The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
letsencrypt.org
The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
1–10 of 236 posts
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#2>> We currently use MariaDB, with the InnoDB database engine.
It is kind of funny how long InnoDB was the most reliable storage engine. I am not sure if MyISAM is still trying to catch up, it used to be much worse than InnoDB. With the emergence of RocksDB there are multiple options today.
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#3I'm guessing someone out there's thinking: Why aren't they hosting in the cloud? The cloud being either Amazon or Azure. Surely nothing else exists. Is it really possible to host your own PHYSICAL machine? Does that count as the cloud?!
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#4As someone unfamiliar with db management, is it really less operational overhead to have to physically scale your hardware than using a distributed option with more elastic scalability capabilities?
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#5What are they storing on this server that requires 150Tb of storage and millions of IOPS?
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#6>> We currently use MariaDB, with the InnoDB database engine. It is kind of funny how long InnoDB was the most reliable storage engine. I am not sure if MyISAM is still trying to catch up, it used to be much worse than InnoDB. With the emergence of RocksDB there are multiple options today.
MyISAM days are gone, no one will seriously consider it as suitable engine in MySQL.
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#7What are they storing on this server that requires 150Tb of storage and millions of IOPS?
> What exactly are we doing with these servers?
Our CA software, Boulder, uses MySQL-style schemas and queries to manage subscriber accounts and the entire certificate issuance process.
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#8As someone unfamiliar with db management, is it really less operational overhead to have to physically scale your hardware than using a distributed option with more elastic scalability capabilities?
Relational databases enable some very flexible data access patterns. Once you shard, you lose a lot of that flexibility. If you move away from a relational model, you lose even more flexibility and start having to do much more work in your application layer, and usually start having to use more resources and developer time every step of the way.
The productivity enabled by having one master RDBMS is a big deal, and if they can buy commodity servers that satisfy their requirement, this seems like a fine way to operate.
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#9I'm guessing someone out there's thinking: Why aren't they hosting in the cloud? The cloud being either Amazon or Azure. Surely nothing else exists. Is it really possible to host your own PHYSICAL machine? Does that count as the cloud?!
For a service like letsencrypt, the independence factor is also a major reason for self hosting.
I can forsee letsencrypt in the future going to building their own cloud (on their own physical infrastructure), but speaking as a letsencrypt user of their free certificate program, I would lose respect and interest in their service if they went with an AWS or GCP or Azure approach.
The independence from other major players (and the ability of their team to change and move everything about their service, as needed) is one of the reasons I use letsencrypt.
Re: The database servers powering Let's Encrypt
#10Unless I misunderstood something, it seems they have a single primary that handles read+write and multiple read replicas for it.
It shouldn't be too difficult given the current use of MariaDB to start using something like Galera to create a multi-master cluster and improve redundancy of the service, unless there are some non-obvious reasons why they wouldn't be doing this.
I think I also see redundant PSUs, would be neat to know if they're connected to different PDUs and if the networking is also redundant.