Page 53 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE AMORPHOUS CL OUD

to visit the Extreme Makeover site several times a day. Parker and
his staff were kept busy posting updates, pictures, and stories
on the project, updating the site as many as 50 to 60 times
per day.
Shortly thereafter, entertainment bloggers in Hollywood
wrote about tidbits they had picked up on the upcoming Philo

show, generating even more traffic. Visitors to the site spread
news of updates over Twitter. Long before the show aired, traf-
fic spiked to heights that Parker would not have conceived
possible.
In one 24-hour period, the site had 41,466 visitors, each
staying on the site for an average of six minutes and down-
loading an average of four pages, for a total of 168,873 page

views. Going into the project, Parker had conceived of relying
on a single dedicated server to host the site. Rackspace Cloud’s
general manager, Emil Sayegh, was able to marshal dozens
of servers—up to 100 were serving the site at certain times—
during periods of peak demand, because the combined traf-
fic to all sites in the cloud is automatically monitored, and
managers keep a constant surplus of capacity on standby at all
times. As Extreme Makeover ate into that surplus, Rackspace
fired up more servers to stay ahead of demand. The elastic

cloud expanded to meet the need as it materialized.
To Parker’s surprise, traffic was steady as the show aired
Sunday evening and dropped off soon afterward. The spikes
had been prior to the show because participants in the proj-
ect, their families and friends, and interested onlookers were
anticipating what the show would reveal and wanted to be the
first to know.

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