Company will be first to deploy SMR at exabyte scale; to provide
open-source software enabling other enterprises to follow suit
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun. 12, 2018--
Dropbox,
a leading global collaboration platform, today announced a new chapter
in the evolution of Magic Pocket, its custom-built storage
infrastructure. The company is successfully deploying Shingled Magnetic
Recording (SMR) drive technology, which will increase overall storage
density, reduce the company’s physical data center footprint, and
provide significant cost savings—without sacrificing performance or
reliability. Dropbox will be the first company to test and deploy SMR
technology at this scale.
Dropbox anticipates approximately a quarter of its Magic Pocket
infrastructure will be on SMR drive capacity by 2019. In the coming
months, the company also plans to open source the test software it
created in the process, which will let other companies qualify SMR
technology for their own enterprise storage environments.
“Creating our own storage infrastructure was a huge technological
challenge, but it's already paid dividends for our customers and our
business,” said Quentin Clark, SVP of Engineering, Product, and Design
at Dropbox. “As more teams adopt Dropbox, SMR technology will help us
scale our infrastructure by providing greater flexibility, efficiency,
and cost savings. We’re also excited to make this technology open-source
so other companies can benefit from it.”
The move to SMR technology has been a significant undertaking: Dropbox
sourced SMR disk drives from third-party suppliers, designed a bespoke
hardware and component ecosystem around it, and created new software to
ensure its compatibility with existing Magic Pocket architecture. The
company ultimately chose SMR technology for its unique ability to expand
storage capacity from 8TB to 14TB per disk, while still delivering the
performance and reliability the company expects.
This process is another example of the company’s engineering expertise
in building large distributed systems. By the end of 2018, Dropbox will
have an infrastructure footprint spanning 29 facilities in twelve
countries and four continents, including storage for users inside and
outside the U.S.
Expanding the impact of Magic Pocket
In 2016, Magic Pocket set a new standard in the industry by introducing
an exabyte-scale storage infrastructure that was exceptionally reliable
and secure, and could meet the dynamic workloads of more than 500
million registered users. The system was designed to provide annual data
durability of over 99.9999999999%, and availability of over 99.99%. This
move to SMR technology is the next phase in the company’s development of
its cutting edge, custom-built infrastructure.
For more information on how Dropbox engineering is successfully
deploying SMR disk drives at scale in Magic Pocket, please visit our SMR technology
blog.
To read more about how Dropbox created Magic Pocket please visit our original
blog post.
About Dropbox
Dropbox is a leading global collaboration platform that's transforming
the way people and teams work together. With more than 500 million
registered users across 180 countries, we're on a mission to unleash the
world's creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working.
Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, and has 12 offices around
the world. For more information on our mission and products, visit dropbox.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180612005358/en/
Source: Dropbox
Dropbox
Steve Imm
Steveimm@dropbox.com