Ever wonder how Notion handles your notes when 100 million other people are using it too?
In this video, I break down Notion's incredible engineering journey from a single database to an infrastructure that manages over 200 BILLION blocks without breaking a sweat.
We dive into:
- How Notion's engineers tackled explosive growth that doubled every 6-12 months
- The sharding strategy that transformed performance
- Why they built their own custom data lake after outgrowing traditional solutions
- The behind-the-scenes story of how they tripled their infrastructure without any downtime
Whether you're a developer curious about scaling challenges or just someone who uses Notion and wants to know how it all works, this deep dive reveals the invisible technical magic that keeps your notes accessible and lightning-fast.
Further Reading:
https://www.notion.com/blog/building-and-scaling-notions-data-lake
https://www.notion.com/blog/the-great-re-shard
https://www.notion.com/blog/sharding-postgres-at-notion
https://www.notion.com/blog/data-model-behind-notion
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Introduction to Notion's growth
0:25 - How Notion works under the hood
1:32 - Single database limitations and scaling challenges
1:55 - Sharding approach explanation
2:57 - Database migration strategy
3:39 - Data lake implementation
5:35 - Building a custom data lake solution
7:07 - Facing new scaling challenges
7:37 - Second sharding implementation
8:46 - Testing and migration process
9:22 - Conclusion