The Mobile Device Lab at the Prineville Data Center
Article Summary
Facebook built a 2,000-device testing lab inside a data center. The journey from tangled cables to custom EMI racks is a masterclass in scaling mobile performance testing.
Facebook's Production Engineering team shares how they scaled CT-Scan, their mobile performance testing service, from single desk devices to thousands of phones in custom-built racks at their Prineville data center. The article details both hardware and software challenges overcome.
Key Takeaways
- Custom racks achieve 122 dB signal isolation using copper tape and power filters
- Each rack holds 32 phones with 8 Mac Minis or 4 OCP Leopard servers
- Chef automation reduced iOS device setup from 20 manual steps to one
- One wireless access point can drive 64 phones at 500 kbps each
- 60 racks now support hundreds of thousands of continuous experiments
Critical Insight
Facebook scaled from desk-based device testing to 60 racks holding 2,000+ phones by solving Wi-Fi interference, automating configuration management, and open-sourcing their designs.
