How Data Centers Can Deal with Peak Holiday Season Traffic

Christmas Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Easter Sunday…the list is endless when it comes to peak days of holiday shopping. Online shopping sites go crazy with traffic during these periods and many sites have been known to crash due to inadequate planning for dealing with such high loads. Statistics reveal that 86% of customers will not return to a poorly performing site, and as many as 31% will buy from a competitors website if they can’t get to what they want. Given that response time is a key issue during peak traffic, IT operations needs to do all that it can to prepare for a smooth customer experiences.

Some of the preventive measures that can be taken to deal with these time sensitive situations include the following:

• Review past records and metrics to get an estimate of the peak volume during peak seasons.
• Set limits for downtime that you can deal with, without losing business. Once the downtime limit is known, you can choose the disaster recovery and failover option that is best suited for your needs. Some of the options that work best are:
  • Using multiple servers that are geographically dispersed.
  • Using standby servers that can be deployed and put into production on demand in case of failures in the primary server.
  • Using remote locations for backing up data in case of downtime.
• Work on load balancing services and DNS lookup services.
• Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A content deliver network can serve customers from a network of servers based on proximity to the customer. This technique can speed up operations considerably.
• Test, test and retest. With today’s advances in technologies, there are tools available that can simulate large volumes of load so as to test your websites performance. It is always better to test and record test results, and use them for further optimization.

Handling peak volumes differentiates the good from the best. Ensure that you are connected to the right data center provider who can scale up with you in testing times. For a free quote on hosting solutions, do get in touch with us at Lifeline Data Centers today.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.