MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 Now Available with MariaDB Community Server 10.5

MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 brings a high-performance, open source, distributed, SQL-compatible analytics solution to the market. Included as a pluggable storage engine with MariaDB Community Server 10.5, MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 is a columnar storage engine that enables customers to easily perform fast and scalable analytics.

Earlier versions of MariaDB ColumnStore have been available to the open source community as a separate fork of MariaDB, but with the 1.5 release, MariaDB ColumnStore is now fully integrated into the MariaDB stack and has been significantly upgraded from previous versions. It is easier to install and manage, data loading is among the fastest in the industry, and it works with cost-effective cloud-native object storage.

Single Stack, Simplified Install

MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 marks what we refer to as “convergence.” This is the first version of MariaDB ColumnStore that is fully integrated into MariaDB Community Server. ColumnStore is included with MariaDB Community Server 10.5 and can be deployed with a few steps: download MariaDB Community Server 10.5, make it executable, and install ColumnStore with either yum or apt.

$ wget https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup
$ chmod +x mariadb_repo_setup
$ sudo ./mariadb_repo_setup --mariadb-server-version="mariadb-10.5"
$ sudo yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-columnstore-engine

At this point, you can customize your configuration and then enable and start ColumnStore, or you can skip customizing the configuration, use the defaults, and enable and start ColumnStore. If you’ve used a previous version of ColumnStore, you’ll notice that the postconfig steps are no longer necessary.

[centos@localhost ~]$ systemctl enable mariadb-columnstore
[centos@localhost ~]$ systemctl start mariadb-columnstore

Management Utilities

We’ve also made ColumnStore easier to manage. MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 uses a new REST API that replaces the OAM functionality and ColumnStore 1.5 now uses systemd to manage its processes.

There are also a couple of .xml utilities provided should you choose to customize your configurations:

  • mcsGetConfig -a will show the current ColumnStore .xml settings.
  • mcsSetConfig will allow you to change a variable using the syntax mcsSetConfig <group> <parameter> <value>

For example: mcsSetConfig CrossEngineSupport User “myuser” will change the CrossEngineSupport user to “myuser”

Fast Data Load

MariaDB ColumnStore provides some of the fastest data load in the industry and when you’re dealing with massive data sets, that’s important. MariaDB uses LOAD DATA INFILE with the cpimport bulk load utility to bypass the SQL layer and inject data directly into the database or into low cost cloud native object storage.

Low Cost Cloud-Native Storage

MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5 supports cloud-native object storage through an S3-compatible API. ColumnStore provides significant data compression, up to 90%, but storage costs are a concern when you are dealing with massive data sets. Using object storage is particularly cost-effective. With MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5, it is also very easy, just configure the ObjectStorage in the storagemanager.cnf file.

To configure object storage, you edit the [ObjectStorage] section of the file:

/etc/columnstore/storagemanager.cnf: 

[ObjectStorage]
…
service = S3
… 
[S3]
bucket = yourbucketname
endpoint = s3.amazonaws.com
aws_access_key_id = <youraccesskeyid>
aws_secret_access_key= <yoursecretkey>

More Information

MariaDB Community Server 10.5 provides significant enhancements, one of the biggest being the convergence with MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5. The integration of MariaDB ColumnStore as a pluggable storage engine in MariaDB Community Server 10.5 means that everyone has access to a high-performance open source columnar database for analytics out-of-the-box. See our documentation for a comprehensive list of new features in MariaDB ColumnStore 1.5.

ColumnStore 1.5 is available to all, give it a try.