[sgichohi]

To my understanding, Neon stores all its data in pageservers and s3 (where together they are used as a write-back page cache, with S3 as the bottom-most layer).

Timescale gives users a lot more control. S3 is used for storage of older data while newer data is stored on faster disks. The workload patterns for use cases like time-series, events, and analytics fit this well. The time dimension often gives a clear separation between what should be stored in hotter storage and what should be stored in cooler storage, based on time-oriented nature of data.

We also leverage a compressed columnar format that makes our data space and scan efficient for time series workloads. Neon stores a database page friendly format that best supports their workloads.

(Timescale engineer)

[nikita]

That's right. Our approach is "no knobs". We think the system can make better decision on what should be offloaded to S3 vs kept on the pageservers which leads to zero configuration to the users.