How Facebook Stores Billions of Photos

David Gobaud writes "Jason Sobel, the manager of infrastructure engineering at Facebook, gave an interesting presentation titled Needle in a Haystack: Efficient Storage of Billions of Photos at Stanford for the Stanford ACM. Jason explains how Facebook efficiently stores ~6.5 billion images, in 4 or 5 sizes each, totaling ~30 billion files, and a total of 540 TB and serving 475,000 images per second at peak. The presentation is now online here in the form of a Flowgram."

Comments

Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[denzacar]

I thought it was created just so that you could have all your spam and silly forwards in one place.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[oskard]

I think you're thinking of MySpace.

If you used the service, you'd know that Facebook privacy settings are actually implemented very well. For example, I set up an account for my mother so she can look at all her siblings photos. She hasn't been bothered by anyone outside of the family, and is really enjoying the ability to communicate with everyone.

The best thing I can compare it to is AOL. Its got a built in Email clone, IM service, Forums, Groups, and of course, profiles. But unlike AOL, Facebook is just a web page. There's no lock in - its more of a resource provider than a service provider.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[snowraver1]

I find it funny that you start by defending FaceBook from the following statement:
I thought it was created just so that you could have all your spam and silly forwards in one place.

Then proceed to futher prove the GP post by saying:
The best thing I can compare it to is AOL

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[0100010001010011]

This stuff is cool either way, even if it is just "childish spam." Many of us only dream to work on something that will become this large scale.

Facebook started off (stolen idea or not) as a site with some php and a database. In the early years there were no applications or photos. They've managed to scale PHP beyond what most slashdotters will say PHP can even do. They've even contributed some of their stuff back to the PHP community.

Look at some other similar 'home grown' sites that have had to quickly scale and invent stuff just to stay a float.
Archive.org has their pentabox
Google has their Google File System and all of their own hard ware design.

Hopefully the site will recover. 540TB of data and 500k images per second while at the same time being able to process photos near instantly in the background to 4-5 different sizes is nothing to ignore. Fortune 500 companies could probably learn a thing or two...

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[maxume]

Not everyone prides themselves on using a 'cool' isp.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting how you say FB privacy settings are implemented very well.

Every few days, I find myself looking at photo album of someone I HAVE NOT friended, and SHOULD NOT be able to see under any circumstances.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortune 500 companies could probably learn a thing or two...

Hey now! I work at a Fortune 500 company and we resemble that remark!

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[encoderer]

You mean, unless they specifically set that album to be open to everybody. Which they can do.

By default, profiles and pictures are hidden unless you grant access, which you can do both by friending somebody and by sending/replying to a message. (However, access granted to a recipient merely by sending them a message is temporary)

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[hostyle]

Me too!

Not everyone prides themselves on using a 'cool' isp.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[hostyle]

I get updates like "Friend A has left a comment on photo X" with a link to the photo and comment - where photo X is in an album of person B - somebody I do not know. I can go view all the photos in that particular album. I'm not very up on how things at facebook work, but has Person B allowed full public access to their photos for me to do this?

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[virgil_disgr4ce]

In a related story, it turns out the MySpace servers are powered by a train of mules turning a mill-wheel, and the IT staff consists of a pair of quadriplegic chimpanzees.

Seriously, MySpace is some of the worst software I've ever, ever seen :)

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[vux984]

If you used the service, you'd know that Facebook privacy settings are actually implemented very well.

Given that I can't look at my sisters photos without signing up for an account I'd say her privacy is being 'protected' solely to induce all her friends and siblings to sacrifice theirs by joining facebook.

I set up an account for my mother so she can look at all her siblings photos.

You don't need facebook for that.

and is really enjoying the ability to communicate with everyone.

or that.

But unlike AOL, Facebook is just a web page. There's no lock in - its more of a resource provider than a service provider.

How exactly is requiring me to create and login to a facebook account to view content someone else wants me to be able to see not lockin?

That's like requiring me to create a gmail account to receive email from people with gmail accounts. Or requiring me to sign up to AOL to see websites hosted by AOL. Facebook is pretty much the definition of lock-in.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Mythrix]

You can set an album viewable for "Friends of friends". You can also set it viewable for "My networks and friends".

Both of these settings would allow people that you don't have on your friend list to see your photos. (As long as they fulfill the chosen criteria.)

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Andy Dodd]

I'd need to test it again, but I'm fairly certain FB had a function that let you share albums with non-users by having FB generate a special link you'd give to the user.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[STrinity]

That's Digg -- "Hey look at this cool link I found."

Facebook is where you spam your friends with pointless messages about how you've hurled a squirrel at them.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[PatrickThomson]

I totally agree with you about how having friends on facebook is highly offensive and joining it will lead to identity theft and involuntary permanent incarceration in guantanamo bay. My neighbour tried to give facebook fake details, and mark zuckerberg showed up and stabbed him in the eye.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[vux984]

I totally agree with you about how having friends on facebook is highly offensive and joining it will lead to identity theft and involuntary permanent incarceration in guantanamo bay.

Not all of us are willing to 'join free services' that exist for the sole purpose of collecting our information, profiling us, and selling us to advertisers in exchange for stupid web shinys. I don't have a gmail account either for the same reason. Google collects enough data on me against my will, without me handing it to them on a silver platter.

My neighbour tried to give facebook fake details, and mark zuckerberg showed up and stabbed him in the eye.

The terms of service explicitly forbid giving fake details.

Firstly, while I'm sure Zuckerberg doesn't have time to personally stab everyone in the eye, that really isn't the point. If one can't in good conscience agree to the terms of service of a site or service, one shouldn't use that service. So I don't.

Secondly, even a facebook account with fake details would be pretty trivial to unmask simply by virtue of its location within the social network. There is no real anonymity unless I refuse to associate with my real friends and family, which rather defeats the use.

I would consider a social networking product if one existed where I was the customer not the product.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you can look at photos without an account. There's a link at the bottom of every album you own that allows people to see your album without having to log in or have an account with facebook.

There was even a link to allow people without facebook to see a limited profile, but that one is more well hidden.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you upload a photo to facebook, then
save it, you'll see that facebook has
slapped a FaceBook copyright on your picture.

I don't recall allowing them to own my pictures...

I probably should have read the user agreement
better, I must have agreed to that when I signed
up.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be nice to have a mother who can coordinate all the family's photos on protected webpages. What does she code that in? FORTRAN?

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[theshowmecanuck]

You don't actually interact with your friends in person do you??!! [shocked look] YOU SIR should be BARRED from Slashdot.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a URL on each album page you can copy and paste to non-users.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you used the service, you'd know that Facebook privacy settings are actually implemented very well.

Here's some Good Links to get you started on learning about it. Be sure to check out what apps can do too.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[PatrickThomson]

It's nice to have principles but at the end of the day my friends come first. I can always (ad)block adverts. Oh no, what if they wheedle into my subconcious or the ToS change? Then I'll occasionally make a marginally worse purchasing decision. It's not like i never do that anyway.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[KGIII]

If your user number and choice of nickname are an indication then I might suggest that without CompuServe and/or AOL you might not appreciate the internet as you have it today. What AOL did, in their time, they did well enough. AOL was responsible for the masses getting the internet (for good or bad). They didn't do so by themselves of course. They are also the people responsible for IM today as it stands, again they're not alone in that. And, well, don't discount their contribution (good or bad) to the use of email as we know it today. But, yeah, they had their place. Mind you, I abhor AOL and all they were and most of what they are today, well no... Today I mostly feel sorry for them. Either way, get off my lawn. I'm trying to cover my lawn with ISP CDs and you're buggering them all up.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[TimboJones]

I would consider a social networking product if one existed where I was the customer not the product.

Sure, that's a nice idea. But of course then you're paying for it, and most likely so must all your friends and family if they want to share its best features with you. I think a social network built on that model would not grow large. It might fill a niche, but it would have nowhere near the utility of a free-to-join network that promotes sharing information.

What makes a social networking site really great can't happen unless there are a lot of people using it. The policies, shininess, and penetration of Facebook allow amazing results in short time frames. I've been on Facebook I think less than a year. I don't visit the site often, yet in that time I have regained contact with friends last seen during high school, played games with coworkers, learned about worthwhile charitable causes, hosted memes, and grown closer to people after learning about mutual interests that might not have come to light during normal conversation.

Consider an acquaintance of mine, a person I met several years ago. We've previously exchanged pleasantries and gotten along well at the odd party or the around the neighborhood where I work, but never held a conversation about any Deep Topics or connected much more broadly than Shared Entertainment Experiences and Goofy Jokes. About two weeks ago our Facebook networks connected. Tonight I received an invitation to a philosophical roundtable discussion at a library across town. The topic promises to present new ideas and address questions and gaps in my web of understanding. A doorway opens to become better friends with good people. What a serendipitous opportunity! Maybe I would have heard about this event through another medium in a Facebookless world. I doubt it. I don't check the library's events calendar.

I know that Facebook consumes as much information about me as they can stuff into their considerable data hole. So I make sure to only provide information that I don't mind sharing to all and sundry. I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know in meat space. I hesitate to register with apps because I know they get access to everything. I wish Facebook would uncheck their permission boxes by default. But every such border is a barrier to information flow, and networks like Facebook thrive and grow, both in size and utility, on the free flow of information.

Free is the key. Every reward is born from risk.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[tehcyder]

The best thing I can compare it to is AOL.

Well that's certainly not from the Slashdot memeopedia.

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[vux984]

Sure, that's a nice idea. But of course then you're paying for it, and most likely so must all your friends and family if they want to share its best features with you.

Lets see, my ISP offers 'free' email, pop3, imap, and webmail access. They offer 'free' access to a reasonable number of usenet groups, and offer a small and fairly limited but entirely usable web hosting package, with tools to make it easy to setup multiple small websites, upload and share photos, and so on.

Is it really 'free'? Of course not, its bundled in with my internet access so I'm paying for it. And while I have no gaurantee that my ISP isn't reading my email, and processing my hosted content, that isn't their business model, and they aren't pasting adds up in my site or in my email.

I think a social network built on that model would not grow large. It might fill a niche, but it would have nowhere near the utility of a free-to-join network that promotes sharing information.

You mean the model email and usenet and the web itself were built on couldn't reach the critical mass of users to be really interesting and useful? Give me a break.

What makes a social networking site really great can't happen unless there are a lot of people using it.

Sounds a lot like email, and that's worked out just fine.

Lots of people using it. In fact, I can send messages to people at work, coordinate meetings, organize outings, exchange messages with friends, even grandparents. Some of them use ad-supported hosted services, some of them use paid services, some of them host their own services, all seamlessly interconnecting.

Consider an acquaintance of mine, a person I met several years ago...

I'm not arguing -against- social netorking. I'm arguing against accepting facebook lock-in, becoming a product, and selling your information in exchange for a features.

Its a fallacy that the only way we can have services like social networking or instant messaging is via accepting ridiculous lock-in, and closed standards.

Next thing you'll be telling me there is no way to create a modern fully featured multi-user operating system and application suites that could be downloaded and used for free without either paying exorbitant prices for licensing or signing all your rights to the data on your PC away.

Oh wait... ;p

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[TimboJones]

Lets see, my ISP offers 'free' email, pop3, imap, and webmail access. They offer 'free' access to a reasonable number of usenet groups, and offer a small and fairly limited but entirely usable web hosting package, with tools to make it easy to setup multiple small websites, upload and share photos, and so on.

Is it really 'free'? Of course not, its bundled in with my internet access so I'm paying for it.

Yeah my ISP provides all those things too. All the ISPs I've used have. My hosting provider provides them too. I get these services as part of a bundle I pay for. Well, two bundles, since the web hosting package offered by my ISP does not fulfill my needs.

But you know what? I don't use them. I haven't used my ISP's mail since I lived on campus back in college. Before I got there, I did not use my dialup ISP's email service. Two reasons: a) email address lock-in; b) the interface sucks.

Nowadays I've solved the lock-in problem by paying for a domain and the sucky interface problem by having my MX records send all mail to a gmail account, The free-to-join, invasive, ad-supported gmail service works way better than any webmail, IMAP, or POP3 client I've found.

Sounds a lot like email, and that's worked out just fine. Lots of people using it. In fact, I can send messages to...

True. And I use email as a default medium for communication too. I've sent maybe 5 messages with Facebook's message service - to people for whom I don't have email addresses. I've had one IM conversation with Facebook's IM interface - with someone whose IM ID I don't know.

I'm arguing against accepting facebook lock-in, becoming a product, and selling your information in exchange for a features.

Lock-in? Hardly. I'm also on MySpace. I also use email. I also use IM -- Pidgin, so I don't get locked in to a specific IM service. I also use usenet, web forums, feedback forms, web chat, on and on. Different tools for different tasks. Facebook excels at the task of clustering my friends and exposing information about them.

My information costs me nothing to give away. My money costs me money to give away. I'd rather pay for services using a currency that copies on write than one with a 1:1 opportunity cost. Not that I share everything, obviously. Some information will cost to give away - my SSN for example. But most everything about me - my relationship status, my mood, my hobbies - I gain value by giving this information freely.

Its a fallacy that the only way we can have services like social networking or instant messaging is via accepting ridiculous lock-in, and closed standards.

IM is a service that started with ridiculous lock-in and closed standards. I still used it then. Eventually a service will arise to tie together your Facebook and Myspace networks just like Trillian or Pidgin did for IM.

Also, what closed standards?

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[vux984]

I haven't used my ISP's mail since I lived on campus back in college. Before I got there, I did not use my dialup ISP's email service. Two reasons: a) email address lock-in; b) the interface sucks.

re: a - the same applies gmail or any other provider.
re: b - there was likely no 'gmail' when you were 'back in college on your dialup isp', and most people used standalone clients, many still have little need for webmail.

Nowadays I've solved the lock-in problem by paying for a domain

makes sense.

and the sucky interface problem by having my MX records send all mail to a gmail account, The free-to-join, invasive, ad-supported gmail service works way better than any webmail, IMAP, or POP3 client I've found.

To each their own.

Personally I run a Linux server, with Scalix community edition, works great with my smart phone (push email support, address book sync, etc), has an excellent webmail client for the odd time I need one, and I mostly access my mail via Thunderbird. It works way better than any other solution I've found has no privacy implications, is ad free, and it meets my needs and principles better than anything else, including gmail.

The cool thing about it though is that I can still send you a message without signing up for a gmail account. YOU can agree to their terms, and I can stand by mine, and we can still interact, exchange messages,

Lock-in? Hardly. I'm also on MySpace. I also use email. I also use IM -- Pidgin, so I don't get locked in to a specific IM service. I also use usenet, web forums, feedback forms, web chat, on and on. Different tools for different tasks. Facebook excels at the task of clustering my friends and exposing information about them.

You don't know what lock in is then.

I don't have or want a facebook account. If all your friends had accounts at different social networking sites, how well would facebook excel at 'clustering your friends and exposing information about them'?

It wouldn't.

The only way facebook excels if everyone has a facebook account and agrees to facebooks terms of service.
The only way email excels is if everyone has an email account. The difference is that we can get an email account on any service we like, or even host our own, and it makes no nevermind. No matter where I get my email account you can send it messages.

While my refusal to submit to facebook means that I am excluded from that entirely because it won't interoperate with any other site. I know people with multiple accounts on multiple social networking sites, not because they have any desire to do so, but because each site gives them access to different groups of friends they can't access from the other site. THAT is the effect of LOCK-IN. I only need one email account to send to any other email provider. I might have multiple if I have a desire for multiple, but I don't need multiple.

My information costs me nothing to give away. My money costs me money to give away. I'd rather pay for services using a currency that copies on write than one with a 1:1 opportunity cost. Not that I share everything, obviously. Some information will cost to give away - my SSN for example. But most everything about me - my relationship status, my mood, my hobbies - I gain value by giving this information freely.

That's fine. To each their own. I however have little interest in submitting to facebooks terms of service. I publish what I want people to see on my websites. I'd be happy to integrate with facebook to the extent of letting people include me, message me, etc from their facebook account. But I don't want an account with facebook myself. But facebook is a closed system.

IM is a service that started with ridiculous lock-in and closed standards. I still used it then. Eventually a service will arise to tie together your Facebook and Myspace networks just like Trillian or Pidgin did for IM.

Trillian or Pidgin just lets you access your multiple accounts from a single applic

Re:Photos? You mean people use FB for photos too?

[zrq]

If you used the service, you'd know that Facebook privacy settings are actually implemented very well. For example, I set up an account for my mother so she can look at all her siblings photos.

I started to use Facebook, and it seemed to be quite a good way to share things.

Then I read this bit of their terms of use :

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

I don't use Facebook any more.

I dunno.

[morgan_greywolf]

But seeing as how this just got posted and already it's Slashdotted, I'll bet it's not the same way Flowgram stores its presentations.

Re:I dunno.

[OverlordQ]

To view the slideshow . . err I mean 'flowgram' (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), you dont need to register.

Re:I dunno.

[aproposofwhat]

Not only that, but the UK Facebook site has been down most of the afternoon - some infrastructure, huh?

Re:I dunno.

[IRGlover]

I bet UK productivity rocketed this afternoon then ;-)

Re:I dunno.

[owlnation]

And nothing of value was lost.

In other news, companies in the UK reported record productivity this afternoon.

Re:I dunno.

[7 digits]

In the late 90's we stopped using documents with images and text), because they had the following disadvantage:

1) Printable
2) Searchable
3) You could look over them at a glance to find information

We replaced them by the fabulous presentation with voice-over.

It removed part of the ability to scan over information, to search, and to print.

Unfortunately, it still had the disage of letting the user seek to some part of the presentation, so another iteration was needed.

Now, welcome to the 21th century. Thanks to flowgram, you don't have to worry about printing anymore (you can't), or searching (you can't), or even pausing, going forward, or doing anything (you can't).

If you get a phone call in the middle of the presentation, though luck. And of course, you have no way of knowing how long it is, how long is left, or anything. And if you miss a word or a sentence, you can always restart the presentation and listen more carefully the next time.

I must congratulate the folks over flowgram.com. It seems very hard to have some idea that could be less usable. I'm pretty sure there is someone somewhere working hard at this, and some VC will give him money for that, but, for now, if you want to put have a shitty unusbale presentation online, flowgram is the way to go.

Re:I dunno.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the late 90's we stopped using documents with images and text), because they had the following disadvantage:

1) Printable
2) Searchable
3) You could look over them at a glance to find information

We replaced them by the fabulous presentation with voice-over.

It removed part of the ability to scan over information, to search, and to print.

Unfortunately, it still had the disage of letting the user seek to some part of the presentation, so another iteration was needed.

Now, welcome to the 21th century. Thanks to flowgram, you don't have to worry about printing anymore (you can't), or searching (you can't), or even pausing, going forward, or doing anything (you can't).

If you get a phone call in the middle of the presentation, though luck. And of course, you have no way of knowing how long it is, how long is left, or anything. And if you miss a word or a sentence, you can always restart the presentation and listen more carefully the next time.

I must congratulate the folks over flowgram.com. It seems very hard to have some idea that could be less usable. I'm pretty sure there is someone somewhere working hard at this, and some VC will give him money for that, but, for now, if you want to put have a shitty unusbale presentation online, flowgram is the way to go.

Using FF3 I was able to do pretty much everything you were complaining about.
FF, RW, Pause, Skip.

Course the audio skips between slides were annoying.

Re:I dunno.

[jon3k]

It has a timeline (top) and a timer (top right)

Re:I dunno.

[7 digits]

Lucky you, using FF2 on Mac OS X, with flash player 9, there was none of that...

Re:I dunno.

[RealGrouchy]

It seems very hard to have some idea that could be less usable. They seem to have enhanced their service with the recent slashdotting.

- RG>

Re:I dunno.

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. I was expecting a responsible presentation from which I could glean salient points in a minute or so, and instead discovered the Flowgram - a time-sucking, radically inefficient, noisy, irritating apparent pile of dung.

I can only hope that the experience was miserable solely due to the settings made by that authors of this particular presentation, and not a sign of congenital braindamage on the part of Flowgram's own developers.

Ewww.

Re:I dunno.

[tehcyder]

I bet UK productivity rocketed this afternoon then ;-)

Only if MySpace and YouTube bombed at the same time.

Re:I dunno.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an entire interface with navigation, slide thumbnails, pausing, etc

Re:I dunno.

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=594855&cid=23943205

How X Stores Billions of Photos

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohhhh boy, queue the pr0n jokes in 3... 2... 1...

Re:How X Stores Billions of Photos

[vigmeister]

Ohhhh boy, queue the pr0n jokes in 3... 2... 1...

Cue the cuneiforms of cute girls with no acumen queuing up to watch Cusack's cucumber

Cheers!
--
Vig

he has a premium acct...

[OglinTatas]

at Flickr

FLASH?!

[T-Bone-T]

"You either have javascript turned off or you have an older version of Adobe Flash."

That was an informative article but I didn't see anything about Facebook. At least there weren't ads and they kept it to one page!

Re:FLASH?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You either have javascript turned off or you have an older version of Adobe Flash."

I'm running Gnash (the Gnu flash player) and get the same message. :(

Re:FLASH?!

[legoman666]

bah! I got the same message also.... probably because I don't have Flash installed. And am not going to install it.

Re:FLASH?!

[Mathiasdm]

I do have Javascript installed, and am running Adobe Flash (Linux version). Doesn't work :(

Re:FLASH?!

[nahdude812]

Worked for me from Ubuntu.

Re:FLASH?!

[Skapare]

They should teach Firefox and Opera how to play video directly. It's not much harder than displaying an image file.

Re:FLASH?!

[Anonymous Coward]

crashes with flash 10 on intrepid.

Re:FLASH?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. That's just what I was thinking to. "Wouldn't it be nice if I needed yet another plugin to stop annoying webpages from displaying videos?"

Re:FLASH?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"They should teach Firefox and Opera"

I guess you didn't read the recent articles on Artificial Intelligence.

Re:FLASH?!

[Murpster]

Bwaaahh! You damn kids and your newfangled Flash! All I need is Lynx. Now get offa my lawn!

Re:FLASH?!

[Firehed]

I think it's becoming part of the HTML5 spec; however, it's tremendously more complicated due to the limitless plethora of video formats. With web-oriented images, it's almost all jpegs for photos and typically pngs for graphics, with plenty of gifs around. Tiff is a very established format but never sees use in websites since the files are stupidly large, and most other formats are specific to some editing program. With video, you've got half a dozen Quicktime formats, DivX, XviD, h.264, x264, WMV, Real, and a huge number of others (many of which are pro-oriented). Never mind the play/pause/scrubbing interface (which could become yet another CSS nightmare), the much bigger file size, the audio, auto-playing, etc.

Until there's a jpeg for video, I'd say we should leave it alone. Flash is currently fulfilling that role, and all things considered does it reasonably well given the ease of implementation.

Re:FLASH?!

[Nicolay77]

Opera has some support already for embedding video without plugins.

Ahh haha

[Bored MPA]

Perhaps I should turn on audio, or they should have a less friggin confusing UI.

Re:Ahh haha

[hansamurai]

It's just an online presentation where you can actually click on the links in their slides.

Very interesting

[phase_9]

Fascinating Presentation for those of you who actually bother to watch the Hour or so of content.

Re:Very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating Use of random Capitalization in Your post.

Re:Very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating Presentation for those of you who actually bother to watch the Hour or so of content. Not really. Everything was done in the obvious way.

Hire the guy who asked about "re-inventing databases." They re-invented one layer of a B-Tree and don't realize it.

Re:Very interesting

[lena_10326]

I watched it. It was interesting, but nothing earth shattering. Somewhat obvious optimizations. Caching + packing data smartly.

Slashdotted

[Rik Sweeney]

Does anyone see the irony in Flowgram's demonstration?

Flowgram Guy 1: "OK, this is how Facebook stores billions of photos and serves thousands of them each second"
Flowgram Guy 2: "Cool, maybe we should implement that technology"
Flowgram Guy 1: "Why? It's not as if we're ever going to have our servers swamped with thousands of requests..."

Re:Slashdotted

[elronxenu]

That's for sure.

Plus, when their server (singular?) finally responded to me, it requires a later version of Flash than I have. So I can't read the presentation at all. Way to not get the word out, folks.

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the latest version. I'm a problem solver.

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

You young people with your newer Flash. I am sticking with Flash 2.0. It is a Flash from a more innocent internet era, not like that corporate elitist media-whoring Flash 9.0

Group photos problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I guess it helps the storage problem by disabling the ability to add photos to groups, which seems to have occurred in the last few days... (for a few people at least)

I know /.'ers don't admit to having facebook accounts, but a link in case any lurker wants to see the comments about this
issue.

The peak is a paltry 0.45e6/s?

[vigmeister]

Let's all go look at pictures on fb from 12 noon EST to 12:05 EST. That ought to show them...

I 3 Myspace hunni!

Cheers!

Re:The peak is a paltry 0.45e6/s?

[STrinity]

Why put the most significant digit after the decimal? Why not 4.5e5/s?

Re:The peak is a paltry 0.45e6/s?

[Torvaun]

Or 450e3, if you really like engineering notation.

flowgram sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

alternate source?

Transcript?

[dstar]

I don't suppose there's a transcript of this anywhere, is there? That + slides would be infinitely more useful....

Was Facebook stolen?

[commodoresloat]

I don't know if this was posted on slashdot before and I'm too lazy to look, but this article from Rolling Stone about the founder of Facebook seems far more interesting than a slashdotted hour long flash presentation.

Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

I wish that facebook wouldn't resize its images on the backend. My friends all post pictures from parties/trips, etc.. there, and I'd love to be able to just download the full res version to send off to be printed, but facebook resizes the largest dimension to be ~600px, which is pretty worthless for printing.

Yeah yeaj. there's other sites that don't, and I post my stuff there (to flickr, personally), but convincing that one person who took the nice photo of you to do it too is near impossible.

Re:Full sized images, please

[darthnoodles]

It's a Social Networking site, not a photo management site. If you want a full res copy of the photo just ask you friend for one.

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

Trust me, I do ask my friends for them, and they usually get around to it. With all the drive space they have at facebook and as fat as internet connections are for my friends (either at home or at school), the extra space/time would be insignificant compared to the utility of just being able to go, "print". Besides, if facebook integrated it in the site, they could probably make a killing on letting people print directly from the interface (and take a cut along the way)

There is already a site where my friends post cool pictures from events, conveniently commented on and indexed by the people in the picture. Why should they post to another site just for a higher resolution image.

Besides, get in a big enough group, and the person who has the picture you want invariably is the laziest person ever, who just won't do it, regardless of prodding.

Re:Full sized images, please

[Firehed]

Aside from the fact that most photos on facebook are blurry drunken crap, the copyright and privacy settings coming from that kind of thing would get VERY weird VERY fast. Facebook profiting from selling my photos? Nuh-uh, I don't think so. If they want to display an ad alongside them as my friends view them, I'm okay with that - it's understood as part of using the service; without at least some sort of profit sharing, that would be a big no-no. Maybe if they want to tie in SmugMug or something that I can optionally use, there would be something.

Of course, the implementation cost of that versus what they'd get out of it would make it worthless (from their perspective) anyways.

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

>> Aside from the fact that most photos on facebook are blurry drunken crap

If they were blurry and drunken, I wouldn't want them. I'm thinking things like graduation group photos or pictures from study abroad type stuff.

>> copyright issues
They could make it opt-in or add it to the privacy settings "Allow [GROUP OF PEOPLE] to print photos". Or not even have the photo printing, just offer an 'original resolution' option. There's a number of ways they could work around that issue, the problem is that their upload APIs right now require that the images be prescaled before they're stored in the backened, so even if they did change the site, it would only work for photos uploaded using th enew API.

A friend of mine made a killing just going around to parties on the weekend (I went to a heavily greek-centered university) with a nice camera, taking pictures of people and uploading them to (I think) snapfish. I would think it would be a market facebook would want to expand to.

Re:Full sized images, please

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Facebook (usually) doesn't resize on the backend. When you use their Java image uploader, it resizes and compresses the photos before uploading them, making the upload faster while saving them processing time.

But yes, I wish we could store hi-res photos on their servers.

Re:Full sized images, please

[bill_mcgonigle]

Has nobody done this with a Facebook app? The notable hurdle is that people would have to opt-in before uploading pictures.

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

That's the big thing. I'd knock something together myself, but if they are storing full resolution images in the DB, they're not exposed to the API

Re:Full sized images, please

[virgil_disgr4ce]

If their total storage for photos now is 540 TB, what would it be with print-worthy resolutions? a handful of petabytes? :p

Re:Full sized images, please

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's the big thing. I'd knock something together myself, but if they are storing full resolution images in the DB, they're not exposed to the API

You'd need to intercept on upload and store them on your own server. I'm not familiar enough with the Facebook API (I just read the whitepaper when it came out, that's about it) to know if you can intercept core modules.

If you have to add your own image upload app, that raises the hurdle even higher. If your model has enough value, that might not be a problem. If your model has a high enough margin, the long tail may be sufficient.

Please send me your newsletter. :)

Re:Full sized images, please

[Kimos]

Get the Big Photo application.

It's not ideal, but it works quite well. A friend of mine is a professional photographer and she puts all her work up there. Works well for her.

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

Their current photos have a maximum dimension of 604(ish) pixels on its longest side. Maybe increase by a factor of 4 or 9? Even 4.5PB isn't out of the realm of feasibility, it's only 4,500 1TB drives :)

(I know I know about the drives and the difference between server drives and consumer drives, and how contention on individual drives could bring the thing to a grinding halt)

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

It's not me that's the problem, it's my friends.

Does it integrate with the core photo app so that when you hit the 'photos of xxx' or 'photos of you and xxx' button it shows both the core photos and the big photos? Can you tag users that don't have the bigphoto app? If not, then it just won't fly.

Re:Full sized images, please

[Andy Dodd]

Yup. I wish Facebook would implement some way of performing metadata sharing with external photo sites. I can understand not wanting to store the originals of images unless users paid (and I don't think anyone would pay for photo hosting from Facebook...), but it would be nice if there could be a way for a photo posted on an external site (like Flickr or SmugMug) could appear on a person's Facebook profile *in an integrated manner*.

There are Facebook apps that put galleries from other sites (flickr, SmugMug, etc.) onto a user's Facebook profile, but they are not integrated with FB's photo system at all, namely the ability to tag people in photos.

Re:Full sized images, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Maybe they should just keep the original on their servers.

But given that each photo is 800KB (which is a minimum for a jpeg compressed but not resized photo) a billion of them would take ~745TB (if my math is correct) and probably wouldn't make economical sense although they'd probably compress it with a better algorithm (lower photo quality?) etc...

Re:Full sized images, please

[bucky0]

I figure if google can offer me 6 gigs in exchange for advertisements, facebook can toss me some storage space in exchange for my social profile. It would be nice though, I agree.

Re:Full sized images, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Remarkably, your entered text for search and email is more valuable than your profile. Which is why Facebook has trouble monetizing.

Flowgram slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flowgram serving 475000 /. users flawlessly , now that would be impressing.

540TB / 30 billion images

[Ralph Spoilsport]

equals about 18k per image?

RS

Re:540TB / 30 billion images

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder, what's the size on disk of each picture.. Just adding 1k means a lot..

Re:540TB / 30 billion images

[JuanCarlosII]

A quick survey of the most recent images on my profile tells me a full size image comes in at 50-60k and a standard thumbnail at ~5k so given the other sizes of thumbnail as well I'd say 18k per image is about right.

Re:Flowgram...?

[elronxenu]

Some kind of problem with their Engrams

Better check what KSW says to do when slashdotted ...

Looks like beta.flowgram.com should be

[sdsurfgeek]

alpha.flowgram.com

Not hard

[mlwmohawk]

While the article is slashdotted, this is not a hard problem. It has an expense involved, but it is not difficult.

So, as another poster implied, 18K per photo on average, so about 8Gig per second, peak.

So, assuming that the pictures are evenly distributed, you'd need a bunch of machines and a good number of "tubes" and a way of directing requests to the correct image server or server cluster.

So, what's the problem? Why would you think this is difficult? It's all off the shelf technology, just a bunch of it.

Re:Not hard

[dstar]

Because the access to the pictures is _not_ evenly distributed. Worse, it's also not consistent.

Now, the question is, is it evenly distributed _enough_, or consistent _enough_. My guess is that it is, at best, _barely_ so, to the point that each backend system needs to be able to handle 2-3 times what the peak would be if it was evenly distributed; that's just a WAG, though. Hopefully the presentation answers that question.

Re:Not hard

[funbobby]

The issue isn't the number of bytes per second, it's the number of distinct requests. The data is _way_ bigger than will fit in memory, and hard disks can only do 100-150 seeks per second so you need a lot of them to serve from disk. A naive implementation will go to disk many times for a single file, because filesystems aren't designed for this many small files. So this is really an issue of getting exactly the right stuff in memory so you can serve hot content from memory, and if you go to disk you seek exactly once instead of several times.

Re:Not hard

[TheRaven64]

Most operating systems will do read-ahead caching. If you use something like the sendfile system call then they will swap the entire file in in a single read (if it's only 18KB then this takes a maximum of five seeks, and typically just one). It will then keep it in RAM for a bit, so repeated access to the same photo will be faster.

If they were clever, they would put related photos contiguously on disk and grab them with a single read. If they were really clever then they'd use progressive encoding so they could send smaller images by just sending the first n bytes of the larger one.

Akamai?

[ruiner13]

Why don't they just use a 3rd party distributed storage system like Akamai NetStorage? Then they don't have to worry about adding capacity, redundancy, etc. All they have to do is upload the picture there, and Akamai mirrors it all around the world.

Re:Akamai?

[Anonymous Coward]

...you still have to do that part of uploading to Akamai. And if Akamai brings on a new node, it has to refresh most of the content from you anyway (yeh, its a tiered caching network that usually uploads from other nodes, but sometimes it doesnt). Cache hits from them tend to be in the 97%+ range if done right, but still, 97% of 8Gbs+ leaves 240Mb+ you have to serve. Akamai is a cache, not a content store. What you suggest is akin to saying its ok to pull the Raid array once things are loaded to RAM, cause the OS just keeps the data there. You still have to keep the storage, with redundancy and backups and the bandwidth to serve cache refreshes to Akamai. It does greatly reduce the problem, but it is not a complete solution in itself. It also does not work for most dynamic content, since it doesnt store your DB for you, those requests still have to go home, thus you still have to have the storage, capacity, DB horsepower, etc to serve the requests, including the ones that actually point the requester at Akamai for the static bits.

I dont work for FB, but a company that does make use of 3rd party caching networks for very large content distributions

Tm

Re:Akamai?

[ruiner13]

You're thinking of their caching service. NetStorage is different in that they actually host the physical file, they don't just cache the file for you.

Re:Akamai?

[Anonymous Coward]

That won't work considering the number of files. Given the quote (which require nearly a year of hassle with the Akamai morons and sighing an NDA, thus the AC post) we got from those idiots, it would cost us almost $200k/year given our bandwidth use to store ~1,000 files. Facebook has 30 billion files and assuming the same price per file as we were quoted, Akamai would charge $6,000,000,000,000/year to host them. To put that number in perspective, that's more than the GDP of the Germany plus that of the UK. The Akamai VP (something Danzig, I remember the name because of the band of the same name) I talked to just wasn't able to comprehend why we wouldn't consider paying that much to host a few files. We ended-up renting five 1U servers in four different countries for about $15k/year. While we have a little less total bandwidth and it requires more management time to maintain, it's only 7.5% of the cost of Akamai and we can store many(1,000 times?) more files than Akamai would let us at that price point. To say that the Akamai guys don't understand math is an understatement.

Re:Akamai?

[Mopatop]

They do.

Re:Akamai?

[g8oz]

If you watched the presentation you'd know that they do use Akamai as the first layer of their infrastructure.

FaceBook photo viewing is SLLLOOOOOWWWWWW...

[Ang31us]

I use FaceBook every day and looking at photo albums and pictures is horribly slow on their site. I consider their implementation an example of something that still needs improvement.

Re:FaceBook photo viewing is SLLLOOOOOWWWWWW...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FaceBook every day and ...

Really? And you admit it? In public? I hope you at least wash your hands afterwards.

Re:FaceBook photo viewing is SLLLOOOOOWWWWWW...

[delt0r]

Everything on the FB site is slow, even logging in. Thats why i don't use it anymore. But my wife still uses it a lot.

Facebook needs to add more processing capacity

[debest]

I put some short video clips on Facebook's video application (just stuff of my daughter for my friends and family to see). These are AVI files generated by my digital camera, about 20-30MB in size, lasting about 1-1.5 minutes each.

They uploaded pretty quickly, but then they were put in a queue to be encoded for their flash player. It took over 3 days for them to be online in my profile! It seems they don't need to just have large capacity for storage, but a bunch more CPU for processing.

Next paper

[apillowofclouds]

Next article, how to effectively serve a Flowgram that's referenced on Slashdot

Already been done.

[sirrube]

This stuff is cool either way, even if it is just "childish spam." Many of us only dream to work on something that will become this large scale.

...

Fortune 500 companies could probably learn a thing or two...

This Fortune 500 company could teach a thing or two on this subject. Since before 1999 DataTree has already did this. With over 40 billion land records online, and 600+TB of data, they deliver many millions of images daily. Not to put down FaceBook's Implementation, but DataTree does not need to run 10k webservers and 1800 SQL databases to provide images. It is nice to see the scalability factor of their design, but it does not mean that it is the most efficient way to do things, or to follow and learn from.

Re:Already been done.

[ehrichweiss]

My question is, does DataTree offer the photos in 4-5 different sizes? That is one of the key factors here apparently.

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what did that cost vs what facebook has spent?

Re:Already been done.

[davester666]

Obviously Datatree patented their setup, so they decided to use a very different implementation that works significantly different to avoid having to pay royalties...

Re:Already been done.

[sirrube]

No, A little different implementation, they are Public land records, such as deeds,mortgages, and any other legally recorded documents. They offer them in the original size they were provided by the county recorder. The file sizes range up to several megabytes depending on if it is a assessor map etc.

Re:Already been done.

[x_MeRLiN_x]

Serving images alone is very different from accepting 100 million uploads weekly.

Also, they were unable to withstand you linking to them.

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

DataTree does not need to run 10k webservers and 1800 SQL databases to provide images. DataTree might have same number of images as Facebook. But how much traffic DataTree gets compared to Facebook ?

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

So

DataTree: many millions images per day.
Facebbook: many millions images per 10 sec.

Certainly comparable. If you call a factor of 1000 comparable. How did this get modded informative?

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently your comment generated enough traffic to put Datatree's website down.

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

What FB is doing is impressive, mainly because of their robust index/permissions model and because they are dealing with color and transcoding on-the-fly from all different formats. Of course they suck power and burn down servers because they are using scripting systems written by morons, but it allowed them to get their stuff done and out the door. Getting DataTree online was really, really hard! It's just a damned shame they don't have guys like us to go in and rewrite everything now for optimization. I don't know about you, but after what Harish paid me, I'd be looking for eight digits (firm) from FaceBook or Google to fix them and there is just no way those children who run those places are going to pay like that. They would gladly rather give the money to the server/data center people and keep buying jumbo jets. Gates would pay, but he'd be more likely to try and capture our knowledge for incorporation into .NET (as if) and then force us to use .NET. In the end, it doesn't matter --Google will be in every County Recorder's office soon enough. They'll make Sergey go to Data Tree, he'll buy the company from First American (under threat of getting court orders to suck the data through the county's public terminals or manually re-loading the database), then execute an import command to suck the TIFF files into Google Earth and boom end of Data Tree. Anyway, I don't know about you, but at least I'm not making cereal for a living in San Dimas with Harish!

Re:Already been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but does DataTree have a hit count like Facebook

I find

[msimm]

That if you plan to do it (or hope to) it helps to read the ups and down of people who already have. And it's *nice* that some take the time out (as ./ did and a number of other sites) to talk about it so that we can learn from their experience and mistakes.

But if you already know everything, by all means, shoot. But the outline that just got you modded as insightful isn't an application, didn't detail redundancy of any sort and would be a management nightmare (ie, all the interesting stuff).

I mean really, we could propose that solution to just about any web based application but that's not hardly the story is it?

Re:I find

[ezzzD55J]

But if you already know everything, by all means, shoot. As I don't have modpoints.. Welcome to my friends list.

When you are talking 500Tb, you hit limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Limits, like: Netap filers max out at 16Tb (raw) per volume, so you have to start using multiple volumes and get creative with mount points and hope you dont hit some other limit (max files/inodes, addressing limits of the os/fs, etc). The harder part is the "way of directing requests to the correct image server/cluster" you mention. Its not quite "off the shelf" technology, as you now have to implement something that can handle the 4750000+ requests per second and point them in the right direction for a single entry in a pool of 30000000000. And thats just images, you still have to route and serve the rest of the content for the pages. At those levels, a simple F5 load balancer is not going to cut it. Stacking a bunch of F5's still wont do. This will probably be distributed across several DCs stretched across distant geographical areas with some DNS magic to route traffic to locally close DCs. Keeping even the indexes in sync so the requests can be rerouted to the proper DC (if not stored locally) becomes an interesting problem to solve.

No, I dont work for them, but I do work for another company facing similar storage/distribution problems. When things get this big, its not simply "take what works and just make it bigger or get more of them", you have to start redesigning things. For a bad car analogy: its like saying a passenger train is just a bunch of greyhound busses.

tm

Re:When you are talking 500Tb, you hit limits

[mlwmohawk]

Limits, like: Netap filers max out at 16Tb (raw) per volume,
Then use more than one.

Use multiple IP addresses and pipes. Balance the images based on popularity. Use redundant storage, hell even use rsync to keep images redundant.

None of this stuff is rocket science. It is all just an erector set.

I do this stuff for a living and there are much harder problems than this.

Now, if you were transcoding the images on the fly, that might be more fun.

Re:When you are talking 500Tb, you hit limits

[Anonymous Coward]

ZFS will sure help solve storage limitations. It would be nice if Google would release GoogleFS and all their "cloud" technology...

Re:When you are talking 500Tb, you hit limits

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of agree with you, but it probably IS possible to do this with off the shelf technology, but its probably prohibitively expensive.

eg Sets of Netscaler MPX's can do 15000 Mbps

Software solutions can give you a competitive advantage though.

Alex

Re:When you are talking 500Tb, you hit limits

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually think that my college (PSU) has its own server(s) dedicated to facebook.I'm nost sure if this was on facebooks part of the colleges part to save bandwidth but its there.

server load fixed

[gobaudd]

we had some problems in the beginning but the server should be much better now.

How Facebook Stores Billions of Photos?

[electricbern]

Simple: 70 thousand pen drives.

Facebook?

[PalmKiller]

Nothing to see here folks, move on.

User-mode GoogleFS

[Panaflex]

(summarizing the big long presentation)

This is basically want to make a usermode GoogleFS. Their biggest problem is reducing reads - which are hampered by Posix file standards (inodes, metadata, etc...)

Instead they use a database-like index/data file arrangement. The index stays in memory and files are stored together in large contiguous spaces on a single file. It's possible to utilize a LUN for storage - but not there yet.

There... where's my cookie?

(Oddly enough - I'm writing the exact same code they are... bazaar world, eh??)

Re:User-mode GoogleFS

[Anonymous Coward]

A real man would just open /dev/scd0 and just start writing. Filesystems are for sissies.

What a waste

[jon3k]

All of those hacks, they should have just written a filesystem.

Yeah but their servers are never working

[Snaller]

Either they are not replying at all or so slow you can invade a smaller country for no reason except for doing it while you wait - so I'm not really interested in their opinion

Privacy is a problem ...

[trolltalk.com]

My information costs me nothing to give away.

... yet ...

most everything about me - my relationship status, my mood, my hobbies - I gain value by giving this information freely.

And given enough info, our information mining overlords will be able to predict what passwords you use, what sort of "private" proclivities you indulge in, etc. Then your Big Brother issues a subpoena for that shit, and you're f$cked.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

They want your real name.

[jotaeleemeese]

As your screen name.

That was enough to put me off.