The central database includes data like the 'users' table, which includes primary user

This allows cheaper scaling because you need less hardware as compared to master-master setups which always requires double the hardware. The Dual Tree structure is a custom set of changes to MySQL that allows scaling by incrementally adding masters without a ring architecture.

A pretty picture of Flickr's architecture can be found on this slide.

Over 400,000 photos being added every day.

2 PB raw storage (consumed about ~1.5TB on Sunday.

Cvsup for distributing and updating collections of files across a network.

Subcon stores essential system configuration files in a subversion repository for easy deployment to machines in a cluster.

Ganglia for distributed system monitoring.

Squid in reverse-proxy for html and images.A lot of useful PowerPoint presentations. Database War Stories #3: Flickr by Tim O'Reilly.Building Scalable Web Sites by Cal Henderson from Flickr.Federation at Flickr: Doing Billions of Queries a Day by Dathan Pattishall.Flickr has an amazing challenge, they must handle a vast sea of ever expanding new content, ever increasing legions of users, and a constant stream of new features, all while providing excellent performance. That's a lot of hamburgers.įlickr is both my favorite bird and the web's leading photo sharing site. Update: Flickr hits 2 Billion photos served.

Static flickr photography