Vitess is an open source database clustering system for horizontally scaling MySQL and MariaDB. It uses a control plane including a proxy server (vtgate), orchestration tools like XtraBackup and Orchestrator (vtorc), and supports features like sharding, replication, and online DDL using tools like gh-ost and pt-online-schema change. The presentation demonstrated how Vitess routes queries to shards in a transparent way using its topology configuration and control servers.