Introduction to SILT
Learn about the need for highly efficient key-value stores.
Optimized elements make a better system
A distributed key-value store uses multiple storage and service nodes connected to a high-speed network to serve its clients. Optimizing the constituent parts (the nodes) helps us make a better key-value store. A store that saves several keys per node while minimizing indexing overheads, as well as raw disk searches and reads is highly desirable.
In this lesson, we will explain the need to optimize the individual nodes and formalize our requirements and metrics to measure our progress in achieving a better key-value store.
The importance of key-value stores
In recent years, applications' reliance on data usage has increased. Modern-day applications are data-intensive, requiring prompt and efficient access. Furthermore, most applications need to be scaled for millions of users; as a result, they need to support a significant amount of queries in real time.
Relational databases are used to store and retrieve data. However, many applications might not require all functionalities of an
The costs (for example, performance penalties regarding disk seeks and dollar cost) affiliated with data storage and retrieval are proportional to the designated design's use of memory, computation, and storage. For a better key-value store, we would like to minimize such costs. While the per-unit cost of these resources has decreased over time, application requirements have increased significantly. Modern applications require highly efficient solutions to keep costs at a minimum.
Key-value stores are distributed hash tables (DHTs) that map a key to a value in a short time. We can engineer key-value stores to meet our application's requirements with acceptable costs.
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