FullContact: Improving the Graph by Transitioning from Cassandra to ScyllaDB

FullContact transitioned from Cassandra to ScyllaDB for their Resolve product, aiming to overcome performance limitations with Cassandra, such as failing to achieve desired query rates and encountering timeouts under heavy loads. Initially attracted to Cassandra for its scalability and low latency, the team faced challenges despite extensive tuning efforts, including compaction strategies and heap size adjustments, which only marginally improved performance. ScyllaDB, a C++-based drop-in replacement for Cassandra, promised significant performance enhancements and successfully delivered, allowing FullContact to exceed their goal of 10,000 queries per second and even peak at over 20,000 requests per second with minimal latency. The switch to ScyllaDB not only resolved performance issues but also simplified maintenance with out-of-the-box performance improvements and easy monitoring integration. Despite initial setbacks with data loading due to format compatibility, FullContact adjusted their data processing strategy to leverage streaming inserts, further optimizing their database operations and significantly enhancing their system's efficiency.