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[Top Question: System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #88]Massive Infra: How Facebook Messenger Handles 20 Billion Messages Daily And How it Actually Works
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[Top Question: System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #88]Massive Infra: How Facebook Messenger Handles 20 Billion Messages Daily And How it Actually Works

With detailed explanation and flow chart....

Naina Chaturvedi's avatar
Naina Chaturvedi
May 30, 2025
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[Top Question: System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #88]Massive Infra: How Facebook Messenger Handles 20 Billion Messages Daily And How it Actually Works
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Hi All,

Facebook Messenger's choice of Apache HBase as its backend storage system enables it to handle an astounding 20 billion messages daily. This feat allows Facebook to provide real-time messaging services to billions of users worldwide with high reliability and low latency.

Learn how to System design —Design Lyft

[System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #2] How Lyft Handles 2x Traffic Spikes during Peak Hours with Auto scaling Infrastructure..

Today in this post, let me dive deep into how Facebook engineered this system, exploring the key architectural decisions, scaling strategies, and optimizations that enable HBase to manage this massive volume of messages for Messenger.


System Overview 

Before I delve into the HBase architecture for Facebook Messenger, let's look at some key metrics that highlight the scale of its operations:

- Messages processed daily: 20 billion+

- Active users: 1.3 billion+

- Peak messages per second: Millions

- Data stored: Petabytes

- Latency: Low milliseconds for message delivery

- Availability: 99.99%+

- Global deployment: Multiple data centers worldwide

- Supported message types: Text, images, videos, voice messages, etc.

- Devices supported: Mobile apps, web browsers, IoT devices


How Real World Scalable Systems are Build — 200+ System Design Case Studies:

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How it works ( tech in depth) —

1. User Interaction:

   - A user sends a message through a Messenger client (mobile app, web, etc.).

   - The message is sent to Messenger Application Servers.

2. Message Processing:

   - Application Servers process the message, applying Timeline Consistency checks.

   - The HBase Client Library prepares the write operation.

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