 1.0 stage defined by Li Feifei, general director of Ali Cloud Intelligent database Business Division, in several public occasions. This phase is typically characterized by cloud-based overall IaaS capabilities that improve the performance and service experience of the database itself. So what has changed in the cloud native database 2.0 era? What are the new features? How far has the cloud native approach to The Ali Cloud database evolved? Ali Cloud database senior product expert CAI Dongzhe (alias: Jiang Liu), in DTCC conference during the interview with IT168 reporters, for a detailed interpretation.

CAI Dongzhe, Senior product expert of Aliyun Database (alias: Jiang Liu)

“In Phase 1.0, there was more emphasis on individual capabilities, such as how to build best business practices in MySQL; In the 2.0 stage, what users need is a comprehensive database solution that can integrate a variety of engines. Especially with the support of mobile Internet, IoT and 5G technologies, the application scenarios of data are becoming richer and richer, and they need a whole process product system from production to application.” CAI Dongzhe stressed that Ali Cloud native database, has passed the 1.0 stage of underlying infrastructure and platform cloud, is now marching to a higher service level, through the full link technical support ability, leading the cloud native 2.0 era, the database service to the extreme.

Full link support capability behind the product family

Under the concept of cloud native database 2.0, Ali Cloud in the past just released a series of products on the cloud conference, including cloud native relational database PolarDB and distributed version polarDB-x, cloud native data warehouse AnalyticDB, Cloud native multi-model database Lindorm, enterprise autonomous database RDS, and one-stop online data management platform DMS. PolarDB, distributed version polarDB-X, cloud native data warehouse AnalyticDB, cloud native multi-mode database Lindorm, the industry attention is relatively high, there has been a lot of relevant information, here do not do too much redundant, this paper mainly on RDS and closely related to the application OF DMS do key analysis.

From the big database classification: one is, OLTP transactional database; The other is OLAP analytical database and later HTAP hybrid transaction analysis management. Ali Cloud RDS, which belongs to transactional database, is also a basic business with the largest scale and most users in the whole cloud database market. When it comes to RDS, one might think of it as a “generic product” that everyone has, with a similar experience. In fact, relative to similar products, Ali Cloud RDS has several important characteristics.

** first, have a strong enterprise-level data autonomy. ** Ali Cloud RDS is a fully managed product form built on the basis of open source and commercial kernel, which is not only compatible with the open source database MySQL kernel, but also makes a deeper kernel optimization, especially in the database automatic driving level has a better performance. Ali Cloud database autonomy has been in a leading position in the industry, no matter the depth of autonomy, engine support coverage, or application scale, other manufacturers are not comparable.

** 2. Through the control ability of kernel and related products, it can bring users faster, more stable and more secure database services. ** To meet the dynamic load, high concurrency, and never-stopping service characteristics of Internet applications, RDS provides a solution of integrated read/write separation and seamless expansion of computing and storage. RDS helps users dynamically adjust the read/write ratio or storage computing resources, and solves the scalability problem in the case of enterprises reading more and writing less. In order to ensure high availability, Ali Cloud provides three-copy and two-three-center solutions to meet the application requirements of game, e-commerce, operators, financial and government enterprises on databases. On backup and recovery, RDS can quickly restore TB data at the minute level, which is required for fast service rollback in the case of enterprise service failures. RDS also delivers up to 80% performance improvements over the open source version through deep kernel optimization.

3. Full-link data security advantages, including access security, storage security, transmission security, and audit security.

It is worth mentioning that Aliyun believes that a real cloud database can be just like water and electricity in life, only caring about the upper application, without paying attention to the underlying infrastructure. Ali Cloud first proposed the concept of “automatic driving database” in 2017. The database itself has the ability of abnormal self-perception, self-diagnosis, self-decision, self-repair, self-elasticity and self-safety, and completely self-closed loop to solve the performance, availability and data reliability problems encountered by enterprise database. Alibaba Group, for example, has enabled automated driving capability for all its databases, and 6,000 corporate customers have also realized automated driving of their databases through RDS.

In terms of the automatic driving ability of enterprise-level database, Ali Cloud was employed by SIGMOD2021 in the ResTune system paper of intelligent database tuning, which is a milestone step made by Ali Cloud autonomous database and intelligent operation and maintenance. The so-called intelligent parameter tuning refers to the combination of machine learning and a lot of expert experience and logic, to do the parameter optimization that has a large impact on the database, fundamentally help enterprises reduce the parameter tuning threshold, and meet the workload requirements of thousands of industries.

In addition to its powerful database autonomy, Ali Cloud also has another star product, namely DMS, a one-stop data management platform. DMS is not a product built from scratch. It was first incubated in Alibaba Group and mainly solves the problem of database development efficiency. Later, with the development of enterprise business, users pay more and more attention to the collection, integration and value mining of massive data. At this time, users begin to have a series of demands for data processing, processing, analysis and application integration, which require enterprises to have more powerful platform management capabilities. As a result, Alibaba Cloud launched a one-stop upgrade of DMS in 2021.

Ali Cloud DMS includes several important modules, including: database development and design module (the earliest developed module); Data integration module (mainly solve the problem of data flow between data sources); Data development and processing module; The application modules of the database, data security and DevOps across these modules, basically all the data production and management capabilities can be solved on this platform.

Based on DMS, enterprises can truly realize warehouse integration, can make data flow become simple, and can achieve real-time data flow and integration. In addition, DMS has powerful built-in data security capabilities, enabling users to have one-stop security capabilities from production to application levels, including customized security engines that conform to rules, desensitization of sensitive data, and setting secure access blocking functions. At the same time, the platform itself can provide end-to-end self-diagnosis capability, which can help users quickly discover and diagnose all problems encountered in the process of data flow, integration and flow. The one-stop experience of DMS is also reflected in the large number of data sources covered. There are 27 common data sources, and all data can be managed uniformly.

Therefore, on the whole, Aliyun cloud native database product family not only emphasizes the full scene and full link support capability, but also the single product cloud native capability continues to evolve, especially from the performance of RDS and DMS, is being upgraded to intelligence and security and reliability.

The fundamental trend of convergence is to address the needs of business diversification

In addition to more emphasis on intelligence and security, in fact, the convergence trend is also a new change in the era of cloud native 2.0.

CAI Dongzhe believes that whether it is lake warehouse integration, big data integration or multi-mode, in essence, it is the diversity of enterprise data that leads to the diversity of computing needs. At this time, the development of database will show several evolution ideas. One is special, that is, each engine only solves my unique scene problems, through the combination of complex technical forms to solve the diversified needs of enterprises, this is a solution. The second idea is to reduce the cost of solving problems through the trend of integration. For example, reduce the cost and threshold of data computing and storage through diversified computing and storage requirements.

The combination of cloud native + distributed is mainly to solve the problems of high concurrency, continuous operation, dynamic load and massive data of target customer groups. When traditional stand-alone databases encounter capacity bottlenecks, cloud native + distributed evolution is the best choice to help users meet the challenges of Internet services. Similarly, the integration of software and hardware is an inevitable stage in the development of IT technology. Through the deeper combination of software and hardware, the performance, stability and security of the application itself can be improved from the beginning of design.

No matter what kind of fusion mode, Ali Cloud database will always uphold the cloud native 2.0 goal, in the underlying engine layout, layout of the full link capability. Among them, intelligent, safe and controllable, online integration, multi-mode and distributed integration are the main direction of continuous improvement of single product capability. Including in the context of home-made substitution, the security requirements of the database will be higher and higher, Ali Cloud launched full encryption database products, to ensure that the government, financial and operator industry users, have stronger data encryption ability. In view of the trend to O, Ali cloud database is also making relevant preparations, launched a set of database upgrade iterative solutions, including polarDB-O, can achieve financial database migration.

Ali Cloud database has rich business scenarios, not only a single database product is strong, but also has the full scene of service ability. After years of technical polishing and rapid iteration of Cloud bio-chemical, Ali Cloud database products have better performance in ease of use, cost performance and stability, which may be the most fundamental reason for users to choose Ali Cloud database. In other words, the kernel of the product itself and the strong technology research and development ability are the cornerstone for Ali Cloud database to gain the trust of users and establish a large user ecosystem.

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