Building Planetary-Scale Data Systems with Venice • Felix GV & Olimpiu Pop

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.https://gotopia.techCheck out more here:https://gotopia.tech/articles/421Félix GV - Current Interests: Multi-Planetary Databases, Data Sovereignty & LifeloggingOlimpiu Pop - Technologist & Tech JournalistRESOURCESFélixhttps://bsky.app/profile/felixgv.ninjahttps://github.com/FelixGVhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/felixgvOlimpiuhttps://x.com/olimpiupophttps://github.com/zrollhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/olimpiupopLinkshttps://venicedb.orghttps://github.com/linkedin/venicehttps://rocksdb.orghttps://duckdb.orgDESCRIPTIONFélix GV, a former engineer at LinkedIn and architect of the Venice database system, discusses the complexity of building planetary-scale data systems. He explains Venice's unbundled architecture where each component—from Kafka-based pub/sub to RocksDB-powered servers—operates as an independent distributed system. Félix details their rigorous chaos engineering practices, including regular load tests that push data centers beyond normal capacity to ensure reliability.The discussion covers fundamental distributed systems concepts like the CAP theorem and the trade-offs between consistency and availability in multi-region deployments. He also explains why Venice, as a derived data system, deliberately sacrifices strong consistency for high throughput and availability, and concludes by discussing their experimental integration of DuckDB for SQL-based analytics and data exploration capabilities.RECOMMENDED BOOKSKasun Indrasiri & Danesh Kuruppu • gRPC: Up and Running • https://amzn.to/3sBGBJJTomer Shiran, Jason Hughes & Alex Merced • Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide • https://amzn.to/488Z30kWilliam Smith • Arrow Flight Protocols and Practices • https://amzn.to/4o2Q2fdAdi Polak • Scaling Machine Learning with Spark • https://amzn.to/3N9vx1HMark Needham, Michael Hunger & Michael Simons • DuckDB in Action • https://amzn.to/45QwSliSimon Aubury & Ned Letcher • Getting Started with DuckDB • https://amzn.to/3VPk4qBlueskyInstagramLinkedInFacebookCHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUSJoin this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/joinLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!