Braze embraces hypergrowth while pushing database technology to its limits

The obstacles they faced

In 2012, Braze chose to architect a sharded MongoDB environment to prepare for future growth and scalability. That growth exceeded all expectations, as a brand after brand used Braze’s customer lifecycle engagement platform for its applications, website and email strategies. Braze may have become the world’s largest installation on the cross-platform document-oriented database program.

Every month, tens of billions of messages to and from users are managed through Braze software. As the company’s runaway growth continues, so must its ability to scale and provide service around the clock.

Managing the sheer volume of data, as well as the number of shards and instances, began to present an operational challenge. Braze needed help architecting and maintaining such a massive and sprawling database environment while continuing to position itself for near-constant growth into the future.

What we achieved together

Braze has been able to keep its DBA headcount down, while building and running a truly massive MongoDB installation, thanks to its reliance on ObjectRocket expertise and support from Rackspace Technology. The strength of that offering is now globally recognized as ObjectRocket from Rackspace Technology becomes a certified worldwide cloud provider of MongoDB.

“ObjectRocket has partnered with Braze to push MongoDB up to and possibly past its limits,” said Braze’s CTO and co-founder, Jon Hyman.

Examples of the partnership include physical hardware changes, kernel tweaks, architectural changes, design assistance, application- and database-level design architecting, running a custom-patched MongoDB software version, indexing help and troubleshooting — plus upgrades to Braze’s massive and ever-growing environments.

Hyman also cites what he calls ObjectRocket’s “battle-tested readiness” as a key characteristic of its successful partnership with Braze. If Hyman can envision ways to optimize and scale Braze’s instances, ObjectRocket willingly jumps in to help make it work, testing and optimizing instances as they go.

“ObjectRocket from Rackspace provides database administrators and engineers who fully support our data, not just the infrastructure,” said Hyman. “They have worked with our team to customize and optimize solutions that help us meet our customers’ needs. We’re excited about their certification and partnership with MongoDB.”