[HN Gopher] PlanetScale Scaler Pro
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       PlanetScale Scaler Pro
        
       Author : JackWritesCode
       Score  : 113 points
       Date   : 2023-07-06 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (planetscale.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (planetscale.com)
        
       | darkhorse13 wrote:
       | The only thing stopping me from using this is the lack of foreign
       | keys. Is that ever coming?
        
         | samlambert wrote:
         | Yes, it's on its way.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | new_user_final wrote:
       | What is the expected performance? If I have a very simple table
       | with 100k records, what will be the expected read/write/update
       | tps? I know it depends on many things, but still any guesses?
        
       | Illniyar wrote:
       | Am I missing something in the pricing or is the Storage costs
       | very unappealing. For anything with a usage skewed towards high
       | ratio of storage to usage, the costs aren't competitive.
       | 
       | 2.5$ per GB in "Scalar" and 1.5$ per GB in "Scalar PRO" compared
       | to 0.11$ RDS for General purpose (or 0.125$ for provisioned + the
       | IOPS you use, double that for multi-az), Supabase at 0.125$,
       | Firebase at 0.1725$,DynamoDB at 0.25$, MongoDB Atlas serverless
       | at 0.25$, cockroachDB serverless at 0.5$ per GB, FaunaDB at 1$
       | per GB. (Neon says it's 0.000164 per GiB, but somethings seems
       | off, it's not at the same scale, so I'm guessing there's a catch
       | here)
        
         | mebcitto wrote:
         | Neon price is listed as per hour, instead of per month like the
         | others :)
         | 
         | While you're not necessarily missing something, it's worth
         | pointing out that usually storage costs don't dominate the
         | bill, the compute costs are usually higher. But with the
         | PlanetScale storage price being more then 10x the price of the
         | other, it's definitely something to keep in mind, and it can
         | dominate the bill.
        
       | mebcitto wrote:
       | I kind of have a thing for DBaaS pricing, and that table with the
       | comparison with RDS looked suspicious to me because it doesn't
       | specify the exact instance type used on the AWS side. ~~I think
       | it should be `db.r6g.xlarge` because it has 4 vCPUs and 32 GB
       | RAM. That is $0.43/h, so $0.43 * 730 = $313 / month. They have
       | one primary and 2 replicas, so 313 x 3 = $940. It doesn't quite
       | fit, so maybe that's not the instance type they chose, but indeed
       | it seems cheaper.~~ But that doesn't take into account reserved
       | instances, which can lower the price on the RDS side.
       | 
       | Edit: Looking again, I think the instance used for comparison is
       | `db.r6gd.xlarge` from the Multi AZ-deployments (two standbys)
       | list. That is $1.445/h, so $1054 / month. The difference could be
       | for storage and I/O.
       | 
       | However, the PS Scaler Pro is $1.5 / GB, which is quite a lot.
       | General purpose storage in AWS is only $0.115. The comparison
       | table uses 10 GB only, but if the DB size is 1 TB, then RDS would
       | be a lot cheaper?
       | 
       | Please correct me if I got something wrong, I'm sure there's
       | stuff I'm missing.
        
         | CtrlAltDelete51 wrote:
         | If they are running on AWS (which it looks like they are), they
         | aren't going to be able to undercut AWS. For a retail user who
         | doesn't want to commit to RIs or have enough volume for an EDP,
         | sure PS can be cheaper.
         | 
         | The value I found is being able to do multi-region read
         | replicas with no compute overhead for lower traffic geos.
         | 
         | I like the idea of PS and have toyed around with the idea of
         | migrating to it but there are some glaring issues I don't want
         | to deal with:
         | 
         | - no native way to export backups and avoid vendor lock in (or
         | pay for the row reads to generate regular backups)
         | 
         | - contradictory cost model. Their pricing page reads "Every
         | time a query retrieves a row from the database, it is counted
         | as a row read. Every time a row is written to the database, it
         | is counted as a row written." while their docs state "Rows read
         | is a measure of the work that the database engine does, not a
         | measure of the number of rows returned. Every row read from a
         | table during execution adds to the rows read count, regardless
         | of how many rows are returned."
        
           | rrdharan wrote:
           | That's not contradictory?
           | 
           | It's very common for scale-out architectures to read more
           | data than is ultimately returned, because the former is
           | pulled from individual shards and then some centralized
           | filtering / post processing is applied in some API middleware
           | layer.
           | 
           | Trying to fix that by pushing down more of the
           | query/execution is sometimes but not always feasible or
           | practical.
        
             | semiquaver wrote:
             | (responding to GP) "Full table scans are expensive" is a
             | better way to reframe the pricing model (at least before
             | this pricing change). The distinction is between rows
             | _examined_ vs rows _returned to a db client_. Even the
             | latter is a tricky concept with vitess since it's a
             | routing/sharding system that sits on top of vanilla MySQL
             | instances.
        
         | re-thc wrote:
         | > PS Scaler Pro is $1.5 / GB, which is quite a lot. General
         | purpose storage in AWS is only $0.115.
         | 
         | GP storage is pretty slow (relatively). I hope PS isn't giving
         | us that out of the box and does provision more IOPs etc.
         | 
         | AWS bills for absolutely everything as PS mentioned in the
         | article. This can include temporary files and what not that can
         | take up a large chunk of your storage.
         | 
         | > because it doesn't specify the exact instance type used on
         | the AWS side
         | 
         | That in a way is problematic because CPU generations matter and
         | even if PS is using the "best" currently, how do we know if
         | they'd keep up? Prices could swing the other way quite easily.
        
       | taw1516 wrote:
       | love PlanetScale product. Do you recommend any similar offering
       | for PostgresSQL?
        
         | slig wrote:
         | https://neon.tech/
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | Neon is a great suggestion. I'm just writing to add a bit
           | more color.
           | 
           | Neon is a bit different from PlanetScale. With PlanetScale,
           | they're running Vitess under the covers. Vitess is a proxy
           | that sits between you and the MySQL database. It means they
           | can do fancy things like rewrite the queries on the way to
           | the database or route them differently. For example, a
           | "SELECT" query could be sent to a replica instate of the
           | primary. Likewise, if you've sharded/partitioned your data by
           | customer_id, Vitess could see the query says "WHERE
           | customer_id = 5" and send it to the correct server. This
           | proxy also means that Vitess can seamlessly manage some
           | things for you like failing over to a new database or
           | bringing online a new replica.
           | 
           | Neon is a decoupling of storage from the database processing.
           | While Vitess still has MySQL storing the data, Neon changes
           | the storage so that it can separate data processing and data
           | storage. This is somewhat like Amazon's Aurora.
           | 
           | If you're interested in other PostgreSQL compatible options,
           | CockroachDB is PostgreSQL compatible, but is more of a fully
           | distributed database from the ground up rather than new
           | layers like Neon or PlanetScale.
        
       | tiagod wrote:
       | Would be nice for the first table to have the pricing, and a
       | comparison with the old plan as well...
        
         | AYBABTME wrote:
         | The pricing page shows the old plan starts at 29$/month for
         | row-based pricing, and the new one at 39$/month for resource-
         | based pricing: https://planetscale.com/pricing
        
         | tbarn wrote:
         | We are getting the chart updated with the pricing now. Thanks
         | for pointing that out.
        
       | JoshGlazebrook wrote:
       | Excited to see this finally rolled out. Now just waiting on the
       | foreign key constraint support.
        
         | joshstrange wrote:
         | EDIT: Ignore this comment, I was mistaken
         | 
         | I don't believe that will ever happen due to the underlying
         | Vitess tech [0] that PlanetScale uses
         | 
         | [0] https://vitess.io/blog/2021-06-15-online-ddl-why-no-fk/
        
           | samlambert wrote:
           | It's going to happen.
        
             | joshstrange wrote:
             | Very cool! I didn't know that was on the roadmap.
        
               | osser wrote:
               | It's on the official Vitess roadmap, though you do have
               | to search on this page for it
               | https://vitess.io/docs/resources/roadmap/
        
           | tbarn wrote:
           | We are working on foreign key constraint support right now.
           | :)
        
         | samlambert wrote:
         | It's on its way!
        
         | badrequest wrote:
         | This is the only real thing stopping me from trying PlanetScale
         | as well, glad to see in the comments that it's coming.
        
       | colesantiago wrote:
       | It's great MySQL is still getting some love. I have no complaints
       | with it.
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | I love PlanetScale and if I had one request it would be a plan
       | between Hobby and Scalar (or even a way to combine multiple DBs
       | in 1 plan, and no 2 prod branches won't cut it).
       | 
       | I have 2 paid Scalar DBs on PlanetScale and I have no intention
       | of moving elsewhere but it does kill me that they both sit almost
       | unused ~10 months out of the year (I have bursty traffic and only
       | during the events, in-person events, that the software is built
       | for). At ~$348/yr per DB it's still a steal compared to managing
       | it all myself but I look at my usage (even during my "busy"
       | months) and I barely make a dent in the usage tier I'm on. In
       | fact I think you could total up my total usage for the lifetime
       | of my account (both DBs) and they wouldn't total up to 1 month of
       | the usage tier.
       | 
       | Again, I'm not complaining and the cost is manageable but I did
       | create and sell some new software in the last year that I built
       | on DynamoDB (in part to learn, in part due to costs). My software
       | that uses PS is single-tenant so I need 1 per client which is on
       | me, if I was able to rewrite it to be multi-tenant then I'd only
       | have to pay $348 total a year instead of per-client.
       | 
       | All in all I have had nothing but good experiences with
       | PlanetScale from the product itself to the support staff. I love
       | the migrations and the rollback support, it feels natural when
       | you start using it and dealing with migrations in other DBs feels
       | like a huge pain once you've done it in PlanetScale.
        
         | hu3 wrote:
         | I'm interested in using PlanetScale.
         | 
         | Would you happen to know the magnitude of how many simultaneous
         | connections could $348/yr buy me in PlanetScale?
         | 
         | One of my clients hovers around 50 simultaneous connections to
         | their main MySQL server on a normal day, but they have bursts
         | of 3k simultaneous connections for an entire day, twice per
         | year.
         | 
         | Their workload is about 5% writting (INSERTs, UPDATEs), 95%
         | reading (SELECTS).
        
           | purelogiq wrote:
           | Planetscale advertises up to 10,000 concurrent connections on
           | their $29/mo Scalar plan (https://planetscale.com/pricing -
           | click on "Compare all plan options and benefits"). Being
           | based on Vitess as well, I believe that number.
        
           | gsanderson wrote:
           | The blog post shows both the Scaler and Scaler Pro plan
           | supporting up to 10,000 concurrent connections:
           | https://planetscale.com/blog/announcing-scaler-pro#scaler-
           | pr...
        
           | tbarn wrote:
           | This number of connections on any of the paid plans should be
           | no issue.
        
         | no_wizard wrote:
         | you might find Supabase[0] is closer to what you need. I'd
         | recommend giving them a look, that is, if MySQL compat isn't a
         | requirement of course, since Supabase is all PostgresSQL.
         | 
         | disclosure: not a employee or investor in Supabase, but I sure
         | am a fan.
         | 
         | [0]: https://supabase.com/
        
       | kkzz99 wrote:
       | The last time I recommended to use planetscale at my company the
       | only factor that stopped us using them was GDPR/DSGVO. Any news
       | about a europe friendly version?
        
         | wirelesspotat wrote:
         | Do you know specifics they're missing?
         | 
         | At a glance, their Data Processing Addendum[0] seems to address
         | GDPR, along with country-specific regulations like Swiss DPA
         | and UK GDPR
         | 
         | [0] https://planetscale.com/legal/data-processing-addendum
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | Tl;dr: This new plan basically fix the number one complain about
       | PlanetScale and offers Unlimited row reads and writes.
        
         | steventey wrote:
         | wow that's incredible!!
        
         | kubectl_h wrote:
         | Next up is the new number one complain, lack of PITR. When
         | that's ready I can finally realistically propose moving to
         | PlanetScale to my team. I cannot wait for the day.
        
           | samlambert wrote:
           | I'd love to learn about your requirements. Can we chat?
           | s@planetscale.com
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-06 23:01 UTC)