MariaDB started off their annual conference on February 26, MariaDB OpenWorks 2019, with a bang, making new announcements and embarking on new innovations for 2019. MariaDB OpenWorks took place on February 25 -27 at the Conrad Hotel in New York City.
The company is introducing a new Enterprise Server that will support customers with mission-critical applications by delivering a database engineered for greater reliability and stability.
MariaDB Enterprise Server adds new features such as more powerful and fine grained auditing, faster, highly reliable backups for large databases, and end-to-end encryption for all data at rest in MariaDB clusters.
The solution is fully open source and will be the default version for customers using MariaDB Platform on-prem or in the cloud.
Unlike Community Server, MariaDB Enterprise Server is configured for secure, high-performance production environments out of the box.
“There is this enhanced feature with our audit plugin which is important for security to find out if someone used the database in untoward ways,” said Michael Howard, CEO, MariaDB. “We also have a new level of encryption for clustering MariaDB.”
While the entire community gets access to cutting-edge and in development features, enterprise customers get a hardened version of MariaDB restricted to production-grade, fully supported features.
MariaDB Enterprise Server undergoes thorough quality assurance to test performance at scale for production workloads. Priority is given to fixing defects identified in MariaDB Enterprise Server to ensure increased stability for customers.
MariaDB Enterprise Server is distributed securely with a clearly established chain of custody from MariaDB all the way to customers to ensure binaries cannot be tempered with.
“This is a really a new level of focus and quality that’s just never been part of the community side of things and it’s a big step and I hope not a controversial one,” Howard said.
This year the company is investing in the cloud, machine learning, autonomous database behavior, and scaling out with the recent acquisition of Clustrix, Howard explained.
“There’s an incredible push to new qualities, new levels of service, new levels of fortitude and we’re being used by larger and larger companies in a way that’s way more enterprise and mission critical to the goals of those types of companies,” Howard said.
As the company grows, Howard said it’s all about the balancing act between “main street and wall street.”
“You have to both respond and lead at the same time,” Howard said.