Opera: Syncing Tens of Millions of Browsers with ScyllaDB

Opera, a NASDAQ-traded company with a significant user base primarily in Africa, has adopted ScyllaDB to improve the synchronization of user data across its various browsers and platforms. The move from Apache Cassandra to ScyllaDB was driven by performance issues and operational challenges with Cassandra, such as high latencies and frequent crashes. Opera initially faced difficulties with Cassandra's garbage collection pauses and maintenance headaches, prompting the exploration of ScyllaDB's shard-per-core architecture, which promised enhanced performance and reliability. After testing and benchmarking, Opera found that ScyllaDB could handle three times more operations per second with significantly reduced latencies compared to Cassandra. This led to a migration process that initially involved testing with a select user group before a full-scale transition. The successful migration resulted in a more efficient system with reduced node requirements and faster synchronization times, ultimately providing a more seamless experience for Opera's users without the operational burdens previously encountered.