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Sammy Steele, Senior Staff Engineer at Figma, shares insights on scaling databases, including challenges faced in infrastructure growth, horizontally sharding databases to minimize developer impact, navigating scalability challenges, implementing transactions in a sharded system, and managing large tables to avoid database failures.
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Quick takeaways
- Transitioning from petabyte scale to infinite headroom at Figma required tackling fundamental scalability issues.
- Tactical approach included classifying transactions by risk level, shadow frameworks, and gradual sharding transition.
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Challenges in Scaling and Sharding Databases
Scaling databases to accommodate exponential growth poses challenges in maintaining reliability, consistency, and scalability. Sammy Steele discusses the daunting task of transitioning from a petabyte scale setup to one with infinite headroom at Figma. The team grappled with managing the business's exponential growth while investing time in solving fundamental scalability issues. They navigated the complexities of cross-shard transactions, prioritizing tasks based on risk levels, and strategizing to ensure minimal developer impact while addressing critical database challenges.
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