Apica’s new cloud-based service handles temporary peak loads in web traffic in a simple and cost effective manner. Many sites have significant peaks in web load that increase response times, or even risk bringing the company's web servers down. Instead of expensive investments in the web platform, a site owner can now rent Apica’s Web performance service and improve the site’s overall response times, but also handle overload users when a certain threshold number of users is exceeded.
Three frequently asked questions for operators are:
- What load capacity and response time targets is my site designed for?
- What are the costs of various options?
- How can we be sure that our web platform meets the response time targets?
All these issues are associated with large uncertainties and it becomes particularly difficult when you have significant peak loads - "Is it worthwhile to invest in extra capacity that may only be used once or a couple of times each year?
The answer is Apica WebOverload ™. A cloud-based web performance service, handling occasional peak loads without costly investments. The new service is implemented without any changes to the existing operational solution. The client simply hires external capacity management from Apica.
About the technical solution - Apica WebOverload ™
Apica’s technical solution essentially consists of two parts. The first part is a so-called http-acceleration solution, based on Citrix NetScaler, in front of the customer's web platform. This cache stores the most frequently asked questions, pages or picture elements. This means that they can be delivered to users via Apica‘s high performance delivery network without requests to the web server, which is subsequently freed from unnecessary load.
Secondly, incoming traffic is controlled and queued when a certain number of users is reached, so that "overload" users are being passed on to an external wait page. This means that web performance can be guaranteed for those who are "let in" because those “on hold” on the external network do not generate any load on the web server.
The service is delivered as a cloud-based Web service, ie. Apica’s solution runs at Apica’s data centers, which are independent of the client's site hosting. All web traffic is routed directly to Apica’s servers where it is filtered and treated. The managed traffic is then forwarded to the customer's web servers in a second step.
"That high-performance web sites work with caching solutions for images is not new, but there is still no solution for busy databases and application environments, and extreme network capacity is often not available on short notice.
Our strength is that we deliver a comprehensive cloud service, which can be quickly and accurately configured for each application's performance requirements. Apica WebOverload ™ delivers up to 3Gb / s dynamic load and 50 000 users in the queue.", says Sven Hammar CEO of Apica.
More information
Product page Apica WebOverload ™