Hydrolix
activeby Hydrolix · since 2020 · also known as TrafficPeak
Streaming data lake for log-scale event data, with ClickHouse-based SQL over object storage.
Overview
Hydrolix is a commercial streaming data lake for very high-volume log and event data such as CDN, security and video telemetry. Streams are transformed on ingest, compressed into its own columnar, heavily indexed format on object storage, and queried through a ClickHouse-based SQL engine over the ClickHouse HTTP and native protocols, so Grafana, Kibana-style tools and Splunk connectors work on top. Compute is stateless on Kubernetes and scales separately from storage. It is usually deployed in the customer's cloud account and managed by Hydrolix, and Akamai resells it as TrafficPeak. The value is cheap long retention of full-fidelity data; the cost is a proprietary platform with usage-based contracts.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Keeps full-fidelity log data for long periods at object-storage cost
- +ClickHouse SQL and protocols open up Grafana, DBeaver and JDBC tools
- +Ingest-time transforms and summary tables
- +Stateless Kubernetes compute scales separately from storage
- +Proven on very large CDN and live-event traffic
Trade-offs
- −Proprietary platform with contract pricing
- −Needs a defined transform schema per table
- −Smaller community than open-source alternatives
- −Mostly a fit for very large volumes; overkill for small datasets
Great for
- +CDN and edge log analytics
- +Security and bot detection data
- +Video streaming quality telemetry
- +Long-term retention of SIEM-scale logs
Think twice for
- −Small or occasional log volumes
- −Open-source-only environments
- −Transactional workloads
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 9 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Massive · Multi-PB
- Horizontal scaling
- Native
- Multi-region
- No
- Transactions
- None
- Consistency
- Eventual
- Schema
- Strict
- Architecture
- Distributed, Shared storage
- Query languages
- SQL (ClickHouse dialect)
Stateless ingest and query pools on Kubernetes over object storage; designed for petabyte-scale retention.
Deployment
available on · AWS · Google Cloud · Azure · Akamai
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Hydrolix
Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.
hydrolix vs clickhouse →Lucene-based distributed search and analytics engine for text, vectors, logs and metrics.
hydrolix vs elasticsearch →Real-time analytics database for sub-second slice-and-dice over streaming event data.
hydrolix vs apache-druid →Managed event and telemetry store with schema-on-read ingest and the piped APL query language.
hydrolix vs axiom →Single-binary Rust observability platform storing logs, metrics and traces as Parquet on object storage.
hydrolix vs openobserve →Microsoft's Kusto engine: fast KQL analytics over logs, telemetry and time series at petabyte scale.
hydrolix vs azure-data-explorer →Hydrolix FAQ
What is Hydrolix?
Hydrolix is a columnar / OLAP database by Hydrolix, first released in 2020. Hydrolix is a commercial streaming data lake for very high-volume log and event data such as CDN, security and video telemetry. Streams are transformed on ingest, compressed into its own columnar, heavily indexed format on object storage, and queried through a ClickHouse-based SQL engine over the ClickHouse HTTP and native protocols, so Grafana, Kibana-style tools and Splunk connectors work on top. Compute is stateless on Kubernetes and scales separately from storage. It is usually deployed in the customer's cloud account and managed by Hydrolix, and Akamai resells it as TrafficPeak. The value is cheap long retention of full-fidelity data; the cost is a proprietary platform with usage-based contracts.
Is Hydrolix open source?
No. Hydrolix is proprietary, closed-source software.
Does Hydrolix support ACID transactions?
No. Hydrolix does not provide ACID transactions; its consistency model is eventual.
Does Hydrolix scale horizontally?
Hydrolix scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at massive scale (Multi-PB).
How can I run Hydrolix?
You can self-host it and use the vendor's managed cloud. Managed offerings include Akamai TrafficPeak. It is available on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Akamai.
What is Hydrolix best for?
Hydrolix is a strong fit for CDN and edge log analytics; security and bot detection data; and video streaming quality telemetry. Think twice for small or occasional log volumes.
What are the best alternatives to Hydrolix?
Common alternatives to Hydrolix include ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, Apache Druid, Axiom and OpenObserve. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
How popular is Hydrolix?
Hydrolix ranks #667 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (0.2/100), and #54 among columnar / OLAP databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.