Keeping sync fast with automated performance regression detection

This post introduces Apogee, a performance regression testing framework for Dropbox's sync engine. Apogee measures latency, CPU usage, disk I/O, memory usage, and network I/O during end-to-end integration tests. It addresses measurement variability through techniques like static sharding of tests, running in headless mode, using stage server variants, homogenous VMs with dedicated resources, and RAM disks for storage. The framework's data pipeline involves CI, an aggregation service, InfluxDB, and Grafana.