# Aerospike (database)

Aerospike Database is a real-time, high performance NoSQL database. Designed for applications that cannot experience any downtime and require high read & write throughput. Aerospike is optimized to run on NVMe SSDs capable of efficiently storing large datasets (Gigabytes to Petabytes). Aerospike can also be deployed as a fully in-memory cache database. Aerospike offers Key-Value, JSON Document, Graph data, and Vector Search models. Aerospike is an open source distributed NoSQL database management system, marketed by the company also named Aerospike.

## History

Aerospike was first known as Citrusleaf. In August 2012, the company - which had been providing its database since 2010 - rebranded both the company and software name to Aerospike. The name "Aerospike" is derived from the aerospike engine, a type of rocket nozzle that is able to maintain its output efficiency over a large range of altitudes, and is intended to refer to the software's ability to scale up. In 2012, Aerospike acquired AlchemyDB, and integrated the two databases' functions, including the addition of a relational data management system. On June 24, 2014, Aerospike was opensourced under the AGPL 3.0 license for the Aerospike database server and the Apache License Version 2.0 for its Aerospike client software development kit.

### Release history

| Version | First Release Version | First Release Date | Latest Version | Release date | Features | Ref |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.1 | 3.1.3 | January 2, 2014 | 3.1.14 | February 25, 2014 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.2 | 3.2.0 | March 19, 2014 | 3.2.9 | May 12, 2014 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.3 | 3.3.5 | June 9, 2014 | 3.3.26 | December 3, 2014 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.4 | 3.4.0 | December 8, 2014 | 3.4.1 | January 12, 2015 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.5 | 3.5.2 | February 13, 2015 | 3.5.15 | July 15, 2015 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.6 | 3.6.0 | August 31, 2015 | 3.6.4 | November 10, 2015 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.7 | 3.7.0 | December 10, 2015 | 3.7.5.1 | March 31, 2016 | Geospatial queries Native List data type | [9] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.8 | 3.8.1 | April 15, 2016 | 3.8.4 | June 17, 2016 | Secondary Index on List, Map & Geospatial | [10] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.9 | 3.9.0 | July 11, 2016 | 3.9.1.1 | September 2, 2016 | Rapid Rebalance | [11] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.10 | 3.10.0.3 | October 21, 2016 | 3.10.1.5 | January 13, 2017 | Durable Delete Support IPv6 | [12] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.11 | 3.11.0 | January 5, 2017 | 3.11.1.1 | February 15, 2017 | Transport Layer Security on client-server communications | [13] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.12 | 3.12.0 | March 15, 2017 | 3.12.1.3 | July 31, 2017 | Predicate Filters | [14] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.13 | 3.13.0.1 | May 30, 2017 | 3.13.0.11 | April 26, 2018 | Clustering Layer refactoring Required "Jump" Release before 3.14 | [15] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.14 | 3.14.0 | June 6, 2017 | 3.14.1.10 | April 26, 2018 | Clustering Layer refactoring pt. 2 | [15] [8] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.15 | 3.15.0.1 | October 3, 2017 | 3.15.1.4 | January 3, 2018 | Encryption at rest | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 3.16 | 3.16.0.1 | February 21, 2018 | 3.16.0.6 | March 2, 2018 | | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.0 | 4.0.0.1 | March 7, 2018 | 4.0.0.6 | September 6, 2018 | Strong consistency Model | [16] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1 | 4.1.0.1 | May 10, 2018 | 4.1.0.6 | September 6, 2018 | LDAP Support | [18] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.2 | 4.2.0.2 | May 31, 2018 | 4.2.0.10 | August 10, 2018 | Increase maximum object size to 8MB | [19] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.3 | 4.3.0.2 | August 1, 2018 | 4.3.1.14 | April 26, 2019 | All Flash Namespaces | [20] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.4 | 4.4.0.4 | November 19, 2018 | 4.4.0.15 | April 26, 2019 | Change notification Framework - connectors for Apache Kafka and JMS Rack aware reads | [21] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.5 | 4.5.0.1 | December 12, 2018 | 4.5.3.22 | July 7, 2020 | Support for Intel Persistent memory for Indexing Record level Data compression | [22] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.6 | 4.6.0.2 | August 9, 2019 | 4.6.0.21 | September 18, 2020 | Added bitwise BLOB operations Nested Collection Data Type API support | |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.7 | 4.7.0.2 | September 30, 2019 | 4.7.0.26 | November 25, 2020 | ADQ Support | [23] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 4.8 | 4.8.0.1 | December 12, 2019 | 4.8.0.31 | March 29, 2021 | Support for client/server compression Support for Intel Persistent Memory for storing data | [24] [17] |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 4.9 | 4.9.0.3 | April 8, 2020 | 4.9.0.36 | October 25, 2021 | Added support for HyperLogLog (HLL) data types Improve Scans for non key value access Modify Eviction/Expiration (TTL) Default behavior Required "Jump" Release before 5.0 (LTS) | [25] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 5.0 | 5.0.0.3 | May 14, 2020 | 5.0.0.38 | July 19, 2021 | Refactor cross datacenter replication (XDR) Strong consistency multi site clustering | [26] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 5.1 | 5.1.0.3 | July 31, 2020 | 5.1.0.42 | September 20, 2021 | Hashicorp Vault integration | [27] [17] |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 5.2 | 5.2.02 | October 1, 2020 | 5.2.0.37 | October 30, 2021 | Redesigned predicate expressions | [28] [17] |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 5.3 | 5.3.0.2 | December 10, 2020 | 5.3.0.27 | October 30, 2021 | Added expression filtering for XDR Expanded Multi-Site Clustering | [29] [17] |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 5.4 | 5.4.0.1 | January 13, 2021 | 5.4.0.22 | October 30, 2021 | Added bin level convergence for active-active XDR scenarios | [30] [17] |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 5.5 | 5.5.0.2 | February 5, 2021 | 5.5.0.20 | October 30, 2021 | | |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 5.6 | 5.6.0.3 | May 10, 2021 | 5.6.0.14 | October 30, 2021 | Aerospike Expressions Set Indexes Per-user quotas Boolean datatype | [31] [17] |
| Old version, yet still maintained: 5.7 | 5.7.0.7 | September 27, 2021 | 5.7.0.9 | December 10, 2021 | Improved memory footprint and garbage collection for secondary indices Support for PKI authentication | [32] [17] |
| Current stable version: 6.0 | 6.0.0.0 | April 27, 2022 | 6.0.0.0 | April 27, 2022 | Storing, Indexing and Querying JSON Documents Partitioned Secondary Index Queries | [33] [17] |
| Legend:Old version, not maintainedOld version, still maintainedLatest versionLatest preview versionFuture release |||||||

## Features

Aerospike Database is modeled under the shared-nothing architecture and written in C. It operates in three layers: a data storage layer, a self-managed distribution layer, and a cluster-aware client layer.
Aerospike uses hybrid memory architecture: the database indices are stored fully in main random-access memory, while the data is stored on a persistent device using the data layer. The data layer stores the data in solid-state drive, NVMe or Persistent memory. Reading the data is done using a direct access to the record position on disk using a direct pointer from the primary index, and data writes are optimized through large block writes to reduce latency. This architecture to fetch all records from the persistent device and void the use of data cache. Aerospike also provides the ability to store the data fully in RAM, thus acting as an in-memory database. In that case, data would be persisted to either SSD, NVMe, PMEM or traditional rotational media.
Aerospike provides single-record ACID transactions. The distribution layer is responsible to replicate the data across nodes to ensure the durability and immediate consistency properties of the transaction. This allows the database to remain operational even when an individual server node fails or is manually removed from the cluster. Since version 4.0 (2018), Aerospike Database can be configured both as Available and Partition-tolerant (AP) or Consistent and Partition-tolerant (CP) under the CAP theorem.
The client cluster-aware layer is used to track the cluster configuration in the database, and manages client direct communications to all the nodes in the cluster. The clustering is done using heartbeats and Paxos based gossip protocol algorithm.
The software employs two sub-programs that are codenamed Defragmenter and Evictor. Defragmenter removes data blocks that have been deleted, and Evictor frees RAM space by removing references to expired records.