ArtistData Moves to Rackspace
http://www.artistdata.com/us/blog//articles/98/1/ArtistData-Moves-to-Rackspace/Page1.html
By Brandon Passley
Published on 02/24/2010
We have been in the process of rebuilding and restructuring the
ArtistData server architecture for the past two months and finally made
the switch live on February 15, 2010 around 12 AM CST. This was a much
needed upgrade that will allow ArtistData to continue to serve its tens
of thousands of artists using it every day and hundreds of thousands of
fans viewing their data each month.
We have been in the process of rebuilding and restructuring the
ArtistData server architecture for the past two months and finally made
the switch live on February 15, 2010 around 12 AM CST. This was a much
needed upgrade that will allow ArtistData to continue to serve its tens
of thousands of artists using it every day and hundreds of thousands of
fans viewing their data each month.
Our current server setup could no longer handle these large loads and the enormous growth that ArtistData has been experiencing. Users continued to have poor experiences because of extremely slow response times and worse, full on outages. It was becoming a struggle to keep the servers stable during our peak times.
We chose Rackspace to host ArtistData because, well, Rackspace rocks. That is all there is to it. They have superior equipment, fanatical support, and a superior API. The Rackspace Cloud allowed us to build a tiered system with load balancers, multi-layered application servers, multiple database servers and a bunch of other geeky stuff.
Besides a few MySQL settings and some legacy code that had been overlooked, the move was very successful. As you can see from the response times below, our servers are now handling not only our peak times but have decreased the response times by around 30%. Our servers are now zippier than ever!
What does this mean for artists and their fans? First of all, a faster user experience for artists as they move throughout the ArtistData dashboard. Artist's fans won't be left out of all of the new zippiness either. Fans will no longer see the dreaded "This record could not be found" error that was becoming more and more apparent as our old servers could not keep up with processing the large amounts of data. Users will now be able to immediately go to the artist's page and view their most recent shows, news and blogs immediately and move throughout the pages quickly.
We have an amazing road map for ArtistData's future and we are continuing to refine every aspect to make the user experience more and more awesome.
Follow me on Twitter: @brandonpassley
Our current server setup could no longer handle these large loads and the enormous growth that ArtistData has been experiencing. Users continued to have poor experiences because of extremely slow response times and worse, full on outages. It was becoming a struggle to keep the servers stable during our peak times.
We chose Rackspace to host ArtistData because, well, Rackspace rocks. That is all there is to it. They have superior equipment, fanatical support, and a superior API. The Rackspace Cloud allowed us to build a tiered system with load balancers, multi-layered application servers, multiple database servers and a bunch of other geeky stuff.
Besides a few MySQL settings and some legacy code that had been overlooked, the move was very successful. As you can see from the response times below, our servers are now handling not only our peak times but have decreased the response times by around 30%. Our servers are now zippier than ever!
What does this mean for artists and their fans? First of all, a faster user experience for artists as they move throughout the ArtistData dashboard. Artist's fans won't be left out of all of the new zippiness either. Fans will no longer see the dreaded "This record could not be found" error that was becoming more and more apparent as our old servers could not keep up with processing the large amounts of data. Users will now be able to immediately go to the artist's page and view their most recent shows, news and blogs immediately and move throughout the pages quickly.
We have an amazing road map for ArtistData's future and we are continuing to refine every aspect to make the user experience more and more awesome.
Follow me on Twitter: @brandonpassley