Latency, Throughput and Fault Tolerance: Building a Modern Database

This 16-minute conference talk by Guy Shtub, Head of Training at ScyllaDB, delivered at DevOpsDays Tel Aviv, explores the key concepts and design decisions behind modern, scalable databases. Dive into the architecture of ScyllaDB, a database inspired by Apache Cassandra but written in C++ instead of Java, allowing for finer control over hardware and operating system resources. Learn how its shard-per-core architecture enables 10x performance compared to other databases, with sub-millisecond 99 percentile latency at throughputs of millions of operations per second. Discover core concepts in distributed, close-to-the-hardware database design including autotuning, scalability, elasticity, and high availability. The talk also addresses data modeling concepts and examines the hidden costs of seemingly budget-friendly technology choices, discussing when cheaper solutions make sense based on scale and budget considerations.