

Riak 1.2 Officially Released  - pharkmillups
http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/08/07/Riak-1-2-released/

======
pharkmillups
Somewhat of a shameless plug here: Basho is having conference in October
called RICON. It's in San Francisco, and it's two days dedicated to Riak,
developers, and distributed systems in production. And there will be plenty of
chatter about Riak 1.2 (and 1.3).

<http://basho.com/community/ricon2012/>

------
jtuple
One thing that isn't highlighted much in the release notes or blog post (but
will be once I get around to updating the docs) is the addition of the new
'replace' and 'force-replace' cluster commands in Riak 1.2.

Have a cluster A/B/C and want to replace A with an upgraded machine Z? Bring
up Z and then: cluster join Z; cluster replace A Z; cluster plan/commit.

Have cluster A/B/C and C irreversibly crashes? Bring up node D from backups of
C, and then: cluster join D, cluster force-replace C D, cluster plan/commit.
Passive read-repair (or the newer repair logic) will resolve replicas missing
from the backup.

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kondro
Any chance on getting indicative pricing for Enterprise.

I generally hate hidden pricing and using products with it because it
generally means the company attempts to charge whatever it can get away with
and is afraid of having their clients find or what others are paying.

~~~
tptacek
What is the thing you can build with Riak Enterprise that you don't think you
can build with just-plain-Riak?

~~~
stock_toaster
WAN replication and their apparently awesome support are the differentiating
factors I usually hear about.

~~~
Pkger
You can get a support contract on the OSS version as well and just use what
you pay for. If you need Multi-Site replication though, yes that's a EDS
thing.

Don't forget though, if you are in a startup, we have Riak for Startups
(<http://basho.com/products/riak-enterprise-for-startups/>) where you pay what
you can.

~~~
stock_toaster
I was under the impression that Basho specifically chose not to provide paid
support for the OSS version. Were you speaking of other companies offering
support, or is this a new thing?

~~~
Pkger
What I was essentially saying was you can pay for EE for the support even if
you weren't getting it for the multi-site ability.

~~~
stock_toaster
ah. gotcha.

------
Pkger
With the 1.2 release, the Riak Enterprise docs are public for the first time.

[http://wiki.basho.com/Multi-Data-Center-Replication-
Concepts...](http://wiki.basho.com/Multi-Data-Center-Replication-
Concepts.html)

------
Ixiaus
Yay for FreeBSD support! I didn't like hacking on it to get it to install on
FreeBSD... Also yay for LevelDB improvements :)

------
continuations
How is Riak different from Cassandra or HBase?

What might be the reasons I'd want to use Riak instead of open source
alternatives?

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asparagui
can you guys update provide a non-/CURRENT/ link so I can bring over the
homebrew formula?

~~~
seancribbs
Go to <http://basho.com/resources/downloads/>, static links are available if
you navigate down the tree to the individual files. e.g.
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.basho.com/riak/1.2/1.2.0/o...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.basho.com/riak/1.2/1.2.0/osx/10.4/riak-1.2.0-osx-i386.tar.gz)

~~~
asparagui
roger, it's in the main brew tree now

why does <http://downloads.basho.com/> show different results than the above,
for the record?

thanks for the nifty db >:3

~~~
Pkger
<http://downloads.basho.com> is being phased out for the new downloads site.
We left it up for now, but it will eventually be taken down.

------
nirvana
Basho continues to rapidly add features and improve Riak. I think they're far
ahead of the competition. Frankly, I think Riak is the undiscovered gem in the
NoSQL space.

~~~
jpflores
we're working on the 'undiscovered' part. :-)

~~~
don_draper
How about a getting started page that is as easy as this one:

[http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-
on-d...](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-debian-or-
ubuntu-linux/)

~~~
pharkmillups
Yes. Docs are high on our list of things to revamp. We should be refacing and
improving in all areas starting right about now...

~~~
pooriaazimi
Look at this page (linked from Basho home page, titled "Learn More"):
<http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/>

There's nothing on that page except useless _talk_ and a chart. There are
hundreds of other NOSQL highly distributed, available, blah blah blah
databases. Why should I choose Riak? Why not MongoDB? CouchDB?

And I challenge you to find a link on that page that tells you anything more.
All other links are just as bad: <http://basho.com/technology/why-use-riak/>
and <http://basho.com/technology/architecture/> and
<http://basho.com/technology/technology-stack/> and
<http://basho.com/technology/technology-stack/> \- The wiki is also not good
at all: <http://wiki.basho.com/Riak.html>

They are just spec sheets and vague sentences. For God's sake, show me a
sample project. A to-do app so I can get my head around all these new
concepts...

It's been 6th or 7th time in the past year that I've stumbled upon your site
and was mildly interested to know more about Riak, but the docs are so
horrible that I know "nothing" about it.

I gave a (introductory) presentation (to an undergraduate class) about MongoDB
after 10 hours of reading their site and "The Little MongoDB Book"[1] and
hacking around with it (that's how good and thorough they explained their
system). I'm not sure how much it would take for me to understand enough of
Riak to explain it to someone.

That guy also wrote a decent "Little Book" on Redis, which I also found
extremely compelling. _Please_ , if you like your product and want to see more
people use it, write a better documentation. Or hire Karl Seguin to write one
for you!

[1]: <http://openmymind.net/2011/3/28/The-Little-MongoDB-Book/>

[2]: <http://openmymind.net/2012/1/23/The-Little-Redis-Book/>

~~~
tptacek
Unlike Mongo, which is a pin compatible architectural replacement for MySQL in
most web app designs, you would probably never build a "to-do app" in Riak.
Mongo is thus probably inherently easier to demo.

Moreover, if you just show someone the API for Riak and what it's capable of
doing, you're not really giving them an appreciation of what Riak is about. To
an application developer, Mongo's interface is probably much more congenial
and full-featured.

I think there's a certain extent to which you either have the problem Riak
solves and know why you'd want it, or you don't and no tutorial is going to
change that. But that might just be an opportunity for a really creative
tutorial.

~~~
latch
Riak's documentation is horrible. It reads like a whitepaper; spending more
time explaining how Riak is built than explaining how to build something with
Riak. It's suitable when all you care about are early adopters, but will put
off everyone else.

Trying to understand Riak by its documentation is like trying to understand
Redis by reading up on ziplists.

Edit:

I'm the author of the two Little books mentioned above. I have no doubt that
Riak's documentation can be much more approachable. (and I have a love-hate
relationship with writing and would never write for money, so you can't hire
me, if you were so inclined)

~~~
heretohelp
Can I beg you to write a little book on Riak then? I'm not a basho employee, I
just hate their documentation every bit as much as you do for the same
reasons.

Your "little" series is a boon to humanity man :(

