The post-90s resigned and started a business, saying they would kill cloud database

Created in the name of FOSS.

Respondents ： Feng Ruohang （ Pigsty founder ）

edit ：lola

Produce ：OSCHINA Open source in China

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Feng Ruohang has been very busy recently ,6 In June, a roadshow of entrepreneurship camp came down , He added twoorthree investors at one time . however , This is also him “ Self seeking ” Of .

before , He is exploring PostgreSQL DBA, In order to reduce my workload , Wrote an open source software —— Pigsty Help yourself , Life is getting easier . Obviously, you can “ loaf on a job ” Live a life , Feng Ruohang has to choose to start a full-time business .

“ Start a business , Most people have oneortwo opportunities in their life , Now that it's in front of you , I have no reason not to do .” He replied in this way .

You bet , Feng Ruohang has a share 90 The latter kind of adventurous spirit is .1993 Born in, he likes traveling and hiking , from Apple I'll leave without saying goodbye for half a year , To start a full-time business is to leave .

besides , He still carries a 90 After the unique mystery “ Two souls in the middle ”, I like to add some sand sculpture expression packs to the product articles , A customer said Pigsty（ pigsty ） Report to the leader if the name is bad , He also joked back ：“ It is likely to lose the Middle East market ”. 

On open source , Feng Ruohang claims to be “ moderate ”, So he is Pigsty Adopted Apache Loose license . But the paradox is , He also has a very radical open source attitude , Think the community needs “ The radicals ”：

Open source is a battle with Software freedom For the purpose of the Communist revolution . Developers do their best , Means of production —— Software code Shared by developers , Distribute on demand . The open source movement doesn't care about the nationality of developers , Prestige inspires — Star/Fo It also replaces money , Everyone for me , I'm for everyone .

In his opinion , Open source is a revolutionary movement , The object of the previous revolution was closed source software , Now it's cloud software .

▲ Pigsty This year's roadshow promotional video , There are too many points , Don't look at the loss series

 

01 “ loaf on a job ” Explore entrepreneurial opportunities

2015 One year after graduation , Feng Ruohang entered Ali , Became a data R & D Engineer .

At that time , I'm in the legend “ Data center ” Write on SQL Do data analysis . For visualization , Start tossing the front end . In order to do a good job in the front end , Start tossing the back end . In order to toss the back end , I went to get the database again . period , I have also done algorithms 、 Combination of software and hardware 、 Door to door implementation 、 The product design 、 Algorithm / recommend , Even worked as an architect of an internal entrepreneurial project .

 

But it's all over the place , I found that the core thing is —— database . This is the core of the whole information software industry , The boundary between infrastructure and application software . At first sight PostgreSQL, I'm crazy about it . To use it , Just in Ali MySQL Our world has a bloody path , I did it myself PostgreSQL DBA.

In Ali , Feng Ruohang went all the way from the top data analysis to the database itself , He has done a series of work on data . That's when , He found out PostgreSQL This treasure , And devoted himself wholeheartedly .

notes ：PostgreSQL Of Slogan yes “ The most advanced open source relational database in the world ”. stay 2022 year ,StackOverflow Developer research ,PostgreSQL Become a professional developer Most popular The database of , And developers' favorite 、 The database you want to use most .

Feng Ruohang's next stop is apple .“ My idea of starting a business originated in Apple： I made a sandbox for demonstration there , To share the demo How to design a highly available database , And demonstrate this ability in an intuitive graphical way .” He said .

This prototype comes with a monitoring system and high availability PG Deployment plan , It's just a rough Demo. Feng Ruohang really carried forward this idea , In fact, it's during the exploration .

Exploring PostgreSQL DBA when , I want to manage tens of thousands of cores / Hundreds of sets PG database . This job has wonderful and interesting exploration and optimization , There are also boring operation and maintenance management . therefore , I solved all the boring and boring operation and maintenance work with software , At the same time, the monitoring system needed for exploration and optimization is done , This is it. Pigsty.

 

Pigsty yes PostgreSQL in Graphic STYle Abbreviation , namely “ Graphical Postgres”, Because at first its core is a individual PG Monitoring system , Make an abbreviation of pigsty in English ; and Logo Is even more joking ,Postgres LOGO It's an elephant , and “ The pig's nose is stuffed with shallots —— Pretend to be ”, I just put PG The elephant's trunk was cut off and turned into a pig's head .

 

▲ Pigsty Of LOGO Is actually a “ A pig with green onions in its nose ”

As Feng Ruohang said , Start with Pigsty It's completely for your own use , More or less “ loaf on a job ” The purpose is inside . however PG The community just lacks a good enough monitoring / High availability solution , therefore He Just want to open source this software , Give back to the community .

At the time , The exploration environment is right Pigsty The incubation effect of this product is not small . Everyone knows that detective is a well-known social stranger APP, But few people know how to explore the internal free and open technological environment .

Probe has great technical taste , Is a company from northern Europe , In the early stage, engineers were of high level 、Old School Send Swedes . They heavily used PostgreSQL Characteristics of , Almost all business logic is put in the database and implemented by stored procedures , Trigger materialized view FDW Play with all kinds of flowers have to Fly up , Few people support millions of daily jobs .

 

Probe supports open source very much , Also support employees to participate and contribute , Even directly sponsor some open source projects and conferences . Tantan's boss is also a sentimental person , So when I told him about open source Pigsty when , He expressed his full support .

Such a thing may not be so smooth in apple and other big factories ,Apple Compared with exploration, exploration is the other extreme .

“ Let alone open source contribution , Even write articles and blog , Participation in technical discussions is strictly restricted . All open source projects used should be submitted for approval , Think of front-end colleagues combing node_modules I want to laugh when I report a bunch of dependencies . It's sad to think that two colleagues even choose to be contract workers instead of employees in order to avoid this restriction .” Feng Ruohang recalled .

▲  Respondent Feng Ruohang's life photo

In the happy time of fishing , Feng Ruohang never thought about starting a business ,“ I believe many open source software authors may not think about it at the beginning have to So far away , Just make a software for yourself .”

And miraculous achievements create an altar （ you 're right , It's the one initiated by Lu Qi ） The incubator has found its value ,Pigsty from 5000 Stand out from many projects , Entered the entrepreneurial incubation .

Miraculous achievements create an altar Scout Take the initiative to find me , I was also very curious and signed up , After the interview, I entered the circle directly , To the seed round of investment . I accepted without hesitation , This opportunity is very rare , It gives me a chance to do what I really want to do 、 What really makes sense .

What is really meaningful ？ Feng Ruohang's answer is one word ：Imapact（ influence ）.

Pigsty I'm exploring for myself , It's just that we can fish at work . But if open source goes out , The influence is far more than that . A good enough open source software , It can immediately improve the productivity of community and even global users , Even subvert an industry .

 

The installation, deployment, maintenance and management of databases used to be a high threshold , Previously, we needed rare advanced open source DBA,Pigsty Let primary DBA/ General R & D / Operation and maintenance can also be easily competent , It can also make advanced DBA Get away from trivial and boring operation and maintenance affairs , Invest in more valuable work . This is the real liberation of productive forces .

obviously , What Feng Ruohang wants to achieve is influence , It is driven by the industry , It's change , It's innovation . therefore , It often appears in his discourse system “ It's exciting ” The words of , For those with vested interests , He showed no mercy . Cloud database 、MySQL、Oracle And so on are his targets , Crazy about ideas .

 

02 “ Dimension reduction blow ” Cloud database

Software engulfs the world , Open source software , Cloud devours open source ; Who will eat the cloud ？ Still see Cloud native and multi cloud deployment .

 

Cloud primordial is a Recapture software freedom from public cloud vendors Great movement , And the last piece of jigsaw puzzle is still missing in its picture .

 

Even cloud vendors , Cloud servers are also being used to deploy databases , We , Will complete this puzzle ！

 

Cattle using cloud servers , Plough the field of cloud database , Enjoy double convenience , Save half the cost ！

 

If use IDC trusteeship / Build your own computer room , Cut costs 80% Can't fight ！

 

We need to count Press the threshold of the library to the floor , We should return the software to users freely ！

 

Pigsty —— Let the world have no difficult databases ！

These are Feng Ruohang's original words for this roadshow , The target is cloud database . say concretely , His view on cloud database The main There are the following ：

1、 At this stage , The cloud is indeed devouring open source

In the first , Development software / Information services need to use very expensive Commercial database software , for example Oracle And SQL Server. With PostgreSQL / MySQL The rise of these open source databases , Users have a new choice , Database software can be used without software licensing fee , But I want to really use it well , Usually need open source database DBA help . Unfortunately , Senior open source database DBA Expensive and scarce .

Next （ public ） The cloud appeared . Cloud vendors shell open source databases , Add your own server / Control and control / share DBA, It becomes cloud database . Cloud vendors pass “ Thumb a lift ” Blood sucking open source software , Open source software is sold on their own cloud platform, but there is little feedback . Such a model will lead to the concentration of open source software profits and jobs to cloud manufacturers , Form a monopoly of a few giants , Ultimately, it will hurt the software freedom of all users .

The world has been changed by clouds , Closed source software is no longer the most important problem .

“ stay 2020 year , The enemy of computing freedom is cloud computing software ”. This is a DDIA author Martin Kleppmann In its “ Local priority software ” Proposed in the movement declaration . Cloud software refers to the software running on the supplier's server , for example ：Google Docs、Trello、Slack、Figma、Notion, And the core software —— Cloud database .

2、 Cloud database has inherent shortcomings

But Feng Ruohang is not worried about the threat of cloud database , There are two reasons ： One is the cost , Second, trust .

The high cost of cloud database is a key reason . Speaking of this , Feng Ruohang calculated an account ： In the era of commercial databases ,Oracle The software license fee can be as high as ten thousand yuan / nucleus · month ; Cloud database directly cut the price to 300～1000 The scope of the . In this dimension , Want to say Cloud database is much cheaper than commercial database. There is nothing wrong with it .

Many people have seen this layer , But I didn't realize Compared with the open source database at the bottom / Hardware , Cloud database is still a whole order of magnitude expensive .

  If we use servers to build open source databases , The hardware cost per core month is 20 or 30 yuan . The main problem of open source self construction is , The salaries of relevant talents are high, and even there is no market , It's more difficult to toss and understand . Suppose you hire a monthly salary 5 Wan's open source DBA To manage the database , Then you want to amortize its labor cost , The size of users should be at least 100 Supranuclear .

 

however , If we can make open source databases better , Make the experience of open source self built database equal to or even surpass cloud database ; And on this basis , By lowering the threshold to mass produce primary and intermediate DBA, The problem is solved , Let users really save 50% ～ 90% Database overhead , In any case, self built databases are cheaper and easier to use than cloud databases .

 

Dimensionality reduction attacks cloud database , That's what we're doing . 

The neutrality of the public cloud is a fatal problem . In business , Technology is a secondary factor , Trust is the key . At this stage, many public cloud manufacturers It is not a neutral third party in the true sense , It's not just what you claim to do “ Store computing power like tap water ” Of IaaS business , It is PaaS/SaaS even to the extent that App Layer by layer .

Data is the lifeline of many enterprises , Autonomous control is a strong demand . For high net worth customers , Put the data in the computer room of potential competitors , It's equivalent to putting your destiny in the hands of others , It's totally unacceptable .

3、 Open source software should be developed , It's no worse than cloud products

Public cloud database /RDS, It is a kind of so-called " Open the box " Solutions for , But its answer sheet is far from satisfaction ： Expensive cost , Many functions that require super user privileges have been castrated , Clumsy UI And crude monitoring , And so on .

Some people think that cloud manufacturers are rich , Talented and skilled , The cloud database must be very awesome . In fact, in the major DBA It seems , Cloud database can only be called a qualified pot . Open source software should be developed , It's no worse than cloud products .

After long-term iterative evolution ,Pigsty At present, there are many places to do better than cloud database .

With Observability For example , Alibaba cloud RDS for PostgreSQL Provide 8 Database related monitoring indicators , Business monitoring software DataDog Provide 69 individual ,AWS Our advanced monitoring includes 99 class . but Pigsty Contains 675 Class pure database indicators , I'll take it all , Monitor with the idea of data analysis .

stay reliability On , Cloud database Pigsty All done. . Master slave copy 、 Automatic failover （RTO=30s）、 Remote disaster recovery cluster 、 Synchronous commit （ So-called “ Financial high availability ”,RPO=0）、 Cold backup and WAL file ; What cloud vendors haven't done ,Pigsty And I did , Delay from library 、 offline ETL example 、 Idempotent service access and so on .

Maintainability Directly related to the use experience , therefore Pigsty A lot of work has been done on usability , It aims to achieve “ Open the box ”. One click download configuration installation , use Database as Code Declare the database you want , One button pull up 、 The destruction 、 Expansion and contraction capacity .

Put the physical machine / Database on virtual machine , Used K8S Of Feel.

From the core monitoring and control , To various new functions ,Pigsty Always keep up with the real needs of users .

I think software development and natural selection follow the same principle ： Really useful software is evolved 、 Used 、 It grows out of ; It's not designed by someone patting his head . It must be polished with specific environment , Driven by real needs .

 

The product manager must think from the standpoint of users , I am the user of Party A , So I know what I want .

Speaking of this , Feng Ruohang pointed out another deficiency of cloud database ： Don't think from the perspective of users , Just as car manufacturers should consider how drivers drive , Now many database manufacturers have not considered “ Driver's driving experience ”.

4、 Post cloud era , The cloud will retreat to IaaS

Software engulfs the world , Open source software , Cloud devours open source . that , Who will eat the cloud ？ In Feng Ruohang's eyes , Yunchang is currently the champion , It needs competitors to loosen . Post cloud era , The paradigm of software use will change again , The open source community should see this , Grasp this historic opportunity .

Feng Ruohang said , Cloud manufacturers have raised the pricing of cloud services far beyond the reasonable range , This is unsustainable . Once various software fields emerge, such as Pigsty Such open source products , It will occupy the public cloud in all directions PaaS/SaaS Niche . And this phenomenon is happening ：

The basic disk of cloud manufacturers is IaaS, Their story is ： Let computing and storage resources be like hydropower , Play the role of infrastructure provider . Public cloud manufacturers through the scale effect , Lower hardware costs and share labor costs , It has great advantages in the price of storage computing power . But in PaaS/SaaS On , This is not true .

 

Cloud manufacturers will not really invest in a segment of the field too many people, and good and bad , More importantly, there is no focus of start-ups 、 input 、 Courage and vitality . besides , Top talents with this vision and cognition have come out to start businesses , For example, we are in the same group Sealos It's coming out of Alibaba cloud , Open source software entrepreneurship , Provide out of the box Kubernetes, We go from different directions “ volume ” Cloud manufacturers .

 

I believe in the next few years , Such open source start-ups will spring up like mushrooms , Take the cloud manufacturer's PaaS/SaaS It was scattered . And the equilibrium point of the game is , Cloud vendors converge to IaaS layer , and PaaS Layer and the SaaS Layer is divided by many similar open source software companies .

 

 

03 Open source is the highest program

2022 year 2 month , Qiji Chuangtan entrepreneurial camp found him , It's only twoorthree months for Feng Ruohang to start a full-time business . If the roadshow goes well , He will finish Pre A Round of funding , meanwhile He also pulled up the team —— A capable team of less than ten people .

He took part in the roadshow himself , stay 2500 Individual investor 、1000 In front of many investment institutions Pigsty, With a Ballmer style sales talk show, it attracted the attention of the whole audience .“ It's really a big challenge for engineers like me , But I don't know who to go to ？” Feng Ruohang said with a smile .

But Feng Ruohang is not alone . Here it is And front ,Pigsty Is a promotion PostgreSQL For the purpose of pure public welfare open source projects , So it's with PostgreSQL The Chinese community has a lot of roots . With the blessing of the community ,Pigsty Growing fast . Many seed users are PostgreSQL Members of the Chinese community , A large number of users will feed back their needs , Some users will roll up their sleeves on themselves , And then put Patch Bring back to they .

Now ,Pigsty The features and functions of are constantly enriched , Has begun to support more Open source database And all kinds of Software Tools , Details can be stamped ：https://pigsty.cc/zh/docs/feature/

 

 

The essence of open source software is at your own risk , Some users can use it in the production environment Pigsty when , I still hope that some commercial companies can provide some information . therefore , Feng Ruohang also began to prepare , Set up the “ Pan Jiyun number ” The company provides users with professional support subscriptions . Panji cloud number and PG Community relations , It's like red hat to Linux Community , In Feng Ruohang's own words ：“ I contribute to the community , Community makes me money .”

Feng Ruohang believes , Community is the core barrier of this kind of open source software . He is in TiDB by example ： 

TiDB The most powerful thing is that it has an active user / Developer community , They have products before communities , And we are just the opposite .”PostgreSQL The Chinese community has no R & D function , It's more like user groups and trade fairs , There is no real fist product as “ Concretion ”.

 

therefore ,Pigsty It aims to occupy this niche .

stay Progress of open source On ,Pigsty It is still in a very early state . at present , They are GitHub There are 570 individual Star and 6 Contributors （ Data up to 2022 year 6 month 28 Japan ）, It's not impressive , But Feng Ruohang expressed optimism ：

Early projects Star It's normal to count less , And the threshold of database field is not low ,Star The gold content is higher than that in other fields .TimescaleDB Melt into C The round is just 4000 Left and right Star. We pay more attention to the mode of growth , Besides, at present Star Is the curve of exponential growth , I'm not worried at all .

 

what's more , We used to promote Buddhism , That is to make a speech at the database Conference , Write some articles on official account , All rely on word-of-mouth fermentation and dissemination . As long as you are willing to promote and operate , Growth will be rapid . for instance , A while ago, we were PostgreSQL Weekly Contributed a draft , One breath is more 100 Multiple Star. 

 

Although there are not many contributors at present , But the functions of external contributions are more important . We think Contributor It should be more expensive , repair Typo The number of contributors to is meaningless .

 

Compared with PR, What we need more is feedback from real users to help us further polish our products . We now have a very active user group , You will put forward various suggestions for use , Our feedback mainly comes from here .

at present ,Pigsty With the advantage of open source , Used by all walks of life , Including Internet enterprises 、 forces 、 Meteorological unit 、 Scientific research institutes 、 space flight 、 Hospitals and so on , Existing state-owned enterprises , There are also foreign enterprises . And the user questionnaire in the first two months research in ,Pigsty Of NPS Score up to 80%.

notes ：NPS（Net Promoter Score) , Net recommended value , It can also be called word of mouth , It is used to measure whether users recommend products to others / The overall willingness to serve , Is the most popular indicator of user satisfaction .

“ This is a pretty amazing value , Know the average of the software industry NPS It's about 31%.” Feng Ruohang said . Because the user feedback is very good , Feng Ruohang set his current goal as ：“ hold Pigsty Make it work well PG A factual criterion of .”

meanwhile , Feng Ruohang believes Pigsty The most exciting part is open source , He firmly believes that open source can subvert closed source software , It can also impact cloud manufacturers .

This makes people have a sense of loftiness and mission , You are fighting for the freedom of all mankind to use software . If my company fails and goes bankrupt , But my software can survive , And make the world a better place , Isn't this also a good thing ？

 

Of course , I'm not alone , Whole Cloud Native The movement is impacting the public cloud as a whole . There is a blank niche in the database , If I don't do it, naturally there will be others .

 

There are also some foreign companies doing similar things , For example, focus on PostgreSQL Put in K8S Of StackGres And CloudNativePG, And help users make good use of open source databases Aiven, wait .

Chinese site ：https://pigsty.cc

English site ：https://pigsty.cc/en/

Official Demo ：http://demo.pigsty.cc

Github Warehouse ：https://github.com/Vonng/pigsty

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