Dropbox has achieved high scalability, growing from 1 million registered users in 2010 to over 500 million users in 2016. This growth was enabled by choosing the programming language Go for its performance and scalability. Dropbox also regularly releases beta updates and tests potential points of failure on its live site. While Dropbox has scaled enormously, limitations include potential performance issues from CPU and memory constraints on Android.
2. INTRODUCTION
• It’s the perfect tool for backing up documents, quickly sharing
files, and saving images, docs and other media
• Dropbox is one of the world’s favorite cloud-based, file-sharing solutions
• Dropbox was founded in 2007, by MIT students Drew Houston
and Arash Ferdowsi
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3. DROPBOX SCALABILITY
Year Registered Users
2010 April 1 Million
210 September 2 Million
2010 November 3 Million
2011 October 50 Million
2012 November 100 Million
2013 November 200 Million
2015 June 400 Million
2016 March 500 Million
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How Dropbox achieve High scalability
4. • Go, limited structural typing, memory safety features and concurrent programming
• Maybe it sounds stupid to run fire drills on the live site, but testing
environments are not sufficient and this is really good insurance
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How Dropbox achieve High scalability
Choosing Go was a Good Decision
Test Potential Fail Points
Keep Hardware Consistence
• Having pieces of hardware's with consistent configurations
Use UTC Time
• Business relies on reliable file synchronization and time zone change
will be the potential issue
5. • Dropbox still releases beta channel updates to its Android, Mac, Windows and
Linux clients. These releases often introduce new features before they hit the
main line for users who explicitly are willing to test the newest stuff, while
understanding there could be bugs
• Users with large numbers of shared folders only had to make one query
of the database
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How Dropbox achieve High scalability
Release Often
Sharing on Dropbox was quiet Buggy
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Mainly Affected Quality Attributes
Performance
• Scale out with mirror servers
• Secondary CPU’s
• Mchached queries
Usability
• Augmented Document Scanner
• Log spam & Downtime log
• Version Controlling
8. Scaling of Dropbox is very high but there is always a trade off
and impact may be high at some point.
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
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9. Performance
• Load handling
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
6.30 AM7.00 AM7.30 AM8.00 AM9.00 AM
CPU Mem-…
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10. • CPU and Memory issues
python isn’t used on Android in order to reduce impact for memory
constraints. mixed environment of python and C creates problems
when fixing CPU.
• Syncing issues
Dropbox automatically throttles itself to 75% of your maximum
upload.
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
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11. Usability & Interoperability
• Re-login issue in Android old Versions
• Issues in upload and download in Android
downloading large files from the Drobox app on Android mobile device.
Android application doesn’t provide “resume download” feature
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
• Resetting password
resetting password on web affected to the Android mobile application
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12. Security
• Vulnerability in the Dropbox SDK – 2014
• Dropbox's "cloud" technology model issue
All Dropbox accounts could be accessed without password for four
hours. The error was caused by an authentication code update.
• Attack in 2012
More than 68 million passwords were robbed from DropBox.
accounts may have been exposed including emails and
encrypted passwords
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
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13. • Encryption issue
users do not have such opportunity to upload their own data with encryption.
Dropbox employees or the government could see or access your files at will.
Strengths Weaknesses
Offline saving available.
Automatic photo and video upload option.
Can create text files inside app.
Light image-editing abilities.
it can automatically back up your photos and videos, too
Security and encryption
Limited sharing and syncing control problem
Opportunities Threats
Offline services – can use offline folder on android app
Pursuing partnership (Android)
Mobile application programming Interface (API)
Free Application
LIMITATIONS & TRADE OFF ANALYSIS
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14. DROPBOX VS GOOGLE DRIVE
1 2 3
50
100
200
400
500
2010
APRIL
2010 SEP 2010 NOV 2011 OCT 2012 NOV 2013 NOV 2015 JUNE 2016
MARCH
UsersinMillion
Year & Month
Scalability In Years
Growth
120
190
240
290
800
2013 NOV 2014 JUNE 2014 OCT 2015 JAN 2017 MARCH
UsersinMillion
Year & Month
Growth
Growth
• Start Date 2007 • Start Date 2012
15. DROPBOX VS GOOGLE DRIVE
• 2000 users to 500 million users • 120 million users on Start