eBay has one of the largest data warehouses in the world! See how the BI Platform team at eBay had to rethink and rebuild their system architecture and processes in order to support the ever-growing data volume and scalability needs of their developers and users.

1. HOW BIG IS BIG: SCALING
MICROSTRATEGY AT EBAY
Business Intelligence Architect
Tim Case

2. TODAY’S TOPICS
•eBay Overview
•Challenges & Solutions
•Plans for 2014
•Extending MicroStrategy
SCALING MICROSTRATEGY AT EBAY 2

3. 128M
Active users
7 out of 10
Items sold are new
7 out of 10
Items sold are
fixed price
EBAY MARKETPLACES

4. A new retail is emerging.
It’s consumer driven and
technology enabled.

5. THE PHONE IS BECOMING A MISSION CONTROL DEVICE

6. People want to get
what they want,
when they want it,
wherever they are.

7. 2012 Mobile GMV
$13B
$22B
in 2013
Countries
190
Application
downloads
190M
EBAY LEADS IN MOBILE

8. every
10
min.a car or truck is
bought via mobile
every
1
min.a tablet is
bought via mobile
every
15
sec.a ladies handbag is
bought via mobile
EBAY MOBILE VOLUME IS STAGGERING

9. We connect people to the
things they need and love.

10. DATA STATISTICS
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11. DATA PLATFORMS
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12. 52N Co-existent
5300/5350/5380
(30 TB /50 TB Max)
‘99 ’01 ‘11’03 ‘05 ‘07 ‘09
Access DB &
MS Excel Reports
(3 MB)
Informatica
Oracle DW &
Business Objects
(500 GB)
Campaign Mgmt
DMs: FADE, RFM,
Power Sellers,
VCRU… (4 TB)
Teradata
12N 5300
(8 TB)
Dual System
Primary: 64N 5400
Secondary: 60N 5380
Auto Gen ETL
SOA
Virtual Data
Marts (VDM)
Tactical Workload
Member Insight
ABC (RAM)
Singularity
Connected Commerce
Cloud (Internal)
Hadoop and
NoSQL
MicroStrategy
SAS
MAX Portal
Ab Initio
Tableau
ANALYTICS EVOLUTION
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13. MICROSTRATEGY BY THE NUMBERS
64 Projects
5,200 Users
440,000 Sessions
15,000,000 Jobs
70,000 Reports
240 Cubes
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14. MICROSTRATEGY ARCHITECTURE
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15. CHALLENGES
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16. INTELLIGENT CUBE GROWTH
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PROBLEM
•No available memory (RAM) for
additional Intelligent Cubes

17. INTELLIGENT CUBE GROWTH
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256
1024
2048
2011 2012 2013
RAM (in GB)PROBLEM
•No available memory (RAM) for
additional Intelligent Cubes
SOLUTION
•Increased the RAM to physical limit of
servers (2TB)

18. INTELLIGENT CUBE PROCESSING
PROBLEM
•Intelligent cube processing taking too
long and missing SLAs
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19. INTELLIGENT CUBE PROCESSING
PROBLEM
•Intelligent cube processing taking too
long and missing SLAs
SOLUTION
•Upgraded to a 10Gbps connection to
backend network
•Added additional server to cluster
•Balanced jobs across nodes Cube 05
Cube 04
Cube 03
Cube 02
Cube 01
Cube Processing Times (in
seconds)
Before After
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20. PROBLEM
•Moving servers between environments
caused issues
URL REWRITE
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21. PROBLEM
•Moving servers between environments
caused issues
SOULTION
•URL Rewrite rules
URL REWRITE
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<rule name="test" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^asp/Main.aspx” />
<conditions>
<add input=“{QUERY_STRING}” type=“Pattern”
pattern=“(.*)server=[^&]+(.*)”
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="bix/asp/Main.aspx?
{C:1}server=ISERVER01{C:2}" />
</rule>

22. PROBLEM
•Users need to be able to gauge data
freshness at a glance
CUBE MONITOR
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23. PROBLEM
•Users need to be able to gauge data
freshness at a glance
SOULTION
•Custom Cube Monitor application
CUBE MONITOR
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24. PROBLEM
•No way to measure end-to-end user
experience
PAGE LOAD TIMES
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25. PROBLEM
•No way to measure end-to-end user
experience
SOULTION
•Plugin to measure client-side
performance
PAGE LOAD TIMES
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26. PROBLEM
•No way to measure end-to-end user
experience
SOULTION
•Plugin to measure client-side
performance
•Email Alerts
PAGE LOAD TIMES
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27. PROBLEM
•Need a low friction way to log anything
MEASURE EVERYTHING
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28. PROBLEM
•Need a low friction way to log anything
SOULTION
•HTTP Log Service
MEASURE EVERYTHING
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http://api.bix.corp.ebay.com/LogService/Log
?app=TEST
&function=TestFunction
&user=tcase
&executiontime=9999
&error=FALSE
&note=This%20is%20a%20sample

29. PROBLEM
•Difficult to monitor multiple applications
•No single point-of-view
CROSS-PLATFORM INSIGHT
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30. PROBLEM
•Difficult to monitor multiple applications
•No single point-of-view
SOULTION
CROSS-PLATFORM INSIGHT
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31. SPLUNK
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32. SPLUNK
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33. PLANNED IN 2014
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34. PROBLEM
•Managing Windows and Linux servers
increases complexity
MIXED ENVIRONMENT
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35. PROBLEM
•Managing Windows and Linux servers
increases complexity
SOULTION
•Standardize on Linux
MIXED ENVIRONMENT
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36. PROBLEM
•Shared storage is a single point of
failure
SHARED STORAGE
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37. PROBLEM
•Shared storage is a single point of
failure
SOULTION
•Flash-based “storage bubble”
SHARED STORAGE
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38. PROBLEM
•Widespread impact during planned and
unplanned downtime
PLATFORM STABILITY
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39. PROBLEM
•Widespread impact during planned and
unplanned downtime
SOULTION
•Sharded architecture
– Physical servers
– Linux cgroups
– Internal cloud (C3)
PLATFORM STABILITY
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40. PROBLEM
•High memory requirements
•Duplicated data
•Scalability issues
ANALYTIC DATA STORE
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41. PROBLEM
•High memory requirements
•Duplicated data
•Scalability issues
SOULTION
•Analytic data layer
ANALYTIC DATA STORE
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42. EXTENDING
MICROSTRATEGY
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43. METRICS EXPLORER
•Integrated with internal DataHub
•Leverages MicroStrategy Visual Insight
•Access to Intelligent Cubes for quick analysis
•Warehouse reports also available for deeper analysis
•Can save and share results
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44. METRICS EXPLORER
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45. METRICS EXPLORER
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46. METRICS EXPLORER
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47. METRICS EXPLORER
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48. ELEMENT CACHING SERVICE
•Improve prompt performance
– Critical for Metrics Explorer
•Daily and weekly schedules
•Developer self-service
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49. ELEMENT CACHING SERVICE
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50. ELEMENT CACHING SERVICE
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51. ELEMENT CACHING SERVICE
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52. ELEMENT CACHING SERVICE
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53. WEB BASED COMMAND MANAGER (WBCM)
•No need to install Command Manager
•Ability to trigger events via REST service
•Simple workflows supported
•Simplified user management
•Empowers developers
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54. WEB BASED COMMAND MANAGER
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55. WEB BASED COMMAND MANAGER
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56. WEB BASED COMMAND MANAGER
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57. WEB BASED COMMAND MANAGER
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58. SELF SERVICE MIGRATION TOOL (SSMT)
•Developer-focused tool for object management
•Enables software development lifecycle (SDLC)
•Built-in automated testing
•Improved visibility into object migration
•Leverages System Manager
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59. SELF-SERVICE MIGRATION TOOL
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1. Get Object Manager access
2. Generate package using Object Manager
3. Upload package
4. Import package
o Update Schema
o Purge Object Cache
o Purge Element Cache
o Email Notifications

60. OData
•Industry-standard Open Data Protocol
•Get data in XML or JSON format
•Consume MicroStrategy data from your tool of choice:
– Excel
– Tableau
– Visualization libraries (D3.js, Highcharts)
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61. OData
http://localhost:8080/owind.svc/Categories/Description
http://localhost:8080/owind.svc/Categories/$count
http://localhost:8080/owind.svc/Categories?$orderby=CategoryName desc&$top=4
http://localhost:8080/owind.svc/Categories?$filter=CategoryID eq 8
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62. WRAP UP
•Challenges & Solutions
•Plans for 2014
•Extending MicroStrategy
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63. QUESTIONS?
tcase@ebay.com
@timrcase
http://www.linkedin.com/in/timrcase/