Django Microservices at Prezi​

Peter Neumark: Moving to microservices without losing sleep

Abstract:

Prezi’s backend services (Django applications) grew in features and functionality until it was no longer possible to easily separate the essential parts from the “nice to have” features. Over time, these services started having all sorts of dependencies on each other and 3rd party components (databases, caches, etc), which made it hard to guess what happens when some part of the system fails.

With microservices, containing and understanding the implications of failure is essential, but you can’t just turn off production databases without disrupting users. Failure injection comes to the rescue, enabling us to prepare for the worst without unleashing it on customers.

Speaker Bio:

Pete started as a front end developer at Prezi. He later moved to the backend and has been happily coding and operating the services which let you present.

Johannes Schirrmeister: Microservices and the need to use your resources more considerately

Abstract:

To keep up with Prezi’s ever-growing user base, their backend teams are shifting towards a microservice architecture and moving to the Amazon cloud. While they are already experiencing the benefits of this approach, they were faced with significantly increased load times when they replaced SQL queries with Thrift requests across data centers.This required them to take a closer look at how they were using what resources to render their most important pages. In this talk, Johannes is going to share how they used New Relic and customized the Django debug toolbar to identify inefficiencies in their code. He will explain how they eventually reduced page load times through a more considerate usage of their data stores and aggressive caching.

Speaker Bio:

Johannes is a backend engineer at Prezi and helping to provide reliable access to their users’ zooming presentations. He loves optimizing things in an environment for millions of users and enjoys refactoring code with Clean Code principles in mind. He loves to code in Python while recently broadening his horizon with functional programming in Haskell and Scala.

Schedule:

6:30pm - Check in and socialize. There will be pizza and drinks provided by Prezi!

7:00pm - Lightning talks

7:30pm - Peter

8:15pm - Johannes

9:00pm - Time to head home

Notes from Prezi:

• Doors will open at 6:30pm to allow enough time for the check-in process.

• Prezi is generously providing us with their venue space and food. Let's make sure we treat it with respect and clean up after ourselves.

• Once the first talk starts there will be no one downstairs letting people in so please try to get to the event on time.

About Prezi

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation platform that helps you connect more powerfully with your audience. Unlike slides, Prezi’s open, zoom-able canvas lets you show relationships between the big picture and fine details, putting your ideas in context. Your message is more likely to resonate, motivate, and be remembered, whether you’re delivering a sales pitch to a high-value client or a TED Talk to the world’s foremost thinkers. Founded in 2009, and with offices in San Francisco and Budapest, Prezi now fosters a community of over 40 million users and over 100 million prezis around the world. With investors including TED Conferences and Accel Partners, Prezi is in the business of making presenters great.