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Case Study

Autoscaling eCommerce Site is up to the Task on Black Friday

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Autoscaling eCommerce Site is up to the Task on Black Friday


During the last two years, eCommerce websites became crucial for the success of almost all businesses around the world. In the competition for the best website, the digital marketing agency Orchid Sun got in touch with eApps, a CloudScale365 company, to work together for their client.

The client is Highlander Wine & Spirits, a brick-and-mortar wine and spirits retailer with a growing online presence. Highlander Wine & Spirits has been serving Calgarians as a premium retailer of fine wine, spirits and beer since 1996. Originally a popular off-sale in the old Highlander Hotel, their history dates back to 1961.

The Challenge: Meeting Highly-Variable Demand

Buying a very large server with the hope it will be big enough to meet peak usage demands definitely wasn’t a good decision for the digital agency nor for the customer. They had to find an intelligent and cost-effective solution that would reliably scale up computer resources to meet demand, and scale them down to lower costs during slow times. Here their needs met eApps and Jelastic.

After hours of hard work and communication with the customer and the other teams involved in the process, Highlanderwine.com became real. It is built with WordPress and WooCommerce, configured as a cluster that can scale vertically and horizontally. It runs on the eApps Platform as a Service (PaaS), powered by Jelastic. Caching and CDN technologies are used to optimize performance.

Series of Load Tests Measure Performance 

eApps tested the load in many series to prove it is valuable in identifying bottlenecks and areas that could be tuned and optimized. Since going live the performance was very satisfying. “When a promotion is sent, demand goes through the roof. The cluster can handle many hundreds of logged in shoppers, all placing orders within moments of each other,” says Tom DeBello, CEO of Orchid Sun. The scalable solution provided by eApps became crucial for the success of the eCommerce website.

Orchid Sun and eApps worked together on the solutions during the whole process. “We have extensive experience hosting sites in single server Nginx environments, but the burst-like traffic patterns of this site required that we seek out a scalable solution. Being new to the Jelastic autoscaling platform and how it functions, we knew we needed a strong hosting partner,” adds Tom DeBello.

Indeed the eApps team worked with the digital agency every step of the way during deployment. In the process, were involved senior technicians, including the eApps CTO, via email, chat, and Zoom to make sure everything went as planned. The eApps team solved any little snag encountered. 

Up and Running Well…and Then Black Friday

Оnce the website was running, Black Friday was the biggest worry about the deployment. After all tests, the teams were sure that the site was running well for the recurring promotions before the big day but Black Friday is a whole other level. “I experienced a very strange feeling of being highly confident and scared to death when the tsunami hit,” said Tom DeBello.

Of course, all the teams involved in the process took a deep breath when Black Friday passed and the site was up to the task. Even more, Highlander Wine & Spirits blew out new records for Internet sales during this intense period of promotions.

“I definitely look forward to using this scalable solution again. Having the ability to scale up or down automatically at a moment’s notice is terrific,” declared Tom DeBello after the success of their common work with eApps.