Identity/BrowserID/ServerImplementation
BrowserID is built on Node.js.
In terms of scaling the service to 1 million users and later 10 million users, we should examine the best technology choices.
Requirements
- CPU bound, mostly crypto workload
- C10K style to reduce need for hardware
- Prefer horizontal scaling over vertical scaling
Application Server Platforms
We'll assume Zeus (frontend caching, load balancing), nginx (static web server), MySQL (RDBMS) and Socketlabs (outbound email).
Node.js
BrowserID is currently a Node.js application with multi-master MySQL.
Scaling tips
It's early days. Although projects like Cluster exist, Mozilla may end up trail blazing how to scale the system.
gunicorn/gevents
Firefox Sync's service is gunicorn plus SQLAlchemy. Sync has ? million API calls per day on ?? servers, ?? master/slave dbs, and ???
Sync has continuous integration and sophisticated deployment practices.
Playdoh
This is a secured Django plus Jinja templates and other goodness. Baseline framework for webdev projects. Powers AMO which does roughly 50 million API calls per day (cache misses 91M including cache hits somewhere in the stack). Roughly 25 app servers, 6 slave DBs, 3 memached.
AMO has continuous integration and sophisticated deployment practices.
Scaling tips
Hotspots bypass ORM and do straight SQL plus string interpolation.
Evaluation Matrix
TODO: topics
- Mozilla dev pool (small, medium, big)
- Ops familiarity (low high)
- External community
- In production today
- C10K
- Sweet spot (webapps, services, etc)
- Libraries
- Development (PITA, pleasure)
- Deployment (easy, hard)
- Infrasec comfort level (low, high)