CASE STUDY FLIPKART

Reduce lag time.

Enhance user experience.

Indias largest online retailer accelerates MySQL

Challenge
Flipkarts data center infrastructure suffered latency
issues and was unable to handle peaks in traffic.
database performance, improves site integrity
and conserves power with HGSTs enterprise-
class PCIe SSDs
Following its launch in 2007, Flipkart grew rapidly and is now Indias largest online retailer. While
Flipkarts explosive growth was clearly a business success, its data center infrastructure lagged
behind and was unable to handle peaks in traffic. According to Burzin Engineer, director of
engineering at Flipkart, Our website performance was unpredictable under load, and during
peak load, our MySQL database replication lagged. The MySQL slaves would never catch up.
We needed to recreate the slaves with a backup and restore to get the slaves back in sync. This
got to the point where it was happening every couple of days.

Solution
Flipkart replaced most of the 15K HDDs in its MySQL
server with HGST FlashMAX PCIe SSDs.
In addition, Flipkarts typical MySQL databases were stored on three servers with six 15K 146GB
hard disk drives (HDDs) per server. The MySQL servers were running at less than 50 percent
of CPU utilization because of the storage I/O bottleneck. Flipkart needed a solution that would
solve the problem quickly.
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 CASE STUDY FLIPKART

Benefits Cutting Power Usage

50 percent increased performance.
Improved user experience and site integrity.
Enhanced website stability with unconditional
peak performance.
Amod Malviya, Flipkarts vice president of engineering,
heard about HGSTs high-performance FlashMAX PCIe
solid-state drive (SSD) and decided to test the solution
via HGSTs 45-day sample program.
After a quick lab test, it was clear that FlashMAX
was the solution to Flipkarts database and website
performance problems. Engineer decided to replace
most of Flipkarts 15K HDDs in the MySQL server with
HGSTs FlashMAX PCIe SSDs. The problem was solved
quickly, Engineer said. FlashMAX allowed us to focus
on our core business, instead of on database tuning and
administration.
Power consumption in the data center is always a
concern for any enterprise. This is especially true in India,
which struggles to deliver enough power. Engineer said,
FlashMAX enabled us to improve our I/O performance
by 10 times with approximately half the power. Before
deploying FlashMAX, Flipkart had eight 15K HDDs
in a RAID 10 to meet its performance and reliability
requirements. FlashMAX now delivers more than 10
times the performance with the same reliability through
a RAID 5 running on the FlashMAX PCIe SSD. According
to Malviya, The money we save on power and cooling

Performance alone further justifies our FlashMAX investment and

could easily pay for the cards over their lifetime.
FlashMAX PCIe SSDs completely eliminated the I/O
bottleneck caused by the HDDs. After installing
FlashMAX, our web performance was outstanding right
through the peak performance periods, Engineer said.
We had been thinking about replacing the MySQL
servers, but they now have sufficient unconditional peak
performance to meet our needs.

Improving Site Integrity

HGSTs FlashMAX PCIe SSDs performed much better
than the former disk arrays, but more importantly for
Flipkart, they improved the integrity of its site. When
the slave MySQL servers were so far behind, we would
deliver out-of-date information to our customers. With
HGST, our customers always receive the most up-to-date
information, said Engineer.

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The Results About Flipkart

Before deploying FlashMAX PCIe SSDs, Flipkarts MySQL
environment included:
Three MySQL servers (one master, two slaves)
Eight SAS 15K 146GB HDDs in RAID 10
32 total HDDs
Flipkart replaced the 32 HDDs with four FlashMAX 1.1TB
PCIe SSDs, resulting in the following benefits:
50 percent increased performance
Flipkart.com, Indias largest online retailer, went live
in 2007 and since then has grown rapidly with the
introduction of innovative features such as collect on
delivery, 30-day replacement guarantees and its own
delivery network. Today its product portfolio ranges
across 14 categories from books to music, mobiles,
computers, cameras, home and kitchen appliances, TV
and home theatre systems, personal and healthcare
products, and the newly launched stationery items. The
site ranks among the top 30 in India (per Alexa rankings)
and receives more than 12 million visits every month.

Improved user experience and site integrity

Enhanced website stability with unconditional peak

performance

Extension of the MySQL servers lifetime by at least a

year

50 percent reduction in storage power usage

By simply replacing hard drives with HGST FlashMAX

PCIe SSDs, Flipkart achieved dramatic improvements in
HGST FlashMAX II PCIe SSD customer experience, IT performance, Opex and Capex.

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CS12-FLIPKART-EN-0815-04