Upgrade of Server-Side Backend to Object Storage

Damian Moore, Published: 4 April 2022

Thanks to our new server-side backend code, we can store more audio files than ever before. We can robustly handle many more customers at one time and provide a faster service. It took several days of solid work to make sure all parts were transitioned over but we think it will pay dividends way into the future.

It used to be that we had a single server that handled all audio files, and we had to keep track of space to make sure it didn’t fill up. Now, with cloud-based object storage, all of our audio files are stored securely inside unlimited buckets. Our original single-server solution was fine to begin with but we know we’d have to change this before we could move beyond our beta-testing period and cater to more users. There are millions of podcasts currently active and to cater to a significant portion of this a single hard drive would quickly fill up. You’ll have no-doubt noticed from your own machine when recording and editing that audio files are not small. They’re much smaller than video files but still quite hefty when you’re dealing with a large quantity.

We use Google Cloud Storage to store audio files that customers upload as well as data we derive from that such as cover images and waveform images that are shown in our player interface. Not only does the move to cloud storage save us space but it also reduces computation and network traffic on our servers. The upload and play speeds should also be significantly faster for the customer. This is because, for the most part, data is being transferred directly between the user’s browser and the storage bucket inside Google’s infrastructure. When a user uploads their audio it goes directly there and when they play audio it comes directly from there. Our server needs to get the files from cloud storage too but that all happens in the background.

The takeaway is that we’re now better able to handle customers and generate reports for them. We invest in quality, modern software and think you should know. Here’s to more customers, more reports, and more storage!

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Photo courtesy of Vincent Botta