It’s time to start preparing your e-shop infrastructure for the busy season. Think ahead and get ready for the high demand for your products.

Now is the perfect time to prepare your infrastructure for the busy season. Many e-shops focus mainly on marketing campaigns to boost sales, but they forget that if these marketing efforts are successful, their e-shop might not be able to handle the influx of customers. 
If preparations start taking place in the fall, the infrastructure upgrade might not be completed in time, leading to lost orders. If the website is slow or crashes, customers will shop elsewhere- it’s as simple as that. Don’t believe us? We recently conducted a survey that shows how much revenue businesses lose if their websites loads longer than 3 seconds. 

So, think ahead and prepare your e-shop for the anticipated demand for your products. Now is your chance to outsmart the competition and steal their thunder with a fully workable website.  

Here are 7 important tips on how to keep your website functionable.

1) Verify Your Solution’s Capacity

Ask yourself and your employees about the past season. How much did the demand on your infrastructure increase during that time? It’s crucial to compare this with your average annual operation. Once you have this comparison, you can roughly calculate the expected increase for this year using a simple formula. 

However, it’s entirely possible that this year’s main season will be even more successful. That’s why we recommend planning for an additional 20% performance reserve and you should consult with your hosting provider on this matter. 

Increasing the capacity of your hosting solution is best tailored directly to your needs because, in many cases, performance cannot be linearly increased. It also depends on the software technologies your e-shop utilises.

If you are unsure on any of the above, then feel free to contact us on consultation@vshosting.co.uk

2) Make Sure To Include Your Marketing Team In Discussions

A surprisingly successful marketing campaign might be every e-shop owner’s dream, but only if the e-shop is prepared for it. If it’s not, there’s a risk that the website might crash due to the increased traffic, and the money spent on the campaign would go to waste. 

That’s why it’s essential to communicate your planned campaigns with your hosting provider well in advance. This is especially crucial if you’re planning a larger campaign, such as a TV ad. So, make sure to have a prepared plan for an unexpectedly successful campaign.

3) Consider Premium Database Backups

Think ahead; it’s about your reputation and money- both are extremely important. 

Prepare a backup plan for emergencies and consider premium database backup. After all databases are the heart of every e-shop.

For instance, if your database suddenly stops working due to reasons like accidental deletion by a careless colleague or a failed disk drive, orders will soon start disappearing. You won’t know what customers bought and for how much, let alone where to ship their purchases. While you might have a backup of the database, it was likely quite extensive, so restoring it could take several hours. With premium backup and “point-in-time recovery,” data restoration is lightning-fast (up to 10 times faster!) this minimises any data loss by restoring the database to its correct state.

Contact us for more information – we can tailor the backup solution to your database technology. 

4) Make sure to have a backup plan

Regardless of how thoroughly you prepare your infrastructure for the season, unexpected issues can always arise. This is why we always recommend having a disaster recovery plan in place. It’s a recovery plan designed primarily to ensure that you don’t lose anything in a crisis situation and know exactly how to proceed.

Do you have such documentation ready? Do you have an idea of how long it would take to recover the data if needed? It’s a worst-case scenario, but if it happens, it’s critical. It’s not just about your company’s reputation but especially about your profits and customer data. You need to respond quickly, efficiently, and salvage as much as possible.

Check out our guide on what disaster recovery plans should include.

5) Switch to a dedicated solution

Many clients switch to VPS hosting when they outgrow their existing solutions, especially when using shared infrastructure in web hosting. They start hitting performance limits, typically during traffic peaks, when numerous e-commerce websites compete for limited shared resources.

A prime example is the Christmas season, which sees the highest demand on e-commerce infrastructures. This period, between September 1st and December 23rd, often accounts for more than half of an e-commerce business’s annual revenue. Slow loading times or, worse, downtime is simply not affordable.

From our 15 years of experience, we can say that if you’re on web hosting or any shared solution and expect higher traffic than usual, you should at least consider a dedicated solution. For growing and successful e-commerce businesses, we recommend transitioning to an infrastructure where all the resources are dedicated solely to them, ideally several months before the peak season.

6) Don’t underestimate the importance of security

Security is crucial, whether it’s about protecting data or ensuring the availability of your e-shop. 

Security is closely related to software updates, which include security patches. That’s why, with managed services, we monitor the software’s current status and alert clients if it becomes outdated. We also perform operating system updates upon agreement.

As a successful company, you can also expect DDoS attacks – either from random hackers or directly from competitors. Unfortunately, these incidents are becoming more frequent. That’s why we recommend not underestimating security. At vshosting, we have our own anti-DDoS protection, which reliably shields our clients from such attacks. Don’t forget about training your employees, who are your first line of defence against phishing attacks.

7) Test the quality of your provider (and consider switching in time if necessary) 

To prepare the infrastructure for your e-shop, a reliable partner is key. What are your experiences with your current hosting provider? Do they proactively address issues before they occur? And what are the experiences of their other clients? We always recommend checking their references.

At vshosting, we believe that if something goes wrong, you should have access to a team of senior administrators and technicians who will immediately start working on the problem. Even at 2 in the morning, including weekends. That’s why we provide this quality of service to all clients without exception. Whether it’s a large e-shop with a billion-pound turnover or a smaller e-shop that is just starting out.

We hope you have found these tips helpful. If you have any questions on how to keep your E-shop prepared for the busy season, then please contact us on cosultation@vshosting.co.uk

Imagine you’re in the middle of the peak season, marketing campaigns are in full swing and orders are pouring in. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Unless the database suddenly stops working that is. Perhaps an inattentive colleague accidentally deletes it. Or maybe the disk array fails – it doesn’t matter in the end, the result is the same. Orders start falling into a black hole. You have no idea what someone bought and for how much, let alone where to send it to them. Of course, you have a database backup, but the file is quite large and it can take several hours to restore.

Now what?

Roll up your sleeves, start pulling the necessary information manually from email logs and other dark corners. And hope that nothing escapes you. But those few hours of recovery will be really long and incredibly expensive. Some orders will certainly be lost and you will be catching up with the hours of database downtime for a few more days.

Standard database backup (and why recovery takes so long)

Standard backup, which most larger e-shoppers are used to, is carried out using the so-called “dump” method, where the entire database is saved as a single file. The file contains sequences of commands that can be edited as needed. This method is very simple to implement. Another advantage is that the backup can be performed directly on the server on which the database is running.

However, a significant disadvantage of the dump is the time needed to restore the database from such a backup. This applies especially to large databases. As each command must be reloaded separately from the saved file into the database, the whole process can take several hours. At the same time, you can only restore the data that was contained in the last dump – you will lose the latest entries in the database that have not yet been backed up. The result is an unpleasant scenario described in the introduction – a lot of manual work and lost sales.

Premium backup with Point-in-time recovery

In order for our clients to avoid similar problems, we offer them premium database backups. This service allows for very fast recovery of databases, to the state just before the moment of failure. We achieve this by combining snapshot backups with binary log replication.

How does it work exactly?

We create an asynchronous replica from the primary database to the backup server. On this backup server, we make a backup using a snapshot. In parallel, we continuously copy binary logs to the backup server, which record all changes in the primary database. In the event of an accident, the logs will help us determine exactly when the problem occurred. At the same time, thanks to them, we have records of operations that immediately preceded the accident and are not backed up by a snapshot.

By combining these two methods, we can – in case of failure – quickly restore the database to its original state (so-called Point-in-time recovery, recovery to a point in time).

First, we restore the latest backup snapshot and copy it to the primary server from the backup server. Subsequently, for binary logs, we identify the place where the destructive operation took place and use them to restore the most recent data.

The speed of the whole process can be as much as 10 times higher than recovery from a dump. It is limited only by the write speed to the disk and the network connection. With a database of around 100 GB, the length of the entire process will be in the order of dozens of minutes.

What is needed for implementation?

Unlike the classic dump backup, which you can perform directly on the primary server, you need a backup server for the premium option. This server should have similar performance as the production server. The size of the storage is also important: we recommend about twice the volume of the disk with the primary database. This capacity should allow snapshots to be backed up for at least the last 48 hours (if you opt for hourly backups).

We will be happy to recommend the ideal storage volume for your database – book a free consultation at consultation@vshosting.eu –⁠ it depends on the frequency of backups, the number of changes in your database, and other factors.

Premium backup also depends on the choice of database technologies. Due to the use of binary logs, it can only be implemented in relational databases such as MariaDB or PostgreSQL. NoSQL databases do not have a transaction log and are therefore not compatible with this method.

Another condition is a more conservative database setup on the backup server. The repository must always be consistent in order to take snapshots using ZFS. Upgrades that prioritize database performance over consistency cannot be used on the backup server. Therefore, it is necessary to choose a faster storage option than on the primary server, where a higher performance setting that reduces consistency is feasible.

Is the premium database backup for you?

If you can’t afford to lose any data in your business, let alone run for hours without a database, our premium backup with Point-in-time recovery is right for you. An example of a project that will benefit the most from this service is an online store with large databases, which would cost thousands of euros. In this case, an investment in the backup server needed for premium backup will pay off very quickly.

Conversely, if you have a smaller database with just a few changes per hour, you’re probably perfectly fine opting for a standard dump backup.

If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to advise you free of charge: consultation@vshosting.eu.

But your cargo will probably sink, and you will scramble to try and save as much of it as possible. To avoid this, we recommend that you prepare in advance for the expected fluctuations in infrastructure load. Among the most demanding e-commerce events are Christmas and Black Friday.

Online stores are traditionally preparing for Christmas in the summer. That’s when it’s time to think not only about marketing campaigns to attract as many customers as possible but also about the technical background that needs to withstand their influx to the website. The key is to know the average traffic to your site. And what the last season was like. Once you have this comparison, you can simply calculate roughly how much increase you can expect this year.

But what if you do even better than last year? That would be great but be prepared for this very desirable option. We recommend having an extra infrastructure capacity of approx. 20% on top of your estimate from the calculation above. However, it is always best to consult your hosting provider directly about tailor-made capacity reserves.

How to calculate the necessary capacity

For a simple calculation of infrastructure capacity, it is sufficient to compare the expected numbers with the current data. If you assume that the application will scale linearly, you can simply use last year’s high season increase in traffic compared to the average traffic in the first half of the year. Use that percentage increase combined with this year’s traffic and you’ll find out what system resources you’ll need this time around.

The advantages of this method are its speed and minimal cost. However, it is only a rough approximation. A more accurate alternative would be the so-called performance test. During this process, we simulate large traffic using an artificial load, while monitoring which components of the infrastructure become bottlenecks. This method also reveals configuration or technological limitations. However, it is fair to mention that performance tests are time-consuming as well as highly specific depending on the technologies used. For small and medium-sized online stores, they can therefore be unnecessarily expensive.

Pro tip: For example, the popular Redis database is single-threaded, so when the performance of a single core becomes saturated, it has reached its maximum at that point, and it doesn’t matter that the server has dozens of free cores available. Simply because such an application cannot use them.

Getting technical: 4 things to watch

CPU – beware of misleading CPU usage graphs if hyperthreading is enabled. The graph aggregating performance across all processor cores then greatly distorts the available performance. Although hyper thread theoretically doubles the number of cores, it practically doesn’t add twice the power. If you see values above 50% on such a graph, you are very close to the maximum… This is typically somewhere between 60 and 70%, depending on the type of load.

RAM – RAM usually does not grow linearly. For example, for databases, some memory allocations are global and others are separate for each connection. It often gets forgotten that the RAM cannot get completely full. If it does, all you need is a small allocation requirement, and the core kills the process that the memory required.

The operating system typically uses the memory reserve as a disk cache, which has a positive effect on performance. If caching is not sufficient, disk operation needs to increase.

Disks – Low disk speeds are a common reason that some operations are slow or completely inoperable at high loads. Whether the solution is sufficient will be shown only at high load or during a performance test. This load can be reduced by more intensive caching, which requires more RAM. It is also possible to solve the situation, for example, by upgrading from SATA / SAS SSD to NVMe disks.

It is also necessary to consider capacity because it can also affect overall performance. All filesystems using COW (copy-on-write) – for example, the ZFS we use, or file systems such as btrfs or WAFL – need extra capacity to run. All of these file systems share an unpleasant feature: when about 90% of the capacity becomes occupied, performance starts to degrade rapidly. It is important not to underestimate this – in times of heavy load, more data is often created and capacity is consumed faster.

Network layer – especially important for cluster solutions, where servers communicate a lot with each other and the speed for internal communication can easily become insufficient. It is also appropriate to consider redundancy – the vshosting~ standard is the doubling of the network layer with the help of LACP technology. So, for example, we make one 2GE interface from 2x 1GE. This creates a capacity of 2GE, but in practice, it is not appropriate to use up more than 1GE, because at that moment we are losing redundancy on the server.

Even the fact that the solution uses a 10GE interface does not mean that such a solution will suffice under all circumstances. All it takes is a small developer error when a simple query transfers a large amount of unnecessary data to the database (typically select * from… and then takes the first X lines in the application) and it is easy to deplete even such a large bandwidth.

Can we help evaluate your infrastructure capacity? Email us at consultation@vshosting.eu.