KeyDB
KeyDB, formerly known as EQ Alpha Technology and KeyDB Inc., is a Toronto-based company offering a high-performance, fully open-source database that serves as a faster alternative to Redis. The company, part of Y-Combinator's S20 batch, focuses on ease of use and scalability in B2B infrastructure solutions.
Company Overview
KeyDB, formerly known as EQ Alpha Technology and KeyDB Inc., is headquartered in Toronto, ON, Canada. The company focuses on the B2B infrastructure industry, offering a high-performance, open-source database solution. KeyDB was founded in 2019 and joined the Y-Combinator S20 batch. In 2021, KeyDB was acquired by Snap Inc., consolidating its entire codebase into one unified project under the BSD-3 license.
KeyDB Founders
KeyDB was founded in 2019 after creating a multithreaded fork of Redis. The core development team consists of C++ developers who originally developed KeyDB, and following its acquisition, the team has expanded to include engineers from Snap Inc. The founders' vision centers around ease of use, high performance, and a 'batteries included' philosophy.
Products and Features
KeyDB offers a fully open-source database known for its high throughput and low latency. Key features include support for multiple data structures like strings, hashes, lists, sets, and more. KeyDB boasts a single node throughput of over 1 million operations per second, MVCC for non-blocking operations, and non-blocking queries. Upcoming features include FLASH storage, JSON support, multi-tenant support, and RAFT. KeyDB maintains compatibility with Redis while enhancing functionality, offering better expiration mechanisms and TLS support, and includes the ModJS module for creating custom commands.
Scalability and High Availability
KeyDB supports scalability through active-replication and cluster-mode, enabling it to handle any workload. High availability is achieved with active-replica nodes that do not require sentinel nodes for failover. The database supports cross-region multi-master setups, allowing all nodes to act as masters in a single replicated dataset. KeyDB’s architecture includes forkless background saving to reduce memory requirements and minimize write amplification.
Performance Metrics
KeyDB is recognized for its high performance, with a single node benchmarking over 1 million operations per second. The database keeps data in-memory to ensure low latency. Its wait-free and lockless algorithm for MVCC guarantees system-wide throughput and latency. KeyDB’s architecture also includes Subkey EXPIREs and active deletion of expired keys in near real-time, further enhancing performance metrics.