What is tarantool?

Tarantool is a database and application server built to keep data in RAM for fast access, while still saving it to disk so nothing gets lost if the server restarts. The idea is that keeping data in memory makes reads and writes much faster than traditional databases that rely primarily on disk storage. It runs on Linux, Mac, and FreeBSD. On the database side, Tarantool supports standard SQL queries, multiple ways to index and look up data, and replication across multiple servers so data stays available even if one machine goes down. It stores data using a compact binary format called MessagePack, which is more efficient than plain text formats. You can choose between a fully in-memory engine for maximum speed or a disk-based engine suited to larger datasets that do not fit in RAM. On the application server side, Tarantool runs Lua scripts directly inside the same process as the database. Lua is a lightweight scripting language, and Tarantool includes a fast compiler for it. This means your application logic and your data live in the same place, avoiding the back-and-forth network trips that happen when an app talks to a separate database server. The server handles many tasks at once without blocking, using a cooperative multitasking model. Built-in features include persistent queues for background job processing, sharding to split large datasets across multiple nodes, and a framework for managing clusters of Tarantool instances. It can also connect to external databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL if you need data from those systems. Tarantool is described as a good fit for web architecture components that need speed: caches, message queues, and stateful applications where response time matters. Connectors exist for many programming languages, so you are not limited to writing Lua to use it.