Company and Use Case Fairwinds, a Boston-based company, helps enterprises streamline the management of their Kubernetes clusters. Their platform provides insights into cost, security, and policy management for companies managing multiple applications. With Kubernetes' complexity, Fairwinds simplifies cluster management, allowing platform teams to enforce consistency and avoid security risks and cost overruns.

Performance Problems to Solve Fairwinds faced challenges with handling time-series data related to tracking Kubernetes cost and performance. Their initial setup using PostgreSQL struggled to scale past two weeks of data, leading to customer frustration over limited data visibility and inability to manage costs effectively across clusters.

Performance Gains Unlocked By integrating TimescaleDB, Fairwinds expanded their data retention from two weeks to over 13 months. TimescaleDB’s ability to aggregate data over time improved query performance, enabling Fairwinds to offer real-time cost analysis and efficient reporting to their customers. This flexibility allowed for quick iterations of new features based on customer feedback, without sacrificing performance.