Fauna, the company behind the NoSQL database FaunaDB, has announced that it will shut down its service by May 30, citing a lack of capital to support the database and market it. This sudden move will affect over 195 databases and more than 3,000 development teams across various enterprises, giving them just two months to switch to alternative databases.

In a blog post, the company stated that it has made the "hard decision" to sunset the Fauna service over the next several months, with the official shutdown date set for May 30 at noon Pacific time. After this date, all Fauna accounts and associated data will be permanently deleted, making it essential for customers to migrate their applications and data out of Fauna by then.

To ease the transition, Fauna has committed to providing support to its enterprise customers, including building new tooling and offering guidance on migration approaches through a dedicated migration guide. However, this additional support is only available to customers on the Startup, Pro, and Enterprise plans. Those on the free and pay-as-you-go plans will have to rely on the company's community forum for help.

The news has sparked criticism from users on X, a platform where developers and users share their experiences and opinions. One user, @ImSh4yy, cautioned that users should "think twice" before relying on an unprofitable startup for critical infrastructure, highlighting the risks of vendor lock-in. Another user, @TweetsOfSumit, shared his experience of initially building his application Parqet on FaunaDB but eventually switching to MongoDB due to development difficulties and bugs in the database.

In addition to the shutdown, Fauna has announced that it will no longer accept new customers. However, the company has committed to releasing an open-source version of its core database technology, alongside its existing open-source drivers and command line interface (CLI) tooling, in the near future. This move is expected to enable the FaunaDB community to continue accessing the database's core features, such as its document-relational data model and database language (FQL).

The release of the open-source version is seen as a positive step, as it will provide ongoing value to the wider developer community. However, the sudden shutdown of FaunaDB raises concerns about the risks associated with relying on startup-based infrastructure and the importance of having a robust migration strategy in place.

As the deadline for migration approaches, affected customers will be closely watching Fauna's support efforts and the development of the open-source version. The shutdown of FaunaDB serves as a reminder of the importance of due diligence and contingency planning when selecting critical infrastructure components.