What is PlanetScale Neki?

A database stores an application's records, and as an application grows, a single database server can run out of room or speed. One common answer is sharding: splitting the rows of a database across several servers, which is complex to do in practice. Neki is a sharded version of the Postgres database, made by PlanetScale. The maker describes it as adding a router (directs each query to the right shard), sidecars (helper programs beside each shard) and a control plane (the management layer) around ordinary Postgres, so each shard stays real Postgres and the database can be spread over more than one machine. It is built by the team behind Vitess, a sharding system for MySQL.

Written from primary sources and reference pages, and checked against them by an independent AI fact-checker. Drafted with AI assistance.