(Part 1 of "The Adventures of the Acquia Cloud Ops Team" blog series)
You’re in your office, feet up on your desk bathed in the luminescent glow of your multiple large screen monitors. You’re feeling good because your site is going to be getting some great media coverage, and you and your team have prepped for this based on all the projections provided by your Marketing team plus a bit of a buffer. And then...
Your manager comes racing in saying that the analytics are showing the site traffic numbers are way beyond what Marketing had predicted. “How are we holding up?” he asks. Panicked, you check and pray that Acquia has been monitoring any unforeseeable spikes and traffic that may have your boss throwing the nearest object at you.
They have. In fact, Acquia caught the sudden spike in traffic and notified you in an email before anyone saw the blip. So you can reassure your boss that your site lives to see another day.
At Acquia, we don’t sleep, so you can. The monitoring systems for Acquia Cloud are always keeping an eye on the systems and services that keep your web sites available, making sure that your site visitors always have great digital experiences. No matter the time of day, time zone, or how large the traffic spike, Acquia has your back. We don’t want your best day to be your worst day, and a team of Cloud Operations experts ensures this.
When a client came to us the night before they were going to be on a major morning news show for a media promotion, we made sure we put all hands on deck. Acquia had constant communications with the customer around the clock by leveraging Acquia staff around the globe, in this case relying on experts located throughout four major time zones. This is what we call “following the sun.” The Ops team was able to monitor their site so that whenever their name was mentioned on air we knew within seconds, and we were able to make sure that the traffic was handled through targeted capacity increases.
We expected a drop in traffic once the major viewership changed from the East Coast to Central time, but it stayed consistent throughout. This sustained traffic was at an all-time high once it reached the Pacific and it saw no decrease in performance. So their best day was, in fact, their best day.
In order to continuously innovate and create digital experiences, you’ll need a support system that won’t let you down. Whether it be constant monitoring of your site or recommending resources that will meet your needs, the Acquia Cloud Operations Team is there for you.
Check this blog space later this month to find out exactly what we did to handle and monitor this client’s big day.
