SurrealDB is built for modern applications that need real-time data and flexible querying. It merges the best of SQL, documents, and graphs into one engine, and supports live subscriptions for connected apps. But those strengths come at a cost: they generate heavy storage activity. WAL commits, replication, and backups can overwhelm traditional disks, making “real-time” apps feel delayed.
With NVMe-over-TCP, zone-resilient volumes, and live scalability, simplyblock provides the high-performance storage foundation SurrealDB needs to stay fast, consistent, and production-ready.
SurrealDB’s Real-Time Features Push Storage to the Limit
SurrealDB live queries and subscriptions depend on low-latency storage. Transaction logs and checkpoints must commit quickly to keep updates streaming in real time. On standard cloud storage, these operations lag, slowing replication and delaying live updates.
Simplyblock ensures WAL and transaction logs are written at NVMe speed, keeping SurrealDB real-time under any workload.
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Step 1: Deploy SurrealDB on Simplyblock Volumes
Provision simplyblock volumes for SurrealDB data and logs. Mount them directly for immediate NVMe-level performance in all read/write operations.
sbctl pool create –name surreal-pool
sbctl volume create –pool surreal-pool –size 200Gi –name surreal-data
mkfs.ext4 /dev/simplyblock/surreal-data
mount /dev/simplyblock/surreal-data /var/lib/surrealdb
By placing database and WAL files on simplyblock, SurrealDB avoids common disk bottlenecks and stays consistent under load. For more on deploying SurrealDB with high-performance storage, check out the SurrealDB Deployment guide.
Step 2: Keep Live Queries Responsive
SurrealDB’s live queries power real-time apps, but only if updates stream without delay. Slow storage creates replication lag, leaving clients waiting for updates. Simplyblock ensures WAL and transaction logs write at NVMe speed, so subscriptions and live queries stay accurate and responsive — even as workloads scale.
Step 3: Balance Backups with Real-Time Workloads
SurrealDB backups can generate heavy I/O that competes with active queries. On ordinary volumes, this leads to lag and unpredictable app performance.
Simplyblock keeps throughput high enough for both workloads to coexist. That stability is especially important when SurrealDB runs in KubeVirt-based Kubernetes environments, where virtualized clusters need consistent storage during backup and recovery tasks.
Step 4: Scale Storage for Hybrid Data Models
SurrealDB handles hybrid workloads — relational, document, and graph data in one system. That flexibility often leads to unpredictable growth. Static volumes can’t keep up, forcing downtime for migrations.
With simplyblock, you can resize volumes live. SurrealDB keeps serving traffic while storage expands in the background.
sbctl volume resize –name surreal-data –size 500Gi
resize2fs /dev/simplyblock/surreal-data
This approach aligns with software-defined storage, where resources adapt dynamically to application demands without rigid hardware constraints. To learn more about how SurrealDB manages these hybrid models, check out the SurrealDB Models guide.
Step 5: Ensure SurrealDB Resilience Beyond the Cloud
SurrealDB isn’t just for centralized cloud deployments. It’s increasingly used in IoT and edge computing, where live queries and real-time analytics happen outside traditional data centers. In these environments, storage must be both performant and reliable under constraints.
Simplyblock supports edge and air-gapped storage, giving SurrealDB the durability and low latency it needs, even when running closer to devices or in disconnected setups.
SurrealDB and Simplyblock – Real-Time Without Limits
SurrealDB is designed for real-time, multi-model applications, but its strengths create intense demands on storage. Without fast, scalable, and resilient volumes, performance lags and reliability suffers.
Simplyblock provides NVMe-over-TCP throughput, zone-independent durability, and seamless scalability — making SurrealDB fast, consistent, and production-ready. For IoT platforms, analytics engines, and collaborative applications, pairing SurrealDB with simplyblock delivers real-time reliability without compromise.
Questions and Answers
SurrealDB runs faster and more consistently when paired with simplyblock. By using NVMe over TCP storage, simplyblock eliminates latency bottlenecks and provides predictable IOPS, ensuring SurrealDB scales smoothly for real-time applications.
SurrealDB handles graph, relational, and document queries, requiring high-speed access. Without strong storage, latency increases and consistency drops. Simplyblock’s software-defined storage ensures stable query performance, enabling SurrealDB to deliver reliable results across complex workloads.
Simplyblock improves SurrealDB consistency by offering replication, instant snapshots, and optimized throughput. With database performance optimization, SurrealDB maintains ACID guarantees even under heavy I/O demand, ensuring stable operations without data loss or inconsistent queries.
Yes. Simplyblock integrates with Kubernetes-native storage, enabling SurrealDB clusters to scale effortlessly. Dynamic provisioning, replication, and low-latency volumes ensure SurrealDB runs efficiently, providing developers with reliable performance across distributed and containerized environments without bottlenecks.
Cloud-native disks often throttle and introduce unpredictable latency. Simplyblock’s cloud cost optimization offers NVMe-level performance with consistency. For SurrealDB, this ensures faster queries, reliable throughput, and reduced downtime risks at significantly lower operational costs.