Oxygen³™

Oxygen³ stands for zero contention everywhere that matters on a distributed system: application, network and database (0³), representing the epitome of modern technology.

What is contention and why it matters

Contention is what happens when multiple actors compete to access the same resource at the same time. Most distributed systems (and by extension, RGSs) are plagued and bottlenecked by it, causing unpredictable performance issues and costing incredible amounts of money to tech companies.

Contention is regularly ignored and hidden as a reason of fault in most companies, since it requires deep understanding of technology and coding principles. The most common symptoms of an RGS suffering from it are:

    • Database performance issues even though its CPU, memory and network are still not maxed out [DB-level contention].
    • The need of a distributed shared memory system (e.g., Redis, memcached… ) to alleviate database performance issues due to locks [DB-level contention converted into Network-level contention].
    • Application performance degradation despite sub-maximal CPU utilization (<100%), caused by lock contention (threads blocked, CPU “idle”) or I/O contention (threads waiting, CPU in “iowait”) [Application-level contention]

More often than not, contention is patched rather than solved:

    • Add more hardware instances.
    • Add a distributed shared memory to move contention from one level to another.
    • Change to more powerful instances.

Although these patches work in the short term, each of them adds a level of complexity that requires more complex infrastructure, more staff (coders, ops, db admins, managers…). This bandaid makes owning such technology increasingly costly and prone to unpredictable traffic load issues, turning what should be a robust, linearly scalable system into a ticking bomb.

How does Oxygen³ solve this problem

Rather than using bandaids, Oxygen³ encompasses a series of technological designs and implementations that tackle contention as a core principle. Designed and built from the ground up, Ethereal RGS was built using Oxygen³, providing unmatched scalability, predictability and reliability. The technology allows to scale traffic without the need of a bigger team or human intervention, taking full advantage of state of the art cluster orchestration systems (such as Kubernetes) and their automation capabilities (horizontal and vertical auto-scale).

What does Oxygen³ mean to business

When owning the technology, it trades a big messy team for a small skilled one:

    • Higher ownership, less bugs, less risks.
    • Faster deployment cycles.
    • Better team work cohesion, better team culture.
    • Operation simplicity.
    • Self-managed.
    • Massive costs reduction.

When acting as a service:

    • Minimal costs.
    • Faster deployment cycles.
    • Faster additions of new on-demand features.
    • Better specialized support.