Building Planetary-Scale Data Systems with Venice • Felix GV & Olimpiu Pop • GOTO 2026

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted https://gotopia.tech Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/articles/421 Félix GV - Current Interests: Multi-Planetary Databases, Data Sovereignty & Lifelogging @felixgv @VeniceDB Olimpiu Pop - Technologist & Tech Journalist RESOURCES Félix https://bsky.app/profile/felixgv.ninja https://github.com/FelixGV https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixgv Olimpiu https://x.com/olimpiupop https://github.com/zroll https://www.linkedin.com/in/olimpiupop Links https://venicedb.org https://github.com/linkedin/venice https://rocksdb.org https://duckdb.org https://youtu.be/bzVjBu5nhyM https://youtu.be/6IcCTLggNwU https://youtu.be/Dq7TLlnhSyc https://youtu.be/5rOjtdh7kmU https://youtu.be/4E3xfR6IBII https://youtu.be/b3UA4vGVnTw https://youtu.be/_ugRNuE9xmA https://youtu.be/-wCzn9gKoUk https://youtu.be/_ZvwRJnSsQ4 https://youtu.be/IzbYUjPAm5A https://youtu.be/9Rdwh0rNaf0 https://youtu.be/Gd-mhbiy8Vo https://youtu.be/DeEkA9cunB4 https://youtu.be/lWPLgm52ICs DESCRIPTION Félix GV, a former engineer at LinkedIn and architect of the Venice database system, discusses the complexity of building planetary-scale data systems. He explains Venice's unbundled architecture where each component—from Kafka-based pub/sub to RocksDB-powered servers—operates as an independent distributed system. Félix details their rigorous chaos engineering practices, including regular load tests that push data centers beyond normal capacity to ensure reliability. The discussion covers fundamental distributed systems concepts like the CAP theorem and the trade-offs between consistency and availability in multi-region deployments. He also explains why Venice, as a derived data system, deliberately sacrifices strong consistency for high throughput and availability, and concludes by discussing their experimental integration of DuckDB for SQL-based analytics and data exploration capabilities. TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 00:55 The architecture of Venice: An unbundled database 06:09 Multi-region reliability & chaos engineering 09:54 Data flow: Writing & reading in Venice 15:15 Understanding the CAP Theorem 22:34 Integrating DuckDB: Adding SQL capabilities 27:31 Outro RECOMMENDED BOOKS Kasun Indrasiri & Danesh Kuruppu • gRPC: Up and Running • https://amzn.to/3sBGBJJ Tomer Shiran, Jason Hughes & Alex Merced • Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide • https://amzn.to/488Z30k William Smith • Arrow Flight Protocols and Practices • https://amzn.to/4o2Q2fd Adi Polak • Scaling Machine Learning with Spark • https://amzn.to/3N9vx1H Mark Needham, Michael Hunger & Michael Simons • DuckDB in Action • https://amzn.to/45QwSli Simon Aubury & Ned Letcher • Getting Started with DuckDB • https://amzn.to/3VPk4q https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #VeniceDB #RocksDB #DuckDB #ApacheKafka #ApacheHelix #ApachePinot #ApacheIceberg #Zookeeper #OpenSource #DatabaseDevelopment #CAPTheorem #DistributedSystems #DistributedData #DataProcessing #Programming #TodayInTech #FelixGV #OlimpiuPop CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1