Monster Scale Summit

Summary: Tzach Livyatan explains why ScyllaDB Cloud is a cost-effective alternative to DynamoDB. Tablets and Raft let ScyllaDB cloud add or remove mixed‑size nodes on demand and operate at 90% storage utilization. Fast tablet rebalancing delivers hour‑by‑hour compute elasticity. Tablet‑aware, file‑based streaming trims inter‑zone traffic and speeds cluster operations, cutting both network spend and wall‑clock scaling time.

Topics discussed

• X Cloud: a tablet‑ and Raft‑based ScyllaDB Cloud design that enables cost reduction
• How just‑in‑time scaling works
• Why higher storage utilization and mixed nodes lowers server count and provisioning lag
• How rapid tablet rebalancing enables elasticity that tracks workload peaks
• How tablet‑enabled, file‑based streaming reduces inter‑zone and inter‑region network charges while accelerating data movement

Takeaways

• Tablet‑driven, mixed‑size clusters push storage utilization from 70 % to 90 %.
• Fast tablet rebalancing lets operators spin compute nodes up or down within minutes, so nightly batch spikes don’t require all‑day over‑provisioning. Automate the scale‑in/out loop to match traffic curves.
• File‑based streaming moves whole SSTables and avoids cross‑zone chatter on triple‑replicated data, lowering network bills and shortening maintenance windows that can hurt latency.
• Combining higher utilization with lighter network traffic slashes the cloud bill yet keeps headroom for throughput‑intensive workloads.

Top takeaway: ScyllaDB Cloud’s X Cloud delivers low‑latency performance at extreme scale without over‑provisioning.