In the current landscape, app modernization has transitioned from a mere option to a vital necessity for enterprises aiming to maintain a competitive edge. This shift is steering organizations away from traditional monolithic systems and outdated databases, propelling them toward open cloud-native architectures. Central to this evolution is Postgres, which is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of modern data strategies, enabling businesses to pursue extensibility, cost efficiency, and innovation within open ecosystems.
During a recent discussion on theCUBE, experts from AMD, EnterpriseDB, Supermicro, and Lightbits Labs delved into the implications of app modernization in the age of AI. They emphasized the growing demand for open standards, with major enterprise vendors aligning their offerings around platforms like Postgres and Kubernetes to adapt to the rapid transformations driven by AI.
“As a customer, you should be building everything on open standards,” remarked Simon Lightstone, director of technology product management at EnterpriseDB Corp. “It’s crucial to envision how these systems will transition into production swiftly. It’s not merely about having a toolbox filled with tools; it’s about effectively deploying these tools across multiple nodes in your data center to achieve meaningful business outcomes.”
Lightstone shared these insights with Rob Strechay at the Supermicro Open Storage Summit, where he was joined by Shiva Gurumurthy, global partner marketing manager of database and analytics at AMD; Junxia Zhou, product manager at Supermicro; and Sagy Volkov, distinguished performance architect at Lightbits Labs. Together, they explored how platforms like Postgres and Kubernetes are paving the way for the next generation of enterprise applications. (* Disclosure below.)
Full stack performance fuels app modernization
To fully leverage the capabilities of AI-driven applications, organizations are reassessing their performance delivery across every layer of the technology stack. This reevaluation has heightened the importance of high-performance block storage, which is essential for ensuring low latency and high throughput in transaction-heavy Postgres workloads.
Lightbits Labs exemplifies this approach, having established itself in the block storage-as-a-service sector through a software-defined model that emphasizes ultra-low latency and high throughput for databases and analytics. By utilizing cloud-native EDB Postgres alongside AMD CPUs on Supermicro’s X-14 platform, Lightbits demonstrated remarkable throughput across three work nodes.
“We’re approaching a million transactions per second for read-only operations and around 700,000 transactions per second from 12 clusters of EDB, with a 90% read and 10% write ratio,” Volkov noted. “These figures are substantial, indicating that this platform can handle extensive I/O operations, allowing for flexibility in managing multiple Postgres databases within a shared environment.”
This efficiency translates into tangible benefits for customers. An integrated stack of hardware and software designed to support Postgres and AI workloads can lead to significant savings in energy costs and the escalating expenses associated with expanding data center capacity.
“What does this mean for customers?” Gurumurthy posed. “It translates to enhanced performance and faster throughput. More importantly, it allows customers to achieve greater results with a smaller footprint, both in terms of energy consumption and data center space. This alignment significantly aids compliance with energy budgets and regulations impacting their financial performance.”
Kubernetes integration supports use cases
In addition to Postgres, IT vendors are also focusing on facilitating AI inference and transaction processing for practical applications. Here, container orchestration tools like Kubernetes are becoming increasingly crucial as enterprises re-platform their applications for enhanced portability and scalability.
“We invest considerable effort to ensure that all components function seamlessly together,” Lightstone emphasized. “We offer full lifecycle support for security updates and major version upgrades, not only for Postgres but for every element within the stack, including Open Shift Kubernetes. This approach alleviates the need for customers to maintain a round-the-clock team of Kubernetes specialists.”
The overarching narrative is that leading enterprise IT vendors are adapting to a landscape where AI has fundamentally reshaped business strategies regarding compute infrastructure. For Supermicro, this evolution necessitates staying attuned to the key trends propelling app modernization.
“The AI evolution is driving a heightened demand for optimized hardware, particularly for inference and real-time applications, which require robust performance across compute, networking, and storage,” Zhou explained. “Enterprises seek a comprehensive AI infrastructure solution that simplifies deployment, whether on-premises, in hybrid environments, or in the cloud.”
Here’s a short clip from our interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Supermicro Open Storage Summit:
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Supermicro Open Storage Summit. Neither Super Micro Computer Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
Photo: SiliconANGLE
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