Database Reference
In-Depth Information
found it to be stable, so we moved forward with it. We have around 3TB of raw
storage managed by ZFS today and have not had any issues with the software.
When our storage starts to get busy, we can look at using one SSD per server for
more caching and to store the write journal using ZFS's built-in features.
Putting all this together has allowed Ooyala to create a worldwide network for
video and the analytics to help our customers power and make decisions concern-
ing their content. Companies like Telstra, ESPN, Miramax, and Bloomberg use
our Cassandra-powered system to aid in their planning, creation, and distribution
of video. For more information, visit
www.ooyala.com
.
Hailo
Dominic Wong
Hailo is the world's biggest taxi app, connecting passengers and drivers in cities
around the world. However, to call it just a taxi app would vastly underplay what
the platform does. While the main passenger-facing app is fairly simple (and delib-
erately so), the underlying services that power the platform are much more com-
plex. In addition to the allocation engine that matches passengers to drivers, we
have systems that handle payments, traffic alerts, communications, data analysis,
and more. With so many moving parts, it's vital that we have a powerful and flex-
ible platform based on technologies that can grow and adapt as we do.
When the company started in 2011, it was just a handful of developers working
as hard and as fast as they could to produce a game-changing system. The data
store of choice was MySQL, which has the main benefits of being free to run and
familiar to use for most developers; relational databases have been around for over
40 years and are a core part of most university computer science courses. Fast-
forward to August 2013; we're in 12 cities across the globe and we've moved to
using Cassandra almost exclusively. So why the shift from the familiar and warm
embrace of MySQL to the relative unknown of Cassandra?
Taking the Leap
We launched in our first city, London, in November 2011 and quickly established
ourselves as the number-one e-hail app in the city. We knew that we would need to
expand quickly and effectively to capture key markets but stay within the financial
and people constraints of a start-up. This meant that everything we did needed to
be based on the principles of being distributed, resilient, and operationally simple.
Sticking to these guiding principles would help us to scale effectively.
