Neki
20 days ago
- Neki is PlanetScale's new distributed Postgres solution, now in platform preview, built from experience running large sharded MySQL clusters.
- It addresses Postgres scaling limits like large tables, slow backups, connection limits, schema change maintenance windows, and transaction wraparound.
- Unlike application-level sharding or Postgres-compatible distributed databases, Neki keeps real Postgres on every shard and avoids hiding shard keys or removing extensions.
- Core components include Neki routers (wire-protocol compatible with Postgres), shards organized into shard groups, sidecar connection poolers, a control plane, and a JSON data topology.
- Each shard runs actual Postgres with primary and replicas, supporting normal extensions, SQL, and performance.
- Built-in workflows handle schema changes, version upgrades, failovers, imports, and resharding without maintenance windows.
- Neki can run unsharded initially, offering improved connection pooling, online DDL, zero-downtime upgrades, and monitoring before scaling to sharding.
- Platform preview is not for production workloads; feedback is encouraged and users can try it by opting into the preview on PlanetScale.