dropcam and dynamodb

Dropcamand NoSQL on AWS

Greg Nelson

Thursday, September 5, 13

What is Dropcam?

• Software company in SF

• Wi-Fi enabled camera

• Intelligent motion detection

• Apps (iPhone, iPad, Android, Web)

• Cloud Video Recording service

Thursday, September 5, 13

Dropcam Uses

just because

(Pleasant Hill, CA - burglar caught)

small business

(The Baconery, NYC)

home security

(Toyota dealer saw I-5 bridge collapse)

(Kyra, N.Virginia)

baby

(Chris W, Pittsburgh, PA)

pets

(Dropcam employee, yesterday)

family

Thursday, September 5, 13

Oh $#%!

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Switch toDynamoDB

Thursday, September 5, 13

Oh $#%!

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Switch toDynamoDB

•More inbound than YouTube

Thursday, September 5, 13

Oh $#%!

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Switch toDynamoDB

•More inbound than YouTube

•Suddenly petabytes

Thursday, September 5, 13

Dropcam on AWS

DynamoDB

Nexus Web Platform

S3

Cameras Users

Thursday, September 5, 13

DynamoDBat Dropcam

• CVR metadata

• recording sessions

• cuepoints

• And other stuff (user sessions, etc.)

Thursday, September 5, 13

The Good

• NoSQL as-a-service

• Fast

• Predictable

• Scalable

• Highly available

Thursday, September 5, 13

The Bad**Actually good

• “Eventual consistency”

• Design for sharding (hash key)

• Schemaless, sorta

• Limited query-ability

• NOT a replacement for your RDBMS

Thursday, September 5, 13

The Ugly

• Think in IOs

• Actually, think in IOPS (harder)

• Get throttled and you’ll have a bad time

• Sort only by range key (even on scan)

• Can’t update range key

• No empty values?

Thursday, September 5, 13

Questions?Thank you!

By the way:https://www.dropcam.com/jobs

jobs@dropcam.com

Thursday, September 5, 13