What’s New in Portworx Data Services: Graph database and SQL Availability Groups

Portworx, the world’s leading Kubernetes Data Platform from Pure Storage, has been at the forefront of enabling users to run databases and data services with the economic advantages of containers while ensuring enterprise-grade reliability and security. In that direction, Portworx Data Service (PDS) was launched in 2022 to make it easier to optimally deploy and manage your data services through the Portworx-run managed platform in the cloud.

In July 2024, we announced major strides in Portworx Data Services (PDS) including a new light-themed GUI, enhanced support for security controls within Portworx Enterprise and introduction of new controls like Projects. We continue to add steam to Portworx Data Services and are pleased to say that in September 2024, we’ve enriched PDS with additional data services: a popular graph database, and the ability to seamlessly increase availability for Microsoft SQL Server databases using availability groups. This is alongside improvements in experience and performance, all of which are detailed in the release notes for Portworx Data Services release 24.09.02.

Deploy and Manage the Popular Graph Database: Neo4j

Portworx Data Services provides users with an extensive catalog of popular databases, messaging brokers and data services which can be deployed and managed on Kubernetes with ease. With the newest releases, we’ve expanded Portworx Data Services to now include Neo4j Community Edition in its fold.

Neo4j Community Edition is the open source free variant of the graph database solution. Built for data scientists by data scientists, Neo4j has a true native graph model implemented down to its storage level; this is unlike other solutions which often present a graph-like API interface which can abstract the underpinning in row-based databases.

Java-based Neo4j v5 Community Edition can be deployed using Portworx Data Services in the usual wizard format. Additionally, administrators can control and configure guardrails in Portworx Data Services, including specific resource profiles. They can also restrict Neo4j-specific configuration parameters like memory heap size or disable/enable actions when files are pushed to the database. Neo4j instances created can be accessed via Cypher query language or Bolt protocol using the endpoint presented by Portworx. Post-deployment lifecycle elements are handled by Portworx Data Services, like one-click updates to a new version, or initiating backup and restores forthe Neo4j Community Edition instance deployed.

High availability for Microsoft SQL Server using Availability Groups

Portworx Data Services has long been a major proponent of Microsoft SQL Server for Linux and has been providing it in its catalog for a long time. Today, we’re expanding our capabilities around SQL Server by adding support for its Always-On Availability Groups.

By setting up the multi-node SQL Server as availability group, Portworx Data Services ensures high availability through a group of replicated nodes for user-created discrete database(s) which failover together. Portworx takes care of tasks needed to set up Microsoft SQL Server Always-On Availability Group like creating the availability groups, preparing secondary replicas, setting up AG monitors and more. All this is done behind the scenes, while customers use the Portworx Data Services wizard to easily and swiftly get SQL instances running.

Extending to the multi-node high availability Microsoft SQL Server availability group-based deployment, Portworx Data Services also expands its lifecycle capabilities like database version updates, backup, and restore to gracefully be done across SQL server nodes without the need for user intervention.

Get started with latest Portworx Data Services

Portworx Data Services is now ready for use with the above-listed functionalities and other improvements listed in our documentation. Existing PDS customers can continue to login and use PDS via cloud.portworx.io and use the new features and functionalities.

If you are not a Portworx Data Services customer and would like to try out the latest features like Neo4j support and Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Group deployments, alongside our existing capabilities spanning across over 10+ other data services from CouchDB to Kafka to Cassandra to Elasticsearch, you can reach out to us directly or connect with your Pure Storage (Portworx) account representative to get started with an engagement.