Just the Right Weather for our Company: How We Chose Our Data Stores

A simple web search for NoSQL databases will show us the variety in the field. We at The Weather Company had a “simple” goal: to build a system, in the cloud, that can process, store and distribute all the different types of data we have. This includes weather forecasts, weather observations, radar images, weather satellite data and other consumer oriented data like pollen. Of course, we had fast deadlines to add to the fun.

Choosing the right data store was very important, for a wrong move could push us back in progress, and we did not choose just one. Based on our use cases and evolving needs, we currently run Cassandra, Redis and Riak in production, in the cloud. This session is a discussion on why and how we use them, why we are not afraid of diversity and what you can take away from our sleepless work nights.

Rookie of sorts, Surya Sivakumar is your run of the mill jack of all trades, made into a master of few. He has been the primary NoSQL "DBA" in The Weather Company, with experience in Cassandra, Hadoop, Redis and Riak. He has his Masters in Information Security from Georgia Tech and Bachelors in Computer Science from College of Engineering, Guindy, India.