Percona & Chainguard launch supported database images

Percona has partnered with Chainguard to provide supported container images for its open source database software. The agreement covers Percona's database portfolio and Chainguard-built images.

The partnership targets companies using open source databases in platform engineering and CI/CD pipelines that want supported container images without having to build and maintain them in-house.

Under the arrangement, Percona will support Chainguard builds for software based on MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, as well as community versions of PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Valkey and Redis. Chainguard will build and maintain the images, while Percona will support customers running them.

The move addresses a growing burden for enterprise teams using containerised database software. Security requirements have tightened, compliance demands have grown, and infrastructure has become more varied, leaving many teams to adapt and patch generic images for their own environments.

As a result, database container images have become a maintenance issue for internal engineering teams, especially in businesses running a mix of Linux distributions, hardened systems and internal platforms. In those environments, standard images often need additional work before they are ready for production.

Chainguard said its images are designed to be traceable and maintained with a focus on low Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures counts. Its approach also includes verifiable provenance, FIPS readiness and defined CVE service-level agreements.

Percona's role is to extend its support services to customers using those images. Organisations adopting them will be able to turn to Percona for operational issues involving the database software.

Security burden

The announcement reflects a broader issue in the open source software market: the challenge is often less about finding flaws than keeping up with the steady flow of fixes and dependency updates across large software stacks. Databases are a particular concern because they sit at the centre of business systems and often carry strict uptime and compliance requirements.

Percona said the partnership is intended to reduce the amount of image rebuilding and patching customers need to do themselves. For companies that have built internal workflows around containers, this could shift some security and maintenance work away from in-house teams.

"Secure, compliant, and reliable data infrastructure is mission-critical in the modern enterprise," said Peter Farkas, Chief Executive Officer, Percona. "And with new regulations and more complex architectures becoming increasingly commonplace, many organisations are struggling to keep up. By partnering with Chainguard, Percona is helping to ease that burden. With secure-by-default container images of all of our open source database software, our customers can spend less time worrying about patching CVEs and more time innovating."

Chainguard described the partnership as a way to bridge the gap between open source adoption and production security requirements. The company has built its business around supplying hardened container images and software artefacts to organisations seeking tighter control over software supply chains.

"Organisations shouldn't have to choose between the flexibility of open source and the security required for production," said Brad Bock, Director of Product Management, Chainguard. "By partnering with Percona, we're combining Chainguard's secure-by-default, continuously maintained container images with world-class database expertise and support. Together, we're giving teams a simpler, more reliable way to run open source databases in production without carrying the burden of patching and securing them on their own."

Early partners

Percona said it is among the first organisations to partner with Chainguard and the only one in that group focused exclusively on open source software. Other early partners named include Azul, Chainloop, Elastic, Expanso, F5, GitLab, Mattermost, Nirmata, SmallStep and Tiger Data.

The deal also highlights continued demand for supported open source infrastructure as companies try to reduce exposure to software supply chain risks without bearing the full cost of maintaining every component themselves.

Percona's portfolio centres on open source database software, support and services, making the Chainguard partnership a practical extension of its support business into pre-built container images used in production.

The software covered includes Percona's own database distributions as well as community database projects widely used across enterprise applications and cloud-native systems.