How Airbnb managed to handle global payments, search & discovery, messaging & communication, trust & safety, user experience, and growth strategies.

1. Technology Stack Behind Airbnb
By Rohan Khude
https://in.linkedin.com/in/rohankhude
http://stackoverflow.com/users/4635388/rohan-khude

2. Contents

Application and Data

Utilities

Devops

Business Tools

What and Why – help you drive to deeper level of observation

3. Contents

Application and Data

Utilities

Devops

Business Tools

What and Why – help you drive to deeper level of observation

4. Technology – what?

What(Summary)

Why Airbnb is using this technology

5. Application and Data

6. Nginx – Web Server

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a
mail proxy server

nginx accelerates content and application delivery, improves
security, facilitates availability and scalability for the busiest web
sites on the Internet.

Half of the Internet's largest websites rely on NGINX, including
Airbnb, Box, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Zappos,
and more.

7. 
Ruby on Rails – Ruby language on Rails
Framework

It is well known for its quick iteration cycle(Plan-Run-
Review-Change)

Speed up development

Simplify prototyping

8. Redis – In Memory Database

in-memory data structure store, used as
database, cache

In short a datastore like MySQL

Airbnb - Redis maintained a cache of ticket trend
results from elastic search for Node.js app to
render on the web

9. Amazon S3,EBS – Cloud Storage

Airbnb migrated all of its cloud computing functions to
AWS.

Backup for house backups and static files, including 10
terabytes of user pictures.

10. 
Amazon EC2 – Cloud Hosting

Airbnb is using Elastic Load Balancing, which
automatically distributes incoming traffic
between multiple Amazon EC2 instances.

11. Amazon EMR

To easily process and analyze 50 Gigabytes of
data daily, Airbnb uses Amazon Elastic
MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

12. 
Amazon RDS – Cloud Database

Airbnb moved its main MySQL database to Amazon
Relational Database Service.

Airbnb chose Amazon RDS because it simplifies much of the
time-consuming administrative tasks typically associated
with databases

13. Amazon ElastiCache

ElastiCache improves the performance of web
applications by allowing you to retrieve information
fastly

Used to speeding dynamic web application by
alleviating database load

14. SaSS – Syntactically Awsome Style Sheet

Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested
rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and
more.

15. React – Javascript UI Libraries

A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript
library for building user interfaces.

16. Airflow – Workflow Manager

Airbnb, its own data workflow management
framework

Airflow is being used internally at Airbnb to
build, monitor and adjust data pipelines.

Data pipelines use to automate the movement
and transformation of data.

17. Hadoop - BigDatabase

Open-Source Framework that allows to store and process
big data a distributed environment across clusters of
computers using simple programming models.


It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands
of machines, each offering local computation and storage.

18. Presto, Druid – Big Data Tools

SQL query tool for hadoop.

Druid is an open-source analytics data store
designed for business intelligence (OLAP)
queries on event data.

Druid provides low latency (real-time) data.

19. Airpal – Big Data Tools
Developed by Airbnb
A web-based query execution tool that leverages Presto to facilitate
data analysis.
For example, you can highlight syntax, export results to CSV for
download, view query history, save queries, use a Table Finder to
search for appropriate tables, and use Table Explorer to visualize the
schema of a table.

20. Utilities

21. Amazon CloudFront - CDN
A content delivery network (CDN) is a system that deliver webpages
and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations
of the user.
Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN)
service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video
content or other web assets.

22. Sendgrid – Transactional Email

Delivering your transactional and marketing email through
one reliable platform.

23. MixPanel – Funnel Analysis Analytics
•
It tracks user interactions with web and mobile
applications
•
Funnel analysis helps you identify where people drop off so
you can increase your conversion rates
•
The funnel analyses "are an effective way to calculate
conversion rates on specific user behaviors'

26. Amazon Route 53 – DNS Management

DNS data is typically deployed on multiple physical servers.

The main purposes of DNS management software are: to reduce
human error when editing complex and repetitive DNS data.

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain
Name System (DNS) web service.

27. BrainTree – Payment Services

Subsidiary of Paypal

28. Twilio – Voice and SMS
•
Twilio offers developers a API for phone services to make and
receive phone calls, and send and receive text.
•
Airbnb uses Twilio to build Voice Connect click to call, bridging
the communication gap between guests and would be hosts.

29. Nexmo – Voice and SMS

API for SMS, Voice and Phone Verification.

30. Urban Airship - Mobile Push Messaging
Improve customer engagement with push notifications, location-
based marketing and analytics.

31. Urban Airship - Mobile Push Messaging
Improve customer engagement with push notifications, location-
based marketing and analytics.

32. 
The push notifications services enables international users to receive
notifications regardless of their location or carrier.

Users then receive push notifications for both new messages received on
the platform as well as new reservations, delivered directly to their mobile
device

33. Visual Website Optimizer - A/B Testing Analytics
• VWO is the easiest A/B, Split and Multivariate testing tool.
• To optimizing your website for increased conversion rate and
sales.
• A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two
versions of a web page to see which one performs better.
• You compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let's
call them A and B) to similar visitors at the same time. The one
that gives a better conversion rate, wins!

34. Aerosolve - A machine learning package built for humans.
Created by airbnb
Airbnb's Price Tips feature helps users figure out what to charge
by using machine learning.
n this dynamic pricing feature, we show hosts the probability of
getting a booking (green for a higher chance, red for a lower
chance), or predicted demand, and allow them to easily price their
listings dynamically with a click of a button.

35. Fig. Learning to rank images. On the left,
image ordering trained from professional
photographer ratings. On the right, image
ordering trained from organic books,
clicks and impressions
Aerosolve - Image Analysis Algorithms

36. Aerosolve - A machine learning package built for humans.
Seasonal demand
for Austin

37. DeepLinkDispatch - Deep Linking as a Service
A simple, annotation-based library for making deep link handling
better on Android, by Airbnb
Mobile deep links let users share content that's within an app. If
you want to send a friend a pair of shoes from the Cole Haan
app, you can send them to those shoes inside the app using a
deep link. Without a deep link they have to find the Cole Haan
app, open the app to the homepage, then find the shoes (and
hope they found the right ones).
With deep linking, links to content within mobile apps can be
created and shared just like the web. Developers can build better
experiences, and users can easily discover interesting content.

38. DeepLinkDispatch - Deep Linking as a Service
A simple, annotation-based library for making deep link handling
better on Android, by Airbnb
Mobile deep links let users share content that's within an app. If
you want to send a friend a pair of shoes from the Cole Haan
app, you can send them to those shoes inside the app using a
deep link. Without a deep link they have to find the Cole Haan
app, open the app to the homepage, then find the shoes (and
hope they found the right ones).
With deep linking, links to content within mobile apps can be
created and shared just like the web. Developers can build better
experiences, and users can easily discover interesting content.

39. DeepLinkDispatch - Deep Linking as a Service

40. New Relic – Performance Monitor
SaaS Application Performance Management for Ruby, PHP, .Net,
Java, Python, and Node.js Apps.
A tool for building and distributing development environments

41. Vagrant – Virtual Machine Management

A tool for building and distributing development environments


Vagrant allows you to create portable work environments which
can be easily reproduced on any system.


It's useful for developers and system administrators who want to
mimic a server's configuration on their local machine.


It's useful for teams who want to quickly get designers and
project managers up and running with a local installation.

42. Enzyme – Javascript Testing Framework

Javascript Testing utilities for React, by Airbnb

43. SmartStack – Service Discovery
•
SmartStack is an automated service discovery and registration
framework.
•
It makes the lives of engineers easier by transparently handling
creation, deletion, failure, and maintenance work of the
machines running code within your organization

44. Scout – Performance Monitoring

Scout is a simple hosted server monitoring service.

Rather than installing and configuring monitoring scripts on
servers

Scout features a point-and-click plugin setup

Scout currently monitors the servers of AirBnB and The New
York Times.

45. Sentry - Exception Monitoring

Real-time crash reporting for your web apps, mobile apps, and
games.

Sentry notifies you when your users experience errors in your
web and mobile apps.

48. Chef - Server Configuration and Automation
•
Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure
with no downtime or interruptions.
•
Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to
another.
•
Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including
Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace,
OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute
Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

49. Chef - Server Configuration and Automation

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with
no downtime or interruptions.

Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to
another.

Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including
Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace,
OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute
Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

50. Mocha - Javascript Testing Framework
Simple, flexible, fun javascript test framework for node.js & the
browser.
Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate
reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test
cases.

51. Datadog - Performance Monitoring

Datadog is the service for cloud-scale monitoring

Shows Performance monitoring about app, tools and services in
one place

Used by thousands of companies

52. Logstash - Log Management

Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs.

You can use it to collect logs, parse them, and store them for
later use.

53. kibana - Monitoring Tools
Kibana is an open source, browser based analytics and search
dashboard for Elasticsearch.
Airbnb - Collect logs with logstash and visualize them with kibana.

55. Google Apps - Productivity Suite

Web based email, calendar, storage, file sharing and video
conferencing that let you work from anywhere.

Business emails can me migrated to google app to get above
features

56. Slack - Group Chat & Notifications
Slack brings all your communication together in one place

57. Asana - Project Management
Asana is the easiest way for teams to track their work.
From tasks and projects to conversations and dashboards, Asana
enables teams to move work from start to finish--and get results.

58. Campaign Monitor- Email Marketing
Campaign Monitor makes it easy to attract new subscribers, send
them beautiful email newsletters.

59. InVision- Interactive Mockups

InVision is a web-based prototyping tool created for designers,
by designers.


It allows you to quickly and easily create interactive mockups for
your designs.


Transform your Web & Mobile (iOS, Android) designs into
clickable, interactive Prototypes and Mockups.

60. Assemblage- Visual Collaboration
•
For more efficient projects, teams and meetings.
•
Collaborate directly in your browser.
•
Supports 20+ filetypes.
•
Draw, annotate and edit with partners, co-workers or friends.
•
All changes happen real-time on all screens.

61. Caravel- Business Intelligence
•
Data exploration and visualization platform, by Airbnb
•
Caravel's main goal is to make it easy to slice, dice and
visualize data.
•
Allows you to create and share beautiful charts and dashboards

62. 2009
Engineer Count: 3-4
Core - Rails 2.x app
Backend - MySQL Database
Frontend - Vanilla CSS ( no preprocessors), Prototype.js
2012
Engineer Count: 30+
Core - Rails 3.x, Java (backend services)
Backend - Redis, HDFS (for data warehousing), Postgres (geospacial data), Dynamo DB
Frontend - SASS (CSS pre-processing) O2 (bootstrap with AirBnB styles) (style kit) Query (instead of
Prototype), Backbone & Handlebars (single page, rich client apps)
2015
Core - Rails 3.x, Java, Node.JS
Backend - MySQL, Redis, HDFS, Postgres DynamoDB, Kafka, RabbitMQ
Frotend - SASS (CSS pre-processing), O2 ( AirBnB bootstrap-based style kit) jQuery, Backbone.js,
Handlebars.js, React.js, CommonJS (for modules), ES6 (ES2015), Flux
Airbnb Era

63. References
www.zdnet.com/article/telstra-invests-in-nginx-web-server/
http://stackshare.io/
https://www.quora.com/What-backend-language-does-AirBNB-use
https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-manages-to-monitor-
customer-issues-at-scale-b883301ca461#.26u8nf9w3
http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/airbnb/
https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/bigdata/post/Tx1BF2DN6KRFI27/Analyze-
Data-with-Presto-and-Airpal-on-Amazon-EMR
Www.Slideshare.net/airbnb
http://techstacks.io/airbnb
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-technology-stack-of-Airbnb
https://gigaom.com/2013/07/29/airbnb-is-engineering-itself-into-a-data-driven-
company/
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Airbnb-use-Braintree-instead-of-PayPal
http://nerds.airbnb.com/aerosolve/
https://branch.io/what-is-deep-linking/
http://nerds.airbnb.com/smartstack-service-discovery-cloud/
http://www.yandss.com/yanfilofyev/2013/08/airbnb-technology-stack/
http://www.programmableweb.com/api/scout-app

64. References(cont.)
www.invisionapp.com
https://github.com/airbnb/caravel

65. •Thank You