Playing in the Clouds

It's getting down to the wire.

Next week, Friday, March 13, I'll be leading a workshop (a "tutorial", they call it) at the Cascadia IT Conference to introduce system administrators to some elements of cloud computing.

I expect that there will be several in the workshop who have experimented with virtual machines on AWS or Google Cloud Platform. My workshop will take that experimentation to the next level: making a website scalable.

I call it the "Good Morning, America" scenario. It's 4:30 AM, Pacific Time. You are peacefully entering another cycle of REM sleep. You can sleep peacefully because your web servers are monitored. And the monitoring software with page you at any hour if the site goes down.

Then it happens. George or Amy start chatting about the cool downloads on your company's site that are available only to registered users. But registration is free.

At the commercial break, 7:37 AM, New York Time, 217,243 people try to register at your site in less than 10 minutes. Your server can't take it. It get's overloaded and can only respond to less than 2% of the requests, and those take forever.

Not to worry! Your site is monitored. at 7:43, New York time, 4:34 Seattle time, your cell phone starts playing an obnoxious ringtone that you chose specifically to wake you from the dead. You rub the sleep out of your eyes, read the text message for the third time, then try to log into your web server.

SSH just hangs, then times out. You try again. And again.

"Damn!" you mutter.

Not a problem! It's a virtual server, so you access the hypervisor and tell it to reboot your machine. In thirty seconds, you try to log in again. And again. And again. No such luck.

There are still too many people trying to negotiate an connection to your site so they can register and download the free goodies. But, in large numbers, they conclude that your company is a small time operation. The downloads would probably wouldn't be any good, anyway. Your company has mud on its face.

How do you prepare your virtual server for such a windfall of publicity without getting egg all over your company's face? This could have been the breakout moment for your fledgling company, but your site did a face plant in front of God and everybody.

THAT is what my workshop is going to address: how to build a scalable WordPress site that will spin up more web servers and handle a tidal wave of traffic. While you sleep.

I'm still designing and testing the exercises, but it promises to be a great workshop.