It is the expectation of any e-commerce website that the site will enjoy uptime during peak times, such as during the holiday shopping frenzy. The sad truth is that often, during this critical time when you expect your site to be up and running serving your increasing number of customers, the opposite happens. The site crashes, leaving you red faced. This is often caused by too many queries trying to access your database simultaneously while your existing database lacks the capacity to process them effectively.
The Symptom: Crashing Instances
These identical queries, or instances, accessing your databases simultaneously often overwhelm traditional SQL databases that do not possess the required user surge management technologies. The primary symptom of this problem is crashing instances due to the unscalable database infrastructure. In this case, you need a load balancer that will be effective in coping with the increased user capacity. You need a scalable service that has automated database load balancing. Such a solution will ensure that your e-commerce website is online when you most need it-when shoppers flock to it.
The Main Cause: Database Statements that are inefficient as well as the Usage of the Connection Pool
The underlying cause of this problem of crashed instances, which overwhelms the computational abilities of the server, is often inefficient database statements and connection pool usage. The heavy loads on the server impose a burden on the resources of the database that ultimately crash the application. With the proper solution comprising of built-in application performance monitoring software, this problem is unlikely to occur. Such a solution will keep your e-commerce website running and provide a marked increase on your bottom-line.
The Solution: Optimizing App and Load Balancer
Do not fret, dear e-commerce website owner; there is a solution. There exists a solution that will take care of this holiday shopping frenzy and the increased number of buyers trying to make purchases on your platform. The solution is using a database that has an automated load balancer. Such a solution involves the deploying of multiple tomcat instances, an automated database failover that is app transparent, scalable and has the capacity to deal with increased user surges.
Select a Scalable Solution
The onus on any e-commerce enterprise is to ensure that they have a scalable solution that seamlessly manages increased user demands with in-built technologies such as load balancers and connection pool usage. This, coupled with multiple tomcat instances and application performance monitoring, will ensure that your application’s database can act intelligently and assign resources efficiently across the entire platform at critical moments. This type of solution will prevent data loss and failover that will have a negative impact on your e-commerce platform.
The Result: Zero Downtime
The result of such a solution as described above is that you will never have to deal with downtime, which is a positive outcome for mission-critical enterprise platforms. You can rest easy and secure that during events such as the Black Friday, you will be able to maximize your sales with your platform that scales well under increased loads. Zero downtime will also go a long way in increasing user retention across your platform as buyers will be able to complete their purchases in a unified manner.
The Next Steps: Proactive Performance Management
Well, what next? The next step is to obviously make sure that this solution is permanent. This means that your database resources are optimized, well scaled to take care of all scenarios that might be thrown its way. To maintain zero downtime, you must be proactive in your approach to application performance monitoring. You should seek out a solution that instantly and transparently scales up, that has application pooling, and zero downtime maintenance and patching.
Keep Your Site Fail-Proof
You need, at the outset, to deploy an e-commerce solution that incorporates all the above mentioned, mission-critical technologies. You need a server application that has all these solutions bundled in and at the same time, you should consider a cloud-based solution that has the necessary infrastructural support to manage your services and applications during expected peak times. You need a solution provider that has processes in place that will make sure that your site is up and running even in the worst-case scenario.
Conclusion
As an e-commerce website owner, you need to decide beforehand what technology you need to make sure that your website is up and running even during the peak, shopping holiday season. This means that you need to determine your need beforehand and seek out a solution provider that guarantees you that your application will suffer zero downtime. Make a point to look at their complete offer; tick away using the following simple checklist. Do they offer;
- Transparent database failover
- Zero downtime
- Transparent scalability
- Active data centers
- Application performance improvement
If the answer to most of the above is yes, then you can be sure that your application will withstand any shock due to increased usage during the festive season.
