HALO: Hardware Analytics and Lifecycle Optimization at Facebook

Ideas you will meet

Machine Learning Systems

Recommendations, ranking, feature stores and serving models at scale.

What we already know about this

Our own lessons on these ideas. Read them here before you start, so it makes sense.

• Big Data and Cloud Data Platforms · 11 minData lakes, warehouses and lakehousesWhere analytical data lives and why: OLTP versus OLAP, columnar files, ETL versus ELT, and open table formats.Read hereClose

  Two kinds of workload

  	OLTP (transactions)	OLAP (analytics)
  Purpose	Run the application	Understand the business
  Queries	Many small reads and writes of single rows	Few large scans and aggregations over many rows
  Storage layout	Row oriented	Column oriented
  Examples	PostgreSQL, MySQL for an order system	A warehouse for revenue by region and month

  Running heavy analytics on the production database slows the application, so analytical data is copied into systems built for it.

  Columnar storage and file formats

  Analytical queries typically read a few columns across millions of rows. Storing data by column means:

  • A query reads only the columns it needs.
  • Values in one column are similar, so they compress extremely well.
  • Engines can skip chunks using min/max statistics.

  Parquet and ORC are the standard open columnar file formats. Compared with CSV or JSON they are much smaller and faster to query.

  Three architectures

  100%

  Figure SDA-BDP-03-1 · Three architectures · © forcsguy.com

  Data warehouse

  A curated, structured store optimised for SQL analytics, with a defined schema (often a star schema: a central fact table of events such as sales, surrounded by dimension tables such as customer, product and date). Reliable and fast, but historically costly and rigid with raw or unstructured data.

  Data lake

  Raw files of any format kept cheaply in object storage, with schema applied when read. Flexible and cheap, and good for machine learning and unstructured data. Risks: no transactions, inconsistent data and "data swamps" nobody trusts.

  Lakehouse

  The two combined: files in open formats on object storage, with a table format adding the warehouse features.

  • Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi: a transaction log or metadata layer that provides ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel (query data as it was), and efficient updates and deletes.
  • One copy of data serves BI, SQL, streaming and machine learning, using different engines (Spark, Trino, warehouses) on the same tables.

  Moving data: ETL and ELT

  • ETL: extract, transform, then load. Transformation happens before the data reaches the warehouse.
  • ELT: extract, load raw, then transform inside the warehouse or lake engine. Common today, since storage is cheap, compute is elastic, and you keep the raw data to reprocess.
  • Change data capture (CDC) streams database changes into the lake continuously, instead of nightly dumps.

  Organising data: layers

  A common pattern, sometimes called medallion layers:

  1. Raw (bronze): exactly as received.
  2. Cleaned (silver): deduplicated, typed, validated.
  3. Business-ready (gold): modelled tables and aggregates for reports.

  Good practice

  • Partition large tables (by date, for example) so queries scan less.
  • Keep files a sensible size (hundreds of MB); many tiny files slow everything.
  • Enforce data quality checks and schemas at ingestion.
  • Provide a catalogue (what data exists, who owns it, lineage) and access controls (row, column and table level).
  • Track cost: scanning unpartitioned petabytes is expensive.
  • Separate storage from compute so different teams scale their engines independently.

  Real-world reading

  Related reading

  • Cassandra: A Decentralized Structured Storage System (paper)Lakshman and Malik · FacebookPapers
  • The Architecture of Open Source ApplicationsVarious authors · aosabook.orgBooks
  • HaloDB: Embedded Key-Value Storage Engine at YahooYahoo engineers · YahooCase Studies
  • Bullet: Forward-Looking Query Engine for Streaming Data at YahooYahoo engineers · YahooCase Studies

  Show 6 moreShow fewer

  • Improving Stream Data Quality With Protobuf Schema Validation at DeliverooDeliveroo engineers · DeliverooCase Studies
  • Continuous Load Testing at SlackSlack engineers · SlackCase Studies
  • Druid - Real-time Analytics DatabaseApache engineers · ApacheDocumentation
  • MPH: Fast and Compact Immutable Key-Value Stores at IndeedIndeed engineers · IndeedCase Studies
  • Venice: Distributed Key-Value Database at LinkedinLinkedin engineers · LinkedinCase Studies
  • Data Wrangling at SlackSlack engineers · SlackCase Studies

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