LSM trees from first principles to production systems: how storage engines work, with diagrams and sources.https://blog.renatocron.com/enhttps://blog.renatocron.com/why-cockroachdb-replaced-rocksdb-with-pebble/https://blog.renatocron.com/why-cockroachdb-replaced-rocksdb-with-pebble/Why CockroachDB replaced RocksDB with Pebble: tombstones that scans must step over, range deletes the compaction picker ignored, and the cgo toll on every call.Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTlsm treepebblecockroachdbtombstonesrocksdbhttps://blog.renatocron.com/rocksdb-the-sqlite-of-storage-engines/https://blog.renatocron.com/rocksdb-the-sqlite-of-storage-engines/Why RocksDB exists, why writes stall, how to compute its 33x write amplification, what its knobs cost, and how Ribbon filters get close to the theoretical minimum.Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTrocksdblsm treecompactionwrite stallsbloom filterhttps://blog.renatocron.com/s3-object-storage-for-databases/https://blog.renatocron.com/s3-object-storage-for-databases/Why S3 is not a filesystem: ranged reads but no partial writes, what s3fs, Goofys and JuiceFS paid to hide that, and how LSM trees on object storage use it.Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTlsm trees3object storageslatedbturbopufferhttps://blog.renatocron.com/rum-conjecture-why-so-many-database-engines/https://blog.renatocron.com/rum-conjecture-why-so-many-database-engines/Why LevelDB, RocksDB, Pebble, Cassandra, ScyllaDB and TigerBeetle all share one LSM tree design yet differ: the RUM Conjecture, leveled vs tiered compaction, Bloom filters.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTlsm treerum conjecturecompactionbloom filterstorage engineshttps://blog.renatocron.com/what-is-an-lsm-tree/https://blog.renatocron.com/what-is-an-lsm-tree/How LSM trees turn random writes into sequential ones: MemTable, WAL, sorted runs, the read path, compaction, and the write, read and space amplification triangle.Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTlsm treerocksdbcompactionstorage engineshttps://blog.renatocron.com/inside-your-database/https://blog.renatocron.com/inside-your-database/From punch cards to the B-tree to LSM engines: how databases store data on disk, why B-trees became the default, and what the other family does differently.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTlsm treeb-treestorage enginesdatabase history