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vitessio/vitess

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TLDR

Cloud-native MySQL sharding layer that scales databases horizontally by automatically splitting data across servers, keeping apps unaware of the distribution.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Vitess))
    What it does
      MySQL sharding
      Horizontal scaling
      Transparent to apps
    Key features
      Auto data splitting
      Shard merging
      Fast cutover
    Tech stack
      Go
      MySQL
      Kubernetes
    Use cases
      Scale to millions
      Multi-tenant apps
      High-traffic services
    Audience
      Database engineers
      DevOps teams
      Large platforms

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Scale a MySQL database from millions to billions of rows by automatically sharding data across multiple servers without changing application queries.

USE CASE 2

Run a multi-tenant SaaS platform where each tenant's data is isolated in separate shards that can grow independently.

USE CASE 3

Migrate a monolithic database to a distributed system with minimal downtime using Vitess's built-in resharding and cutover tools.

USE CASE 4

Manage database infrastructure on Kubernetes with automatic failover, replication, and shard rebalancing.

Tech stack

GoMySQLKubernetesgRPC

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires Kubernetes cluster, MySQL instances, and understanding of sharding topology configuration.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you include the Apache 2.0 license notice and document any changes you make.

In plain English

Vitess is a cloud-native, horizontally-scalable distributed database system built around MySQL, written in Go. It is designed to let you scale MySQL to essentially unlimited capacity through sharding, automatically splitting your data across many database servers, while keeping your application code and queries unaware of how the data is distributed. You can split and merge shards as your needs grow, with a cutover step that takes only a few seconds. Vitess was a core component of YouTube's database infrastructure from 2011 and grew to support tens of thousands of MySQL nodes. Starting in 2015, it was adopted by companies including Slack, Square (now Block), and JD.com. It is a graduated project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and integrates well with Kubernetes. A third-party security audit has been performed by ADA Logics. The project is open-source under the Apache 2.0 license.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I set up Vitess to shard an existing MySQL database across multiple servers? Walk me through the resharding process.
Prompt 2
Show me how to configure Vitess with Kubernetes so that my database automatically handles failover and replication.
Prompt 3
I have a MySQL database that's hitting capacity limits. How would I use Vitess to split it into shards without downtime?
Prompt 4
What's the difference between Vitess and other MySQL scaling solutions like Citus or ProxySQL? When should I choose Vitess?
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