Radiohead website crash raises the question of resilience for music download sites

Massive demand for the Radiohead download, and elsewhere in the music industry tickets for the Spice Girls, resulted in websites experiencing huge spikes in demand which can have a serious impact upon the user experience if not managed properly. Both examples raise the question of scalability and resilience issues for web hosting providers and their customers alike.

Jonathan Robinson,COO at managed hosting provider NetBenefit comments: “These websites are experiencing enormous demand within a very concentrated timescale but given careful consideration to business critical solutions such as load balanced and high availability infrastructures, plans can be put in place to ensure that spikes in demand do not bring a website to a standstill. This is especially true if there is an anticipated flurry of activity on the site, such as a product release or promotional campaign which has a specific start date.

"In addition to the design and deployment of load balanced solutions for maintained performance, managed hosting providers can offer short term contracts with burstable bandwidth for the period of time surrounding a campaign or product launch. In both instances, the site remains accessible and the user experience consistently positive throughout the promotional campaign in spite of the large amounts of data being downloaded.

"Organisations with websites or online applications with an international appeal are under further pressure to provide service demand 24x7 because of users accessing websites or online systems across different time zones. When Radiohead fans in the US found out about the special offer, the already struggling website was further deluged with stateside fans eager to take advantage of the special offer.

"NetBenefit’s managed hosting services provide high availability at every level, whether a single server, or multiple servers in a load balanced solution across multiple sites. We are experienced in supporting national ad-hoc and ongoing global campaigns. Partnering with an experienced managed hosting provider or working in tandem with internal IT resource is key to offering a 24x7-user experience with always on access safe from availability and performance issues."

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