How to ship a database every day
Summary
A detailed engineering post describing turbopuffer's control-plane architecture for deploying and upgrading database clusters across multiple deployment models (public SaaS, single-tenant, and BYOC). It explains a local, durable state machine using a Kubernetes CRD (TurbopufferOperation), a centralized API backed by MySQL, and a fleet rollout mechanism that emphasizes reliability, idempotence, and operator ergonomics. The piece also discusses why they avoid heavy reliance on Terraform/GitOps for day-to-day operations and how observability and developer UX are integrated.