DropBox Removed their SSDs, got 20% faster writes

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The Backend Engineering Show with Hussein Nasser not yet transcribed

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Recorded24 Jan 2023

Publisheranchor.fm ↗

Handlerec:9885807

Show notes

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

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