Navigating the Challenges of Bring Your Own Cloud in Vector Databases

In this episode of Infra Pod, Ian and Tim chat with Simon, the CEO of Turbopuffer, about his journey from working at Shopify to building the fastest vector store known to man. They delve into the intricacies of scaling infrastructure, the challenges with traditional databases like Postgres and MySQL, and why Simon believes in building databases on top of object storage. They also explore the trade-offs Turbo Puffer has made, including its unique approach to consistency and high write latency.00:36 Scaling Shopify's Infrastructure01:56 Challenges with Postgres02:19 Building Turbo Puffer16:30 Trade-offs and Performance of Turbo Puffer22:32 Importance of Consistency in Databases26:29 BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) Option32:03 Customer Use Cases and Integration35:11 Spicy Future!