Question on high traffic site (short term traffic)

Bunchadogs

Bunchadogs

Perch
I've got a question about signing up a customer that excepts temporary, but LARGE traffic spikes.

The website in question is for a person that decorates their home with 40,000+ Christmas lights each season. The site is really not going to be anything too complex, just basic HTML/CSS, plus quite a few photos (possibly using the Lightbox JS, although this is really not necessary), links to some movies hosted at MSNBC, AOL, Google, and Youtube.

They are always featured on all the local TV stations - so that will drive a large amount of traffic, but the last few years they've also been picked up by a lot of the national shows - the Today Show, MSNBC news, etc.

I'm assuming setting them up through my regular reseller account would NOT be a good idea - or is there anything that can be done temporarily to accomodate a large traffic spike for a couple of months only (November 15th - December 31st).

Any input would be greatly appreciated!
 
well we are already seeing that now, and hence one reason I was up all night, again.... :D

Kept getting bandwidth usage alerts due to a certain country's miss _____ profile viewing and voting tracker! (all traffic was legit and proper, nothing was turned off or stopped)

It would be best to watch the traffic closely and watch it, alert us in technical, and alert sales we could get you a 1-2 month bump to either a higher plan and then back down to normal, or if already on the platinum plan we could see about another means for such a short time. I know for a 1.5 month period you wouldn't be able to justify a dedicated server all the time, but at the same time you don't want to be down this entire time.

A few things you could do to help us would be before the traffic starts being sure that you are using as static of pages as possible so that the only loads that go high are traffic which we can handle better than all others, in a way that does not affect other clients on the server. In addition to this you can request your own app pool if on windows, it will help some ability to monitor and track if any issue. And next would be to just generally keep us updated if you see an early start of traffic etc.
 
Follow up - the internet is full of a LOT of conflicting information, I probably should have just posted here first but you guys are busy and I hate to take up your time!

For the these questions, assume we're looking at 500-1000 unique visitors per hour.

1. How much does SSI affect CPU load? Basically the main html file, with two includes to two other html files.

2. Is there any benefit between a Windows or Unix server, when it comes to high traffic per hour (and possibly the use of SSI)?

3. I assume we can handle bandwidth by just purchasing more (within the limits of a particular server), but what about hits per page? I would assume the best practice would be to use fewer individual graphic and lump everything into a larger 'sprites' so that a page only produces 3-4 hits per load (html, css, one or two graphics images)?

Thanks again for your input!
 
1. SSI is typically not that noticeable
2. I can make the windows server perform as good or better than unix in most cases, with the exception of php :)
3. We don't limit hits per page in any way, but 500-1000 unique visitors is not going to be a big deal if you do as you mention in the question and keep the image content low and group them together.
 
Just a thought FWIW: why not spread the load by signing up for a second account on another server that would handle just the images (and possibly your CSS file)?
 
thingwarbler said:
Just a thought FWIW: why not spread the load by signing up for a second account on another server that would handle just the images (and possibly your CSS file)?
Click to expand...

If a reseller and the account was made more than 2 months ago simply make a new account and that one will already be on another server and could serve same purpose :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top