Comparing CockroachDB & Google Cloud Spanner

This article compares two distributed SQL databases, Google Cloud Spanner and CockroachDB. It highlights the origin of Google Cloud Spanner as a pioneer in this field and its key features such as global distribution, synchronous replication, and support for external transactions. The author then delves into the architectural differences between the two systems. CockroachDB is noted to be more flexible than Spanner due to its independence from specific hardware requirements. It also offers greater control over data location at the row level of each table, which can improve latency and survival rates. Additionally, CockroachDB integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes clusters, unlike Spanner, making it suitable for multi-cloud environments like Anthos or Red Hat OpenShift. Despite these differences, both databases are praised as excellent tools depending on the specific needs of a project. The author concludes by encouraging interested parties to explore CockroachDB further through their serverless offering or fully managed version.