After several months of concerted effort, Aerospike Database 6.2 is generally available (GA), adding the ability to deploy Aerospike clusters on AWS Graviton2 processors. The rationale was clearly summarized in a blog post from our founder and CTO Srini Srinivasan: Aerospike 6.2 on AWS Graviton2 significantly reduces total cost of ownership. Aerospike Database 6.2 continues to provide the best cost-performance ratio in its field, as the database of choice for mission-critical applications at any scale.
While Aerospike server 6.2 was tested extensively on AWS Graviton2, it runs on any hardware compatible with the ARMv8.2-A instruction set (Neoverse N1 microarchitecture), as well as existing x86-64-v2 microarchitecture level processors.
A warning about our new package naming convention
Aerospike deployments in production typically pull server and tools (.tgz) packages from our artifact repository. The addition of packages, for a processor architecture other than x86_64, has forced us to reevaluate our package naming. We have also rectified the naming of our (.deb) Debian packages.
Starting with Aerospike server version 6.2, Aerospike tools version 8.0.0, Aerospike Prometheus Exporter 1.9.0, and Aerospike C client 6.3.0, the package naming has changed. While previous versions remain unmodified, please take a look at our documentation and adjust your CI/CD scripts accordingly for our latest releases.
So what about development environments?
While Aerospike Database is developed, tested, and deployed at scale in production on 64-bit Linux distributions, developers still need an easy way to deploy it on their own machines, regardless of hardware (Intel, AMD, ARM) or operating system (macOS, Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc). Until now, Docker has been a convenient way for developers to run the database on x86-64 processors. Aerospike server 6.2 runs well in containers on those same machines, but also on ARM64 processors, such as Apple M1 MacBook Pro laptops.
Similarly, Aerospike native clients for arm64 macOS are either already available for your preferred language (Java, C#, Go, Ruby, C) or will arrive shortly after the server release (Python, Node.js). Developers who need to use another software language have the REST Gateway (the software formerly known as Aerospike REST client) with an exciting new 2.0 release. Read all about it in Jesse Schmidt’s blog post.
This is a good moment to introduce one of our best-kept secrets – AeroLab. Starting as an internal tool written by our man Robert Glonek, AeroLab is used heavily inside Aerospike to set up environments for support case reproduction, quality engineering, performance testing, and demos. It is also a fantastically useful tool for spinning up development environments – locally on Docker, or remotely on AWS instances. A developer preview is now available on GitHub.
Our latest tools release
The Aerospike Tools 8.0.0 release comes bundled with our latest server and is also available as a standalone package. A native macOS tools package for Apple M1 / M2 hardware is still in the works; for now, developers can use the tools Docker container image. A native macOS tools package for Intel processors is available, as before.
AQL release 8.0.0 completes the process of separating data browsing from administration, with deprecated functionality, such as secondary index management, being removed. All administration functions now reside fully in Aerospike Admin (asadm), and you are invited to read more about it in our developer blog. AQL development will refocus on adding query capabilities to this lightweight data-browsing tool.
Code and scale fearlessly
We are excited about our newest server release and all the software in its orbit. Our goal is to enable developers to decouple their development effort from the deployment concerns of their operations team. This has been a reality since the start, that code written on a small scale, such as a single-node Aerospike running in a Docker container, can be handed to the SRE team and deployed on huge clusters running massive throughput at sub-millisecond latencies, without requiring application-side workarounds to support the production database – no caching logic, no sharding logic, no complex spaghetti code to save the live system from catching fire under load. View the Aerospike Database 6.2 release notes.
If you are new to Aerospike, visit our Developer Hub, where you can run an Aerospike Database sandbox in your browser. When you are ready to try it for yourself, Aerospike Database Enterprise Edition starts up in a single-node cluster evaluation for anyone to enjoy in their development environment. It requires no additional sign-up or communication – just download it, start it up, and explore. Enterprise users of Aerospike can still provide their own feature key file, to override this evaluation mode.Coming soon, a time-limited, multi-node cluster evaluation option for developers.
