Arc - High-Performance Time-Series Database for Industrial IoT

3 min read Original article ↗

11.8M records/sec ingestion | 12x faster than TimescaleDB | Portable Parquet storage

Built for Billion-Record
Industrial Workloads

Racing telemetry. Smart cities. Mining sensors. Medical devices.

When you have billions of sensor readings and milliseconds matter, Arc delivers.

Single binary. No dependencies. Production-ready in minutes.

Industrial IoT Generates Massive Data

100M+ sensor readings in a single race. 10B infrastructure events daily in a smart city.

Traditional time-series databases can't keep up. Arc can.

Real Industrial IoT Scale:

Race telemetry: 100M+ sensor readings in 3 hours

Smart city: 10B infrastructure sensor events daily

Mining operation: Billions of equipment telemetry points

Medical devices: Real-time patient monitoring at scale

Built for billion-record workloads.

Why Arc

DuckDB SQL. No Proprietary Query Language.

Not a custom DSL. Not a query language that changes every major version.

Not vendor lock-in through proprietary syntax.

Just DuckDB-powered SQL with window functions, CTEs, and joins.

If you know SQL, you know Arc. Powered by DuckDB.

Window Functions

Moving averages, ranking, and complex aggregations built-in

CTEs & Subqueries

Break down complex analysis into readable, composable parts

JOINs Across Sensors

Correlate temperature, pressure, vibration data across devices

Parquet files you actually own

Your data lives in standard Parquet files on S3, MinIO, or local disk.

Arc disappears tomorrow? You still own your data.

Query it with DuckDB, ClickHouse, Snowflake, or any tool that reads Parquet.

Zero proprietary formats. Zero lock-in.

This is what "portable data" actually means.

S3 / MinIO / Local

Store anywhere you want

Standard Parquet

Industry standard format

You Own It

No vendor lock-in, ever

Performance

11.8M records/sec sustained

High-throughput metrics ingestion via MessagePack columnar format.

No degradation. No memory leaks. Just stable performance.

11.8M

records/sec

sustained throughput

1.06ms

p50 latency

p99: 9.94ms

Hardware: M3 Max 14-core, 36GB RAM

See Arc in Action

Live demos running on Arc. Real data, real-time ingestion, sub-second queries.

Migration

Migrate from your existing time-series database

We help with migration at no cost.

Arc speaks InfluxDB Line Protocol natively.

Point Telegraf at Arc. Dual-write during migration. Cut over when ready.

No agent changes. No downtime. No data loss.

Multiple InfluxDB 1.x Enterprise customers already testing migration.

Already running TimescaleDB?

We'll help you migrate at no cost.

Keep your SQL queries. Arc uses standard DuckDB SQL with window functions, CTEs, and joins.

Own your data in Parquet. No vendor lock-in. Query with any tool. 10-50x faster queries after compaction.

Already running QuestDB?

We'll help you migrate at no cost.

Broader SQL support. Full window functions, CTEs, complex joins - features QuestDB doesn't support.

Better ecosystem integration. Native Grafana datasource, VSCode extension, Apache Superset dialect.

Features That Matter for IoT

Grafana Integration

Official Grafana datasource plugin. Build dashboards for sensor data, equipment telemetry, and facility monitoring.

Setup guide ->

VSCode Extension

Full-featured database manager. Query editor with autocomplete. Notebooks for analysis. CSV import.

Install from marketplace ->

Automatic Compaction

Small files merge into optimized 512MB Parquet files. 10-50x faster queries with zero configuration.

Retention Policies

Time-based lifecycle management. Keep 7 days of raw data, 90 days of rollups, 2 years of aggregates.

GDPR-Compliant Deletion

Precise record deletion with file rewrites. No tombstones. No query overhead.

Write-Ahead Log (WAL)

Optional durability for zero data loss. Disabled by default for maximum throughput.

Multi-Database Architecture

Organize by facility, device type, or environment. Isolated namespaces for multi-tenant deployments.

Apache Superset Integration

Native dialect for BI dashboards. Connect your existing visualization tools.

Learn more ->

Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing

Start free with open source. Scale with enterprise features when you need them.

Open Source

Freeforever

AGPL-3.0 licensed

  • 11.8M records/sec ingestion
  • Full SQL query engine (DuckDB)
  • Parquet storage (S3, GCS, local)
  • Docker and Kubernetes ready
  • Community support (Discord)

Enterprise Features

Clustering

Horizontal scaling with automatic data distribution. Query routing and load balancing across nodes.

Security

Fine-grained RBAC with database and table-level permissions. LDAP/SAML integration available.

Data Management

Automated retention policies, continuous queries for aggregation, and tiered storage for cost optimization.

Get Started

Arc Enterprise

For organizations requiring clustering, RBAC, and dedicated support.

Multi-node clustering and high availability

Role-based access control (RBAC) and SSO

Dedicated support and SLAs

Commercial licensing available

enterprise@basekick.net

Ready to handle billion-record workloads?

Deploy Arc in minutes. Own your data in Parquet.