Friday, June 16. 2006

How (not) to Size Your Servers

As a racing sailor I have been monitoring (and reporting on) the efforts by race organizers to track an ocean sailboat race and deliver live data on the web in map format. One such current event (Start Friday, June 16, First warning at 12:50hrs) is the biennial Newport to Bermuda Race.

This event in and of itself probably doesn't merit a mention here. What does, in my opinion, is that after weeks of buildup to the "new satellite tracking system", all a visitor gets four hours after the start is: "We are currently experiencing a very heavy load. Please check back later."

Which begs the question: How was the system's back end sized? Why was not the heavy load anticipated? And are similar surprises awaiting other such systems (AGX implementations, perhaps)?

Saturday morning update:

"Saturday, 0900: Server Overload

Below is a snapshot taken Saturday at 0400."

Posted by Atanas Entchev at 16:05 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry