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[System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #28] 100 Billion Requests Daily : How Google Bigtable Actually Works

With detailed explanation and flow chart....

Naina Chaturvedi's avatar
Naina Chaturvedi
Nov 11, 2024
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Hi All,

Google Bigtable's architecture enables it to serve over 100 billion requests daily, powering numerous Google services such as Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail. This incredible feat allows Google to provide real-time, scalable data access to billions of users worldwide.

Let's dive deep into how Google engineered this system, exploring the key architectural decisions, scaling strategies, and optimizations that enable Bigtable to handle this massive volume of daily requests.

Learn how to Design Facebook Newsfeed


System Overview 

Before we delve into Bigtable's architecture, let's look at some key metrics that highlight the scale of its operations:

- Requests served daily: 100 billion+

- Peak queries per second: Millions

- Data stored: Petabytes to Exabytes

- Latency: Single-digit milliseconds for most operations

- Availability: 99.999%+

- Global deployment: Across dozens of data centers

- Concurrent users: Billions

- Table sizes: Up to hundreds of terabytes

- Columns per table: Thousands to millions


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How it works ( in detail) —

1. Client Interaction:

- Client applications interact with Bigtable through the Smart Client Library.

- The library handles request batching, compression, and intelligent routing.

2. Request Routing:

- Requests are sent through a load balancer to distribute traffic across tablet servers.

- The Smart Client often routes requests directly to the appropriate tablet server.

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