Platform Support

Yellowbrick currently has two editions — Enterprise Edition — which targets multiple supported platforms and — Community Edition — which runs on docker. Although most core database documentation is applicable to all platforms, there are differences. This Platform Support Guide explains the differences and contains sections of documentation that may be pertinent to only one platform or edition.

When looking at shared documentation, at the top of each page of you'll find capsules listing the platforms that the page in question applies to.

The current set of platforms and editions are documented below.

Yellowbrick Edition

Enterprise Edition (EE)

The fully featured, scale-out version of Yellowbrick with enterprise support. Enterprise Edition runs on all Yellowbrick appliances, as well as all public and private cloud platforms. The database engine is identical between platforms, but the infrastructure and storage architecture are different, leading to some differences in system views, SQL utility statements and administration.

Community Edition (CE)

The freely available version of the Yellowbrick SQL Data Platform that runs on Docker, designed for single-node deployments. Built on the same engine as Yellowbrick Enterprise Edition, CE is ideal for development environments, functional validation, and smaller datasets. While some enterprise features such as multi-node scaling, workload management, and advanced security are reserved for the Enterprise Edition, CE delivers the core analytical performance and SQL compatibility that Yellowbrick is known for.

Yellowbrick Appliances

Tinman appliance (EE-APPLIANCE-TINMAN)

Tinman is Yellowbrick's first-generation appliance used in appliance platforms data centers. It is a blade server architecture using Intel Broadwell CPUs with integrated 56gbit active/passive dual port Infiniband backplane and integrated NVMe storage devices.

Andromeda appliance (EE-APPLIANCE-ANDROMEDA)

Andromeda is Yellowbrick's second-generation appliance used in appliance platforms data centers. It is also a blade server architecture using AMD EPYC CPUs with integrated 100gbit active/active dual port Infiniband backplane and removable NVMe storage devices.

Yellowbrick Cloud Platforms

Yellowbrick software supports numerous cloud platforms by running on top of Kubernetes. Currently supported cloud platforms are as follows:

Amazon Web Services (EE-CLOUD-AWS)

Yellowbrick runs on top of EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services), stores metadata and row-oriented data on EBS (Elastic Block Store) and columnar data on S3.

Microsoft Azure (EE-CLOUD-AZURE)

Yellowbrick runs on top of AKS (Azure Kubernetes Services), stores metadata and row-oriented data on Azure Disk Storage and columnar data on Azure Blob Storage.

Google Compute Platform (EE-CLOUD-GCP)

Yellowbrick runs on top of GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine), stores metadata and row-oriented data on persistent disks, and columnar data on GCS (Google Cloud Storage).

Differences Between Appliance and Cloud Platforms

Both appliance platforms and cloud platforms use the same underlying database engine, that processes data using SQL in exactly the same way. The differences are in the following areas:

Area	Appliance platforms	Cloud platforms
Installation	Appliance hardware is installed into a data center by Yellowbrick staff and includes all database and system software preinstalled.	Cloud software is installed into a cloud account using the Yellowbrick deployer.
Storage	Appliances have co-located storage and compute. Data is stored on SSDs within compute nodes and protected using parity encoding.	Cloud software makes use of separate storage and compute. The software stores data on both block storage and object storage from the cloud provider.
Compute nodes	The number of compute nodes available to Yellowbrick is dictated by how many blades are installed in the appliance.	Compute nodes are allocated and de-allocated dynamically from the cloud using Kubernetes, with the number of compute nodes limited solely by the capacity of a given availability zone.
Elastic compute clusters	Appliances have one 'default' compute cluster comprising all installed compute blades.	Multiple compute clusters with separate storage and compute can be created dynamically. Users are assigned to clusters and intensive workloads can be load-balanced across them.
User Interface	The Yellowbrick Systems Management Console (SMC) is used for management of the appliance, along with YBCLI for management of the physical platform. Third party SQL authoring tools must be used.	Yellowbrick Manager is used for management of the instance as well as authoring and issuing ad-hoc SQL. Third party SQL authoring tools are optional.
Authentication and authorization	Database local authentication, OAuth2.0 authorization and LDAP synchronization are supported. Kerberos is also supported via editing configuration files. OAuth2.0 allows easy integration with federated identity management solutions.	Database local authentication and OAuth2.0 authorization are supported.

Differences Between Enterprise and Community Edition

Both Enterprise Edition and Community Edition use the same underlying database engine, that processes data using SQL in exactly the same way and uses the same UI that helps in maintaining a consistent user experience across editions. The differences are in the following areas:

Area	Enterprise Edition	Community Edition
Installation	Enterprise Edition is installed into a cloud account using the Yellowbrick deployer.	Community Edition is freely available to download and use via Docker Hub.
Compute Nodes	Enterprise Edition is typically a multi-node environment.	Community Edition is a single-node environment with a maximum allowed limit for 16 cores.
Backup and Restore	Enterprise Edition supports backup and restore of the system.	Community Edition only supports backup of the system.
Replication	Enterprise Edition supports replication of systems.	Community Edition does not support replication.
Data Loading	Enterprise Edition supports parallel data loading based on set workload management configurations.	Community Edition supports sequential data loading.
Local Data Loading	Enterprise Edition does not support loading data from local disk.	Community Edition supports loading local data from disk.