Pebble is a RocksDB inspired and RocksDB compatible key-value store focused on the needs of CockroachDB. Pebble brings better performance and stability, avoids the challenges of traversing the [Cgo boundary](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/the-cost-and-complexity-of-cgo/), and gives us more control over future enhancements tailored for CockroachDB’s needs. In our upcoming 20.2 release this fall, Pebble will replace RocksDB as the default storage engine. This is the story of why we’ve written Pebble, and how we changed such a foundational component of CockroachDB.