Server Problems

At 10.30 this morning, UK time, our own installation of Server Density notified us of high load on our primary server. Shortly afterwards, the server became unresponsive. After some investigation, we discovered this was due to a high level of traffic hitting the SD website including a relatively high number of beta signups in a short period of time.

Since we are only in private beta testing, we currently host all sites on a single, relatively low powered server and were not expecting such high demand so quickly. We do have plans in place for scaling the product websites and Server Density itself onto multiple servers but were not intending to implement these plans until near the end of the beta cycle.

Unfortunately, we were unable to handle the demand directed at us and after attempting to bring the load under control with config tweaks, the only option was to provision a much higher spec server. This is known as vertical scaling and whilst is an appropriate short term solution, it isn’t wise to just throw more powerful hardware at the problem. That said, our websites and beta user SD installations are now on a much higher powered machine and the situation appears to be under control.

We will be keeping an eye on traffic throughout the rest of the day but I would like to apologise for the downtime that was experienced. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.