DropBox Removed their SSDs, got 20% faster writes

The Backend Engineering Show with Hussein Nasser

Content provided by Hussein Nasser. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Hussein Nasser or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

1+ y ago 31:18

MP3•Episode home

https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/increasing-magic-pocket-write-throughput-by-removing-our-ssd-cache-disks

In this episode of the backend engineering show I’ll discuss how Dropbox improved their write through put by 20% by removing all their SSDs (yes I was surprised too). DropBox uses an SSD layer as a write-back cache with SMR drives as their backend persistent storage. They changed their model to write directly to the hard drives.

0:00 Intro

2:00 Article Summary

3:00 SMR Drives

6:00 SSD Cache & WriteBack

8:00 Replacing Cache

9:30 Storage Engine Background

14:30 Why did they do it

15:00 The limitation of SSDs & Zoned Namespaces

19:30 Updating the Storage Engine

22:30 Tradeoffs

26:00 Rollout

28:00 Summary

522 episodes

#Hussein Nasser #Engineering #Business #Industries #Open Source #Programming #Tech #Software Development