How Expedia Runs 9K Applications For 5 Million Properties Across 400 AWS Accounts

Expedia has 200 travel websites, in more than 70 countries, hosting more than 5 million properties and 500+ airlines.

To support this Expedia has 9,000 applications managed by 650 engineering teams, across 400 AWS accounts.

The complexity of their system was mind-boggling.

Each team used different AWS databases, leading to inconsistent practices, compliance issues, and redundant operations.

To solve this issue, Expedia built a Database as a Service system.

Using AWS Service Catalogue, they built a Hub and Spoke Model called Cerebro.

Cerebro seriously revolutionized the way Expedia's engineering teams created and managed databases.

It offered them:
- Centralized control across 400 AWS accounts.
- A self-serve database environment
- A simplified infrastructure fully managing networking and monitoring

But they didn't stop there.

Expedia's teams also built the Cerebro agent, capable of performing health checks and backups and more.

They also created "First Responder", a tool that could automatically detect and fix common database issues without human intervention.

They truly transformed how the company worked in the cloud.

Learn more about how they implemented this in detail in this link or see the video below.