Wix transitioned from a monolithic architecture to microservices to improve scalability, availability, and performance. The system was split into the Editor, Media, and Public segments. The Editor segment uses active-standby MySQL replication across data centers to provide high availability for editing websites. The Media segment is a distributed file system running on cloud infrastructure. The Public segment uses load balancers, caching, and database normalization to render websites with sub-100ms response times for millions of users. Redundancy and fallback strategies ensure segments can tolerate failures to meet strict 99.999% availability SLAs.

1. Aviran Mordo
Head of Engineering
@aviranm
linkedin.com/in/aviran
aviransplace.com
Scaling with
Microservices Architecture
and Multi-cloud platforms

3. Wix in Numbers
Over 72M users (website builders)
Static storage is >2PB of data
3 data centers + 3 clouds (Google, Amazon,Azure)
2B HTTP requests/day
1000 people work atWix

4. Initial Architecture
Built for fast development
Stateful login (Tomcat session), Ehcache, file uploads
No consideration for performance, scalability and testing
Intended for short-term use
Tomcat, Hibernate, custom web framework
Lighttpd
(file serving) MySQL
DB
Wix
(Tomcat)

5. The Monolithic Giant
One monolithic server that handled everything
Dependency between features
Changes in unrelated areas of the system caused deployment of
the whole system
Failure in unrelated areas will cause system wide downtime

6. Breaking the System Apart

8. Concerns and SLA
DataValidation
Security / Authentication
Data consistency
Lots of data
Edit websites
High availability
High performance
Lots of static files
Very high traffic volume
Viewport optimization
Long tail (immutable)
Serving Media
High availability
High performance
High traffic volume
Long tail (mutable)
View sites, created by
Wix editor

9. Wix Segmentation
1. Editor Segment 3. Public Segment2. Media Segment
Networking

10. HTML
Editor
Flash
Editor
MSM
Private
Media
Public
Media
Editor Segment Public Segment
Premium
Services
eCommerse
List DB
App
Builder
App
Store
App
Market
Dashboard
Statics/me
dia
Mailer
TimeZone
Public
HTML API
Public API
(Flash)
MSP
Public
Server
HTML
Renderer
HTML SEO
Renderer
Flash
Renderer
Flash SEO
Renderer
Sitemap
Renderer
Robots.txt
Renderer
User
Server
Template
Viewer
ContactsHUB
Activit
y
Site
Members
Provided
Mailing
Service
Comments
Snapshoter
User Pref
Feed Me
Shout-out Hotels
PETRI
Site Pref
Dist LoggerSlicer
eCom
Renderer
eCom Cart
eCom
Checkout
eCom
Catalog
eCom
Orders
Payment
Facade
Account
Info
HTML API
HTML
Embeder
BlogMobile

11. It is all about

13. Microservices Guidelines
Each service has its own DB schema (if one is needed)
Only one service should write to a specific DB table(s)
There may be additional read-only services that directly
accesses the DB (for performance reasons)
Services are stateless
No DB transactions
Cache is not a building block, but an optimization

14. Microservices Tradeoffs
Each service has its own DB schema (if one is needed)
Gain - Easy to scale microservices based on service level concerns
Tradeoff – system complexity, performance
Only one service should write to a specific DB table(s)
Gain - Decoupling architecture – faster development
Tradeoff – system complexity / performance
May have additional read-only services that accesses the DB
Gain - Performance gain
Tradeoff - coupling
Services are stateless
Gain - Easy to scale out (just add more servers)
Tradeoff - performance / consistency
No DB transactions
Gain - Better DB performance, easier to scale
Tradeoff - system complexity

15. 1. Editor Segment

16. Editor Server
Immutable JSON pages (~3M / day)
Site revisions
Active – standby MySQL cross datacenters
Editor Server
MySQL
Active
Sites
MySQL
Archive

18. Protect The Data
DB outage with fast recovery = replication
Data poisoning/corruption = revisions / backup
Make the data available at all times = data distribution to multiple
locations / providers

19. Browser
Editor
Server
GCS
MySQL
Active
Sites
MySQL
Archive
Saving Editor Data
WixMedia
(Amazon)
WixMedia
(Google)
Save Page(s)
200 OK
Upload
Save Page
DC replication
Notify
MySQL
Archive
MySQL
Active
Sites
S3
WixMedia
(DC-1)

20. Browser
Editor
Server
GCS
MySQL
Active
Sites
MySQL
Archive
WixMedia
(Amazon)
WixMedia
(Google)
Save Page(s)
200 OK
Upload
Save Page
DC replication
Notify
MySQL
Archive
MySQL
Active
Sites
S3
WixMedia
(DC-1)
Self Healing Process

21. No DB Transactions
Save each page (JSON) as an atomic operation
Page ID is a content based hash (immutable/idempotent)
Finalize transaction by sending site header (list of pages)
Can generate orphaned pages, not a problem in practice

22. 2. Media Segment (WixMP)

23. Wix Media Platform (WixMP)
Eventual consistent distributed file system
(2PB user media files)
Dynamic media processing
Multi datacenter aware
Automatic fallback cross DC
Run on commodity servers & cloud

24. T
Google
Cloud
Prospero – Wix Media Manager
get image.jpg
First
fallback
Second
fallback
If not in
CDN
Amazon
x36
T
x36
T
x32
Austin
CDN

25. 3. Public Segment

26. Public Segment Roles
Routing (resolve URLs)
Dispatching (to a renderer)
Rendering (HTML,XML,TXT)
Public
Server
HTML
Renderer
HTML SEO
Renderer
Flash
Renderer
Sitemap
Renderer
Robots.txt
Renderer
www.example.com
Flash SEO
Renderer

27. Public SLA
Our goal: 99% response time <100ms at peak traffic

28. Publish Site
Publish site header (a map of pages for a site)
Publish routing table
Publish site header / routes (CQRS)
Editor Segment Public Segment

29. Built For Speed
Minimize out-of-process hops (2 DB, 1 RPC)
Lookup tables are cached in memory, updated every few minutes
Denormalized data – optimize for read by primary key (MySQL)
Minimize business logic

30. How a Page Gets Rendered
Bootstrap HTML template that contains only data
Only JavaScript imports
JSON data (site-header + dynamic data)
No “real” HTML view

31. Offload rendering work to the browser

32. The average Intel Core
i750 can push up to 7
GFLOPS without
overclocking

33. Why JSON?
Easy to parse in JavaScript and Java/Scala
Fairly compact text format
Highly compressible (5:1 even for small payloads)
Easy to fix rendering bugs and cross browsers issues (just
deploy a new code)

34. Minimum Number of Public Servers
Needed to Serve 66M Sites
4

35. Public SLA
Be Available 99.999%

36. Serving a Site – Sunny Day
Archive
CDN WixMP
Browser
http://example.wix.com
Store HTML
to cache
HTTP
Request
Notify
site view
LB
Public
Renderer
HTML
Resources / Media
HTTP
Request

37. Serving a Site – DC Lost
Archive
CDN WixMP
Browser
http://example.wix.com
LB
Public
Renderer
LB
Public
Renderer
Change DNS
HTTP
Request

38. Serving a Site – Public Lost
Archive
Browser
http://example.wix.com
LB
Public
Renderer
Get
Cached HTML
Version
HTML
HTTP
Request
LB
Public
Renderer
Fallback to 2nd
DC

39. Living in the Browser
CDN WixMP
Browser
http://example.wix.com
LB
Public
Renderer
Editor Pages
Fallback
JSON /
Media
HTML
HTTP
Request Fallback

40. Summary
Identify concerns and SLA for different parts of the system
Build redundancy in critical path (for availability)
De-normalize data (for performance)
Minimize out-of-process hops (for performance)
Take advantage of client’s CPU power

42. Aviran Mordo
Head of Engineering
@aviranm
linkedin.com/in/aviran
aviransplace.com
http://engineering.wix.com
http://goo.gl/3xhpNW
@WixEng