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How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

blog.discord.com

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Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#31

Post by sascha_sl »

tester756 wrote: post #28
sascha_sl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord's smart move was emulating the concept of servers (including all the teenage drama coming from having administrators and moderators more interested in (ab)using their power than community building) while making them accessible to anyone without technical knowledge. But it's important to remember that Discord is not that. Discord holds all your data, in luxurious detail, with no option to delete. They go as fa…

and you aren't going to get DDoSed if you join server of not the nicest people :)

That used to be a huge issue, less with Client-Server model software, but more the P2P mechanisms in Skype.

These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#32

Post by Sikul »

res0nat0r wrote: post #27
jhgg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. Everything but messages is on Scylla.

It's unfortunate Discord is still requiring relocation to SFO, the product is amazing and it looks like some awesome engineering behind the scenes that would be fun to work on!

This isn't true anymore. We switched to allowing and supporting permanent remote work (writing this from Seattle).

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#33

Post by PeterCorless »

preetamjinka wrote: post #18

Looks like they migrated (at least partially) to Scylla: "Discord Chooses Scylla as Its Core Storage Layer" (2020) https://www.scylladb.com/press-release/discord-chooses-scyll...

Yes. They started experimenting with Scylla earlier, and made the switch in 2020. Here's more on their logic — they like "opinionated systems":

https://www.scylladb.com/2019/03/20/discord-on-the-joy-of-op...

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#34

Post by tester756 »

sascha_sl wrote: post #31
tester756 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and you aren't going to get DDoSed if you join server of not the nicest people :)

That used to be a huge issue, less with Client-Server model software, but more the P2P mechanisms in Skype. These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.

>These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.

Hmm

I didn't meant your server being DDoSd, but you being DDoS (but probably that's what you meant with Skype P2P example?)

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#36

Post by RHSeeger »

tester756 wrote: post #2

Discord had like $300M invested and they created unparalleled piece of software that ate whole market, damn. One of the most impressive softwares that I've seen and use after years of using ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak.

Honestly, I find discord super frustrating. Can't have multiple chats open at the same time, can't close the right rail, etc. It's UX is subpar in almost every way that matters to me. I use it because _everyone_ uses it, not because I want to.

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#37

Post by m4rtink »

yelnatz wrote: post #14
tester756 wrote: post #2

Discord had like $300M invested and they created unparalleled piece of software that ate whole market, damn. One of the most impressive softwares that I've seen and use after years of using ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak.

Well it solved a lot of pain points with the target market. I remember my friends and I kept bickering who would pay for this month's bill for the vent/mumble servers. That kept on for years until I had enough and hosted my own in a droplet in digital ocean. None of my friends knew how to do that since they're not very technical. Discord you just had to click a couple buttons and its free.

It works nice and is free, but for how long?

How long can they keep paying for that bandwidth and message data storage while keeping the thing essentially free?

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#38

Post by jhgg »

snak wrote: post #22
vortico wrote: post #8

I'm curious of the 2021 measure of total disk space that Discord consumes. Servers that I'm in share images every few minutes, which must add up pretty quick.

The Casssandra cluster mentioned (12 nodes, 1TB each) only handles text, as far as the article goes.

We're well over 12 nodes in current year :P

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#39

Post by sascha_sl »

tester756 wrote: post #34
sascha_sl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That used to be a huge issue, less with Client-Server model software, but more the P2P mechanisms in Skype. These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable.

>These days? Well, most server providers have some sort of basic flood mitigations in place now, and even more advanced protection has become affordable. Hmm I didn't meant your server being DDoSd, but you being DDoS (but probably that's what you meant with Skype P2P example?)

Well yeah. Though Vent, Teamspeak and Mumble never had these issues (if you could trust the server admin).

Skype (at the time, no idea now) was a very shoddily written piece of software. It was trivial to query the IP of any online user, even if they were not on your contact list or appearing offline.

You had to use a VPN or carefully conceal your Skype ID, I did work with a somewhat popular live streamer back then (so a VPN wasn't feasible), and their ID was a very random string that was not to be shared under any circumstances.

Re: How Discord Stores Billions of Messages (2017)

#40

Post by Nadya »

kccqzy wrote: post #30
tester756 wrote: post #2

Discord had like $300M invested and they created unparalleled piece of software that ate whole market, damn. One of the most impressive softwares that I've seen and use after years of using ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak.

I've also noticed that in a lot of tech-related social circles people are increasingly choosing Discord over Slack. That's a trend I totally didn't expect: at least until a few years ago it was clear that Discord was for gamers and Slack was for work and everyone else. That changed quickly. Impressive indeed!

At my work we use Discord to have virtual "desks" (really just audio channels) so people can drop by and chat while you are at your desk. If you're busy or don't wish to be disturbed you can 'lock' your desk to prevent people from joining it (it limits the room size to 1, aka just you).

It really has helped the social factor of moving nearly everyone in the office to remote working. Every department that has adopted the "virtual office" Discord setup loves it over Slack and basically never uses Slack anymore. It's way less awkward to call people, it's easier to not incidentally disturb them when they're busy, during breaks/lunch you can go to the "breakroom" and hang out and chat with everyone else. And it was all very easy to setup and with the Discord server template stuff we can even clone it for each department with very minimal work (renaming channels to that departments' people).

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