Pratique du Shadowing: How Uber Scaled from One Server to 150 Million Reads Per Second - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

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In 2009, Uber was starting with a Python mullet.

One application, one growing business.

By 2019, Uber reported more than 15 million trips a day.

And in 2025, its caching infrastructure reported over 150 million cache database row reads per second at peak.

So how does a system grow at that scale?

Let's build it step by step.

Imagine you are building Uber you start with one application

and a postgres database and this is called monolith

and all your main application features live inside one application

and early days that's not a bad thing it's easier to build test

and deploy code but now more rides are booing trips more drivers are sending updates

and your application has work to do if the application and database share one machine they compete for the CPU and RAM.

The database run queries, the application handle request and both need resources.

One solution is to move the database onto its own server.

Now the application and database have separate resources.

You can scale them independently but there is a catch.

They now communicate over a network and the database can still become a bottleneck.

Meanwhile your application is also getting more traffic.

So let's scale your application first the simplest option is to give your application server more cpu

and memory and this is called vertical scaling it can work well

when you are just starting out you don't need to redesign everything just

because traffic increases but one machine has limits and

if it fails your application may become unavailable

so instead of making one server bigger you can add more servers

and that is horizontal scaling now you have multiple servers handling request

but there's a new question when the request arrives

which server should handle it

so you put a load of answer in front of replication server

it distributes incoming requests across them it can use strategies like round robin

or lease connection

and health checks can help it avoid sending traffic to unhealthy server

now one server failing does not necessarily take down the whole application

but there is a other problem imagine a user logs in replication store their session on the first server

then the user's next request reaches a different server

that server may not have the session so how does it know

that you are logged in one option is to store session in a shared system such as redis

now any application server can retrieve the session

and other option is to use a token such as gwd

that carries signed claims that can reduce the need to look up a session on every request.

But remember, tokens don't eliminate every kind of server -side state.

The key idea is simple.

Don't make one application server the only place where information needed by the next request exists.

We've added application servers, but all of them still depend on database.

And every request does not necessarily need to read fresh data from it.

Some data gets requested repeatedly, and that is where caching comes in.

Imagine a request needs a piece of data.

First, the application checks the cache.

If the data is there, it returns it and that is cache hit.

If it is missing, the application fetches it from database

and can put it in the cache and that is a cache miss.

The next request may get the data without querying the database again.

But caching introduces a problem.

What happens when the original data changes?

The cached copy might become stale.

You can use techniques such as time to live or TTL to expire entries.

You can also use invalid cache data when the underlying data changes.

Strategies like write -through or write -around handle writes differently.

And there is no single strategy that's best for every workload.

Uber has built caching infrastructure called CacheFront.

In August 1995, Uber reported that it handled more than 150 million cache row reads per second at peak.

Notice what that number means.

It's cache database row reads handled by that infrastructure.

And it does not mean every database read across

Uber was subbed from the cache.

Caching can remove a lot of repeated work, but it does not solve every database problem.

Some applications read data far more often than updated.

For those workloads, you can introduce read replicas.

The primary database handle writes, replica receive copies of the data then application can send suitable read queries to those replicas

that take some read traffic away from the primary

but there is an important catch replication can take time the primary might have the latest update

while the replica is still catching up and this is called replication lack

so if a request need the fresh data you may need a read from the primary.

Replica help with re -capacity but they don't automatically solve right bottlenecks or storage limits.

Now imagine your trip data keeps growing.

Eventually one database may struggle to store and serve everything efficiently.

Uber ran into storage challenges with the Postgres -packed trip data in its early growth period.

It developed a system called SchemaLess on top of MySQL.

This brings us to another scaling technique.

It is called Sharding.

Instead of storing all the data on one database, you split it across multiple database groups.

For example, imagine dividing trips into groups based on hash of the trip identifier.

One group stores some trips, another group stores others.

The application needs a way to work out which group contains the requested trip.

And that is the basic idea.

This example explains sharding.

It is not a claim about Uber's exact partitioning algorithm okay

so sharding lets you distribute data and workload

but now your application need to know where each record live

and the workload might not be evenly distributed imagine one shard receiving far more requests than the others

that shard can become a bottleneck even when the rest are healthy

and this is also called a hot shard so sluting the data helps but it also makes data management more complicated.

Okay, so there is one more challenge.

As the developer team grow, more developers work on the same application.

A change in one area might affect other.

Deployment can become much harder to coordinate.

One response is to split the application into small services.

And Uber documented its move toward a microservice architecture in 2015.

So imagine this.

Payments, pricing, and trips matching as separate services.

100

These are illustrative examples of how an application can be divided.

101

Each service can have its own code base and deployment process.

102

Teams can work more independently, but now one user request might depend on several services working together.

103

And that creates a different kind of problem.

104

Okay, inside one application, calling a function is usually straightforward.

105

For example, a fare calculation function might take the trip details as input and return the calculated fare.

106

But when one service calls another service over a network, things change.

107

The other service might be slow or it might be unavailable or the network request might time out.

108

Now you need to handle failure across service boundaries.

109

Okay, so when an application has many services, finding the cause of slow request gets hard.

110

Was the delay in pricing, was it payments or was one service waiting on another?

111

So Uber developed Yaeger, a distributed tracing system to help engineer follow requests across services.

112

Tracing helps you to see where time is spent and where request is failing.

113

Without that visibility, debugging a distributed system becomes much harder.

114

Ok, as the services multiply, service discovery and communication also becomes more complicated.

115

A service needs to find the service it wants to call.

116

And the system need to handle those connections reliably.

117

So Uber developed Hyperband as a part of its service communication infrastructure.

118

So engineers also used general resilience patterns such as timeouts, retries and circuit breakers.

119

But those patterns need careful configuration.

120

Retries for example can make an overload service even busier.

121

So by July 2020, Uber had described an architecture with around 2200 critical microservices organized into 70 domains.

122

These 70 domains were not 70 services.

123

They were broader grouping used to organize services.

124

And that is important lesson here.

125

Microservices can be more independent but also create more dependence, more network calls, more operational complexity.

126

So just look at the progression.

127

You start with one application, then you separate the database, you add application servers, you share session state, you introduce caching and read applicas,

128

you shard the data, and eventually you split the application into services.

129

Each decision solves a problem, but each decision also introduces a new trade -off.

130

That's how production systems grow.

131

Not by adding every technology from the beginning, but by identifying the bottleneck, choosing a solution, and understanding the new problem that solution create.

132

When you are designing a system, don't just ask, what technology should I use?

133

Ask, what problem am I solving and what trade -off am I accepting?

134

Save this for your next systemline interview and follow for more.

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Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon

Cette leçon d’expression orale s’appuie sur la vidéo « How Uber Scaled from One Server to 150 Million Reads Per Second ». Les mots qui reviennent le plus souvent : application, database, server, request, Uber. Cette vidéo contient 134 phrases et 1507 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 9:46. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 154 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. Seuls 79 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais, le vocabulaire est donc exigeant.

Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo

15 mots de la vidéo à retenir, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :

Mot	Prononciation	Sens
database nom	/ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/	base de données, banque de données
server nom	/ˈsɝvɚ/	serveur
cache nom	/kæʃ/	cache, mémoire cache
distribute verbe	/dɪˈstɹɪbjuːt/	distribuer
replica nom	/ˈɹɛplɪkə/	réplique, copie exacte
infrastructure nom	/ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/	infrastructure
solve verbe	/sɒlv/	résoudre, régler
introduce verbe	/ˌɪntɹəˈdus/	présenter
query nom	/ˈkwɪɹ.i/	question
necessarily adverbe	/ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/	absolument, nécessairement
complicated adjectif	/ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/	compliqué, alambiqué
technique nom	/tɛkˈniːk/	technique
architecture nom	/ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/	architecture
log nom	/lɔɡ/	grume, tronc
domain nom	/ˌdəʊˈmeɪ̯n/	domaine

Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez

Mot	Prononciation	Sens
take down verbe		décrocher
work out verbe	/ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/	calculer

La grammaire de cette vidéo

Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :

Structure	Dans la vidéo
Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait	is called · are logged · was subbed
Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant	We've added · has built

Prononciation à surveiller

Le locuteur utilise 6 contractions et formes réduites, comme don't, we've. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.

Les sons « th »: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/, monolith /ˈmɑn.əˌlɪθ/
Les sons « sh » et « zh »: cache /kæʃ/, operational /ˌɑ.pəˈɹeɪ.ʃə.nəl/, configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/, progression /pɹəˈɡɹɛʃən/, calculation /ˌkælkjuˈleɪʃn̩/
Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/, developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/

Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :

/h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: horizontal /ˌhoɹəˈzɑn.təl/, unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/, hash /ˈhæʃ/
/tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/, fetch /fɛt͡ʃ/
/r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: distribute /dɪˈstɹɪbjuːt/, replica /ˈɹɛplɪkə/, infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, introduce /ˌɪntɹəˈdus/, query /ˈkwɪɹ.i/

Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo

Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme database, server, cache.

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.

Technique du shadowing : lire le guide complet étape par étape →

Pratique du Shadowing: How Uber Scaled from One Server to 150 Million Reads Per Second - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

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Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon

Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo

Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez

La grammaire de cette vidéo

Prononciation à surveiller

Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?