Aug 6, 2019|
How JD.com uses Vitess to manage scaling databases for hyperscale
The following case study by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation originally appeared here: https://www.cncf.io/jdcom-case-study/
Challenge
China’s largest retailer, JD.com serves more than 300 million active customers with its e-commerce business. “A few years ago, it became apparent that as our data became more extensive, our MySQL databases became larger, resulting in declining performance and higher operations and maintenance costs,” says JD Retail Chief Architect Haifeng Liu. “We needed a solution that would enable us to easily and quickly scale MySQL, facilitate operation and maintenance, and reduce hardware and labor costs.”
Solution
JD chose Vitess for scalable management of large-scale database services and the support of online expansion of complex transactional data in MySQL. “We now run MySQL databases in containerized environments with Kubernetes and use Vitess for scalable cluster management and handling large volumes of complex transactional data,” says Liu.
Impact
With Vitess, JD has seen improvements in the scalability and elasticity of the database clusters. Increased resource utilization and efficiency and the automation of operation and maintenance functions have also led to reductions in labor and resource costs.
China’s largest retailer and the world’s third-largest Internet company by revenue, JD.com serves more than 300 million active customers with its e-commerce business.
The company also owns China’s largest e-commerce logistics infrastructure, which covers an incredible 99% of the country’s population and has achieved delivery rates of more than 90% of orders delivered same- or next-day.
“A few years ago, it became apparent that as our data became more extensive, our MySQL databases became larger, resulting in declining performance and higher operations and maintenance costs,” says JD Retail Chief Architect Haifeng Liu, who leads the Technological Infrastructure Department responsible for driving innovation in containerized infrastructure and developing the hyperscale, containerized, Kubernetes-based platform that powers all facets of JD’s business. “We needed a solution that would enable us to easily and quickly scale MySQL, facilitate operation and maintenance, and reduce hardware and labor costs.”
The company previously used JProxy, a cobar-based database middleware system for MySQL database management. After a thorough evaluation process, Liu says, “we eventually chose Vitess since it was the most suitable solution to address the biggest challenge we were facing: scalable management of large-scale database services and the support of online expansion of complex transactional data in MySQL. We now run MySQL databases in containerized environments with Kubernetes and use Vitess for scalable cluster management and handling large volumes of complex transactional data.”
Being a very early adopter of Vitess—and with one of the largest and most complex deployments of the technology, to boot—came with some challenges. “The re-sharding process was initially manual, the performance was poor, and the orchestrator could fail in large clusters with more than 5,000 instances,” says Liu.
To make sure that Vitess would work at JD’s scale, Liu’s team made numerous improvements and changes, including bug fixes and new functionalities and features. They have also developed performance optimization and automated management tools for the company’s JDOS Kubernetes platform. Among them:
- JTransfer, an online data synchronization and transmission tool that migrates data from JD’s traditional MySQL databases to the Vitess cluster in real time. All topology information in Vitess is stored in etcd.
- BinLake, a MySQL collection tool for real-time collection of Binlog in Vitess and traditional MySQL database services, and publication of the collected Binlog to the Message Queue (JMQ) service. Integrated with Vitess, “BinLake provides intelligent and highly available binlog collection services in clusters,” says Liu. “If there is resharding or failover in Vitess, Binlake will automatically adjust the database instance of the binlog.”
- Mole, a Vitess management system with a GUI console, which improves Vitess service management. “With Mole, we can easily create, reshard, monitor, and back up Vitess’s key spaces,” says Liu.
“Most of our improvements have been contributed back to the Vitess code base for other developers in the community to benefit from,” says Liu.
“We eventually chose Vitess since it was the most suitable solution to address the biggest challenge we were facing: scalable management of large-scale database services.” — Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect at JD Retail
With Vitess, JD has seen improvements in the scalability and elasticity of the database clusters. Increased resource utilization and efficiency and the automation of operation and maintenance functions have also led to reductions in labor and resource costs.
Additionally, “Vitess helped the team grow their technical knowledge and strength in the areas of scalable management and elastic database,” says Liu. “The fact that Vitess is a CNCF project means we can significantly benefit from working with a large number of developers and end users in the most active and fast-growing open source community. With CNCF’s endorsement, Vitess can gain increasing awareness, attract more end users and bring together developers to the project. This is very beneficial for Vitess and its end users, which is important to us.”
Liu and his team are excited about the future of Vitess. In addition to migrating its systems to the newly-released Vitess 3.0 (which Liu calls “a significant improvement”), they’re working on developing some common functions for the latest version and developing a more complete operations and maintenance monitoring system.
“The fact that Vitess is a CNCF project means we can significantly benefit from working with a large number of developers and end users in the most active and fast-growing open source community.”
— Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect at JD Retail
For other organizations considering Vitess, Liu offers this advice: “The most value can be derived from Vitess when it is used in concert with Kubernetes. Before using Vitess, it is imperative to perform more testing and research to determine if Vitess is the right solution for your business, and to better understand what adjustments you might have to make to integrate it with your existing systems.”
For JD, Kubernetes, Vitess, and other cloud native technologies have been a game-changer. “Modern service platforms need to be scalable and extremely efficient and agile,” says Liu. “Cloud native technology is well-suited to handle these ever-changing environments. It offers flexibility, efficiency, scalability, independence, continuous integration and delivery for software services, all of which further enhance the quality of software services and resource efficiency. Kubernetes has become the de facto standard and cloud native is a sure thing to bet on for the future.”
Apr 22, 2024|
JD.com Debuts AI Digital Representative of Founder Richard Liu During Livestream, Drawing 20 Million Views in Under One Hour
During a livestream on April 16th, JD.com introduced an AI digital representative of its founder, Richard Liu (Qiangdong Liu), nicknamed “procurement and sales manager Brother Dong (采销东哥).” Liu appeared in both JD Home Appliances and JD Supermarket’s livestreaming rooms, attracting over 20 million views within the first hour and generating RMB 50 million in sales throughout the entire livestream.
The digital representative almost perfectly replicates Liu’s facial expressions, body language, gestures, and voice, capturing even the subtlest movements of his fingers. Behind this technology is JD Cloud’s ChatRhino, an advanced large language model (LLM) that brings the avatar to life.
Behind the Technology
The LLM precisely mirrors Liu’s distinctive expressions and movements, naturally weaving in his occasional finger twiddles while he speaks, accentuating points with hand gestures, and adding nods at just the right moments for emphasis, creating a natural and authentic representation. Perfecting the voice proved to be a greater challenge. Those who have heard Liu speak are well-acquainted with the distinct inflections of his Suqian accent—a characteristic touch from his small-town roots in Jiangsu province. Observers will note the brisk pace of his speech, lighter enunciation, and his tendency to meld words in a seamless flow. His “sh” sounds carry a nasal quality, and he often addresses people as “brothers” to boost morale.
While programming the standard Mandarin dialect is relatively straightforward, teaching the AI to adopt the nuances of the Suqian dialect and Liu’s unique vocal patterns required a precise level of customization from the ChatRhino LLM. For example, the LLM had to provide accurate judgments on when to introduce the nasal tonality or the specific moments to merge words, ensuring the AI’s linguistic output mirrored Liu’s signature speaking style authentically.
Beyond replicating vocal characteristics, the AI’s voice must also be suitable for the casual, dynamic atmosphere of e-commerce livestreaming, such as adopting colloquialisms like “xiong di men” — a phrase comparable to “folks” or “guys” in English — to create a friendly rapport with the audience. JD Cloud’s ChatRhino team fine-tuned the model to focus on sociable nuances. The initial dataset for the LLM consisted predominantly of Liu’s formal speeches—spirited and compelling, yet too ceremonious for the interactive world of livestreaming. To cultivate a more congenial and approachable persona, the team utilized Liu’s recent casual conversations as the primary source material, rich with personal anecdotes and travel tales. This approach shaped the AI’s voice into one that is that is not only natural and approachable but also genuinely engaging for the end user.
As a fully self-developed technology product of JD Cloud, the ChatRhino Digital Representative solution has already served over 4,000 brand merchants, contributing to a 30% increase in order conversion rate during idle hours and helping merchants reduce livestreaming costs, enhance operational efficiency, and optimize user experience. Equipped with 50,000 hours of voice data, this technology enables digital representatives to intelligently adapt to various livestreaming styles dynamically.
The AI is also adept at managing 70% of routine live chat inquiries autonomously without any manual intervention, while also optimizing its responses with a self-improving algorithm. For instance, digital representatives can autonomously fields questions using product details and scripts, and post-livestream, and assimilate new information. Mirroring the acumen of seasoned sales professionals, it boasts a 90% accuracy rate in offering tailored product recommendations when solicited by customers.
The recent introduction of a cutting-edge livestream control console serves as the “brain” for the digital representative solution. It diligently monitors real-time inventory, adjusting the showcased products in the livestream and tailoring the script to ensure relevance—sidestepping items that are out of stock and spotlighting those in high demand. It also gauges and fine-tunes the frequency and style of interactions based on live audience engagement. With this advanced platform, businesses managing multiple livestreams can effortlessly operate thousands of sessions concurrently via cloud services, bypassing the need for intricate local setups. This innovation yields a substantial cost reduction of 30%.
Human-Machine Synergy
The intention behind digital avatars is not to outshine or compete with human talent but to harness the potential of technology to work in concert with livestreamers, maximizing overall growth. Essentially, the digital representative solution serves as a tool for brands and merchants to leverage long-tail traffic once real livestreamers conclude their broadcasts. JD’s analytics indicate this strategy can boost order conversion rates by 30% during off-peak hours, such as late into the night.
Digital representatives also excel in specific product categories that require detailed explanations, such as health products like nursing beds, electric wheelchairs, and oxygen concentrators. The solution can provide constant, round-the-clock guidance, adding substantial value to livestreams when traffic is typically lower.
Last week, JD.com announced an investment of one billion yuan into video content creation. This investment underscores JD’s commitment to leveraging the power of short videos and livestreams to transform the online shopping experience for its users and create new growth avenues for brand merchants.
Apr 20, 2024|
JD.com Unveils Ambitious Plans for 618 Grand Promotion: Aiming to More Than Double High-Performing Merchants
JD.com is gearing up for this year’s 618 Grand Promotion with an ambitious goal: to more than double the number of merchants achieving sales over one million yuan on its platform. At the recent Conference of Merchants and Ecosystem Partners on April 18, JD.com introduced a range of supportive initiatives aimed at achieving this ambitious target.
Sandy Xu, CEO of JD.com, noted at the conference that the company will dedicate significant resources to bolster traffic support, incorporate advanced AI technology, and enhance service capabilities. These efforts are particularly focused on empowering third-party merchants, including small and medium-sized enterprises in its marketplace.
Key initiatives include optimizing the platform’s traffic distribution ecosystem to prioritize highly-rated stores and products and competitively priced products through enhanced search and recommendation mechanisms. Additionally, JD.com will continue to offer merchants free access to high-traffic channels, which include significant incentives such as the popular 10-billion-yuan discount and free shipping programs.
To engage more content creators, JD.com recently announced that it will allocate over one billion yuan in cash incentives and traffic resources. This investment aims to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem that supports merchants’ traffic, business growth, and innovation.
At the core of JD.com’s strategy is technological innovation, which involves integrating AI-driven solutions into merchant operations. This includes the deployment of JD’s proprietary large language model, ChatRhino, and an AI-empowered merchant operation platform that offers are variety of free AI applications, and more. These technologies streamline various operations scenarios, enhance efficiency, and reduce costs for merchants.
For instance, On April 16th, JD.com unveiled an AI digital avatar of its founder, Richard Liu, as a sales host on its livestreaming platform. This event attracted 20 million viewers in just one hour and generated sales exceeding RMB 50 million ($6.9 million). This AI-driven virtual host technology, developed by JD Technology, is now supporting over 4,000 brands on the platform. Additionally, merchants such as a sashimi knife seller can utilize JD.com’s AIGC content generation tool to quickly produce high-quality demonstration images, bypassing traditional costs associated with product photography.
JD.com also continues to enhance its service capabilities, particularly for small and medium-sized merchants. This includes personalized business guidance, comprehensive training programs, and upgraded after-sales services, ensuring a seamless shopping experience for customers.
As of March 2024, JD.com has seen a significant increase in active third-party merchants on its platform, surpassing one million. This growth is a testament to the platform’s effectiveness and its appeal to both new and established merchants.
JD Rescues Chinese Millennials from Rejection when Gifting
