This talk explains how we use NoSQL databases at wooga to scale our backend services to deal with the data of millions of players every day. Learn from our experience running Basho's Riak in production and how to use Amazon S3 as a database.

1. NOSQL GAMES
Patrick Huesler
wooga GmbH

2. Do you like to
play?

8. technical
challenges

9. monthly active users
20,543,500
for Diamond Dash
http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/127995567256931-diamond-dash (03/10/2012)

10. daily active users
3,871,133
for Diamond Dash
http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/127995567256931-diamond-dash (03/10/2012)

11. backend traffic up to
6,500 RPS
for Monster World

12. what does mean that for a
Database?

13. read/write ratio?
write heavy

14. Wooga’s
EVOLUTION
of architecture

15. Facebook
Game backend
Flash
Reporting
iOS

17. Built with
LAMP
... well, nginx instead of
apache

18. mysql does
scale

19. for certain
use cases

20. with the right
people

22. To the
cloud

23. Let’s use
Rails
instead of PHP

24. load balancer
app server app server app server
master shard 1 master shard 2
slave shard 2 slave shard 2

25. long
story
short

27. load balancer
app app app app app app app app
app app app app app app app app
app app app app app app app app
db db db db db db db db
db db db db db db db db

28. different
use case

29. arcade games
Are NOT
farming games

30. This is
NOT
going to work

31. but there is
Light
at the end of the tunnel

33. Move
SLOW PARTS
to redis

34. rinsE and
REPEAT

37. back to
dedicated

38. More
bang
for the buck

39. Faster
Machines

40. faster
network

41. Let’s use
REdis
all the way

42. load balancer
app server app server app server
redis
redis slave

43. REDIS
HASH

44. all is well in
Redis Land

47. Memory
Leaks

48. how does
BGSAVE
work again?

49. dumps are
no longer
working

51. This is
NOT
going to work

53. Fix it with
Restore on
Demand

54. Redis
Disk Store
(never really supported)

56. Let’s go
Stateful

57. no
database
is faster than no database

58. Let’s use
S3
all the way

59. Let’s use
erlang

60. http://www.slideshare.net/wooga/from-0-to-1000000-daily-users-with-erlang

61. http://www.slideshare.net/wooga/from-0-to-1000000-daily-users-with-erlang

63. project
SPARTAN

66. it has to be
ready
yesterday

67. It has to
scale
enormously

69. node.js

70. What DB
Scales
without sharding?

71. what DB has
masterless
replication?

72. Async
Saving

73. Riak

74. good enough
for now

75. good enough
for good

77. life with
Riak

78. 1 {
2 "userId" : 1000000011100,
3 "xp" : 20,
4 "coins" : 400,
5 "cash" : 300,
6 "rooms" : [
7 {
8 "id" : 1,
9 "type" : "x-ray",
10 "status" : "busy"
11 }
12 ]
13 }
14

80. no
SPoF
is plain awesome

81. bitcask was
suboptimal
for our use case

82. Do not
map/reduce
over all keys!

83. dreadful
ulimit

84. the tale of
riak Attach

86. Monsters go
Mobile

88. An iOS client is
NOT
a flash client

89. do we need a
database
at all?

90. Could we just use
s3
in a stateless architecture?

91. do we need a
backend
at all?

92. what if the
client
writes to
S3?

93. wooga.com/
jobs

94. Referenced Presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/wooga/how-to-handle-1000000-daily-users-without-using-a-cache-railswaycon-2012
http://www.slideshare.net/wooga/event-stream-processing-with-kafka-berlin-buzzwords-2012
http://www.slideshare.net/wooga/from-0-to-1000000-daily-users-with-erlang

95. Credits
Polar bear: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bestrated1/167630455/sizes/o/
Family: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adwriter/212098009/sizes/o/
cart: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41304880@N05/6187541490/
cow closeup: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/227465632/sizes/o/
sparta: http://www.flickr.com/photos/legofenris/5008721616/sizes/l/
tank: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markkelley/1581559810/sizes/l/
bomb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7969902@N07/511234695/