Best Practices for BYOC and Cloud Architecture

At our most recent meetup we covered everything from S3 API standards and portability, to powering zero-disk databases, to simplifying day-2 BYOC operations with Nuon’s Runner Architecture.

Below are the talks from Himank Chaudhary, CTO & Co-Founder at Tigris Data, Almog Gavra, Co-Founder at Responsive and contributor to SlateDB, and our CEO and Founder Jon Morehouse.

Portability in modern cloud design comes from standard interfaces like the S3 API for storage, rather than infrastructure, enabling users to choose any cloud. Himank Chaudhary, co-founder and CTO of Tigris Data, explains that an S3-compatible interface simplifies design, allowing systems to decouple what they run from where they run.

Particularly important for databases building on top of object stores. Platforms like BYOC (Build Your Own Cloud) are adopting this standard-based approach so that moving to a different cloud becomes a matter of redeploying and reattaching storage, rather than a difficult migration.

Almog Garva discusses the object-native LSM tree, and the motivation for its design, which centers on reducing the cost of database operations by leveraging open standards and making it easier to run databases in various execution environments.

The talk covers how to evaluate database trade-offs in performance, availability, and durability using frameworks like the RUM conjecture, the PACELC theorem, and the LCD theorem. Slate DB is built on the principles of using object storage, immutable data structures, and the LSM tree indexing structure to create a flexible, embedded, key-value storage engine that can restore its state using S3 access.

Jon Morehouse discusses the "infrastructure runner" pattern, which involves a binary that is given to a customer to manage their environment remotely, providing an alternative to giving the vendor cross-account IAM or other credentials.

This runner is responsible for operations like managing state, which is where S3 is important as a portable and simple API for storing data. The runner model is key to enabling secure "bring your own cloud" (BYOC) deployment options, where a customer consumes software in their own cloud environment (like AWS, GCP, or Azure), while maintaining control.