# Web Scale Statistics - Failing with MongoDB

DevFeed: [Web Scale Statistics - Failing with MongoDB](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/web-scale-statistics-failing-with-mongodb-2179.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog//web-scale-statistics-failing-with-mongodb>)

Published: 2011-04-28T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [SoundCloud Backstage Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/soundcloud-backstage-blog.md>)

Topics: [MongoDB](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mongodb.md>), [Statistics](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/statistics.md>), [Apache Cassandra](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cassandra.md>), [Amazon EC2](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-ec2.md>), [Replication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/replication.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>)

Tags: [amazon-ec2](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/amazon-ec2.md>), [backend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backend.md>), [big-data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/big-data.md>), [cassandra](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cassandra.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [mongodb](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mongodb.md>), [replication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/replication.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/server.md>), [statistics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/statistics.md>)

## AI overview

SoundCloud describes redesigning its statistics backend for a write-heavy workload of up to 500 playbacks per second. A Cassandra prototype handled writes but required hundreds of queries to retrieve aggregates, so the team built a MongoDB prototype using upserts, secondary indexes, and automatic sharding. The MongoDB system performed well at smaller working sets but degraded sharply as the working set approached 300 GB, with disk utilization reaching 100% on one shard and latency increasing.

## Source excerpt

As SoundCloud rapidly grows our initial systems need an overhaul. Our scaling strategy has been very realistic, design for 10x our current...