Percona Live Data Performance Conference

Percona Live Data Performance Conference
Name	Percona Live Data Performance Conference
Status	Active
Genre	Technology conference
Frequency	Annual
Organizer	Percona
First	2012

Percona Live Data Performance Conference is an annual conference focused on database performance, open source data management, and cloud-native infrastructure. The event brings together practitioners, engineers, vendors, and researchers from the fields of database systems, distributed systems, and data operations to discuss optimization, benchmarking, and operational best practices. Attendees include authors, maintainers, and contributors from major open source projects alongside representatives from cloud providers, enterprise vendors, and academic centers.

Overview

Percona Live convenes communities around MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, Redis, SQLite, ProxySQL, Vitess, CockroachDB, Elastic Stack, Elasticsearch, Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, TiDB, ClickHouse, InfluxDB, Prometheus (software), Grafana, Kubernetes, Docker (software), Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Corporation, IBM and Red Hat to present technical talks, hands-on tutorials, and operator-focused sessions. Speakers often include authors from projects such as Monty Widenius, Wesley Brown (engineer), Dimitri Fontaine, Brendan Gregg, Patrik Falström, Zackary Tong and contributors from organizations like Percona, MariaDB Corporation, MongoDB, Inc., Redis Labs, Confluent (company), DataStax, PingCAP, Yandex, Elastic NV and Timescale (company). The conference typically features panels, lightning talks, and workshops that reference benchmarks and tools developed by groups including TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council), sysbench, pgbench, HammerDB, and projects from Linux Foundation collaborations.

History and Evolution

Percona Live originated in the early 2010s as a gathering for practitioners associated with Percona and open source databases, evolving alongside industry shifts represented by events like Oracle OpenWorld, AWS re:Invent, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Postgres Open, MongoDB World, and Elastic{ON}. Early editions emphasized MySQL performance and replication topics; later programs expanded to include cloud-native architectures influenced by Kubernetes adoption and storage innovations from companies such as NetApp and Pure Storage. Key moments include sessions that paralleled releases from projects like MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 9.6, MongoDB 3.4, and major shifts around containerd and CRI-O, reflecting broader trends showcased at conferences such as Strata Data Conference and OpenStack Summit.

Conference Program and Tracks

Program tracks typically cover operational tooling, benchmarking, query optimization, replication, backup and recovery, observability, and cloud migration. Tracks often draw material related to Linux, BSD, ZFS, Ceph, GlusterFS, NFS (protocol), iSCSI, NVMe, and hardware vendors like Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and ARM Limited. Sessions reference orchestration and CI/CD integrations with Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions, Ansible, Terraform, and monitoring stacks built around Prometheus (software), Grafana, InfluxDB, and ELK Stack. Tutorials may feature hands-on labs using Vagrant, VirtualBox, QEMU, and cloud environments from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.

Keynotes and Speakers

Keynote speakers have included prominent engineers, project founders, and industry technologists from organizations such as Percona, Oracle Corporation, MariaDB Corporation, MongoDB, Inc., Red Hat, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Uber, LinkedIn, and Dropbox. Renowned figures from open source ecosystems—authors of core features, lead committers, and maintainers—deliver keynotes addressing scalability, resilience, and future directions of systems like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka (software), and ClickHouse. Panels often include representatives from standards and benchmarking groups like TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council) and academics from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Community and Sponsorship

Percona Live is supported by a mix of community organizations, commercial sponsors, and open source foundations. Sponsors range from cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure) to database vendors (Oracle Corporation, MongoDB, Inc., MariaDB Corporation, Redis Labs), hardware manufacturers (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA), and service firms (Red Hat, IBM, Datastax, Confluent (company)). Community partners have included Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and project user groups for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis. The conference emphasizes contributor meetups, Birds of a Feather sessions, and sponsor booths which host demos and hiring activities tied to companies such as Cisco Systems, VMware, HashiCorp, HashiCorp, and Puppet (software).

Locations and Attendance

Historically held in venues across North America and occasionally Europe, editions have taken place in cities with strong tech ecosystems comparable to hosts of SXSW, CES, and RSA Conference. Typical locations draw attendees from major technology centers including San Francisco, New York City, Austin, Texas, Seattle, Boston, London, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Attendance varies by year, with participant lists that include engineers from startups, enterprises, cloud providers, and academic researchers from institutions such as University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, ETH Zurich, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Impact and Notable Outcomes

Percona Live has influenced operational best practices, tool adoption, and community collaboration across database ecosystems. Notable outcomes include presentations that changed deployment strategies for projects like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis; published benchmarks that informed procurement decisions; and cross-project collaborations often cited alongside initiatives from Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the Linux Foundation. The conference has catalyzed contributions to open source projects, spawned meetups and user groups in cities worldwide, and influenced vendor roadmaps at firms such as Oracle Corporation, MongoDB, Inc., Confluent (company), and PingCAP.

Category:Technology conferences