Apache Ignite vs RonDB

Apache Ignite is a free, open-source, memory-first distributed SQL database for high-velocity workloads. It keeps data primarily in memory, with persistence available through AIPERSIST, and supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. MVCC snapshot isolation enables non-blocking reads. SQL access includes JDBC drivers, a Table API and native APIs, while catalog-driven schema management allows column and index changes without stopping the cluster. DataStreamer handles high-throughput writes with backpressure control. Native clients are listed for Java, .NET, C++ and Python, alongside AWS, Azure, GCE and Spring extensions. Built-in operational capabilities include authentication, SSL/TLS security, OpenTelemetry metrics, recovery snapshots and backups. Listed uses include event stream processing, microservices state management, session management and AI/ML feature stores. Ignite is self-hosted and available through binary, source, Docker and Maven/Gradle options. The project identifies Ignite 2 as a long-term-support release recommended for existing deployments.

RonDB is an open-source distributed storage engine for real-time applications and a fork of MySQL NDB Cluster. Its shared-nothing design supports up to 1 PiB of storage, with online horizontal and vertical scaling for storage and MySQL-server compute. Applications can use the MySQL Server API for SQL-compatible access and parallel queries. ACID transactions are provided through MySQL-server support; in-memory data is persisted using REDO logs and checkpoints.

RonDB describes its performance aims as low latency, high availability, high throughput, and scalable storage. It supports AI application storage integrated with Spark and Kafka, while Rondis implements a Redis server using RonDB storage and the Redis wire protocol. Deployment options include local testing, Docker, cloud deployments using your own AWS, Azure, or GCP credentials, and on-premises deployment by inquiry. Replication can be synchronous active-active across availability zones or asynchronous across regions with conflict resolution. RonDB is used as the online feature-store database for machine-learning applications in Hopsworks. The serverless plan through Hopsworks is free, with quotas on Feature Groups and memory usage.