Free Tier Architecture Efficiency

5 posts · Mar 2023 – Jul 2023

What this trail covers

Pinecone has introduced a new, more efficient architecture for its free tier, running in a new free region called `gcp-starter`. This change enables instant sign-ups, allows new users to keep their free indexes indefinitely, and significantly reduces index provisioning time to seconds. This new architecture also simplifies index creation for new users by removing features like namespaces, collections, and delete by metadata from free indexes. The `gcp-starter` region replaces `us-west1-gcp-free`.

All Pinecone trails

Jul 2023Start now, then take your time: Removing the Pinecone waitlist and inactivity policyThis post announces the removal of the waitlist and inactivity policy for new free plan users, enabled by a new, more efficient Pinecone architecture running in the `gcp-starter` region. Index provisioning time is reduced to seconds, and features like namespaces, collections, and delete by metadata are removed from free indexes to simplify creation and improve efficiency. The `gcp-starter` region replaces `us-west1-gcp-free` as the default for new free users.
Apr 2023Opening up our free planThe free plan's capacity has been adjusted to approximately 100k 1536-dimensional embeddings with metadata, reflecting the usage patterns of the vast majority of free users. Free indexes can now be retained after upgrading to a paid plan, serving as a sandbox. The pod type selection has been removed for free plan indexes, simplifying the getting started experience. The waitlist admission has been accelerated due to recouped cloud capacity. Inactive free indexes will be archived after 7 days of inactivity (1 day for ephemeral indexes), with archived indexes saved as collections.
Apr 2023Supporting our growing number of free usersThe post describes architectural changes to the free tier to support a rapidly growing number of daily signups. These changes include expanding cloud capacity, implementing a waitlist, archiving inactive indexes after 7 days (or 1 day for ephemeral indexes), and reviewing the free plan's architecture for long-term scalability. The new architecture runs in a `gcp-starter` region, enables instant sign-ups, allows free indexes to persist indefinitely, and reduces provisioning time to seconds. Features like namespaces, collections, and delete by metadata are removed from free indexes.
Mar 2023March 1st Partial Database OutageThis post details a partial database outage that affected a portion of indexes on the Starter (free) plan due to a bug in an inactivity script. 515 indexes were inadvertently deleted and then fully restored two days later. No indexes on paid plans were affected. The root cause was a bug in a SQL query and an incorrect deployment process for the script. Actions taken include enhanced approval processes for data modification, auditing of access and permissions, enabling bucket versioning, and prioritizing the development of a new free plan architecture, more educational materials, integration tests for cron jobs, mirroring staging environments to production, enabling soft deletes, and designing a data export feature.
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