GOSS Interactive scales servers to help website weather the storm
The plunging temperatures and heavy snowfalls that have hit almost the entire British Isles this winter have created a huge appetite for up to date information regarding weather and travel conditions.
Gloucestershire County Council governs a county that has particularly suffered from adverse weather conditions over recent years. Between 2nd and 6th February 2009, the County website experienced a three-fold increase in its website traffic between the hours of 6:30 and 9:00am daily, as teachers, parents and children checked to see if their schools were open or closed. The region was experiencing the heaviest snowfalls of the last 20 years.
Gloucestershire County Council has procured GOSS iCM (intelligent Content Management) for their web presence and uses GOSS Interactive for hosting. Engineers at GOSS noted that page response times were increasing significantly, this was confirmed through alerts generated by the GOSS automated systems.
The existing infrastructure that Gloucestershire County Council had invested in with GOSS consisted of a single live web server. However, GOSS engineers were able to apply more resources into the cluster, dynamically scaling the technology to meet demand.
The engineering team developed a plan using the existing investment and available resources to double the capacity of Gloucestershire's web environment. GOSS operates a system where multiple servers can be presented to the Internet as a single resource with the load apportioned equally to each participating server. The GOSS iCM product also natively supports clustering.
This flexibility enabled GOSS engineers to bring support for Gloucestershire's live web server quickly into play, ensuring that the council's online presence remained able to satisfy users' needs for accurate and up to date information and weather the storm.
Angela Frodin, E-communications Manager at Gloucestershire County Council comments, "The people of Gloucestershire rely on us for essential information regarding school closures, road conditions and travel advice, especially when we're experiencing such harsh weather conditions. GOSS gives us confidence that we will be able to deliver when demand is high and provides the flexibility to scale resources up and down, relative to the needs of the council and service users."
Analysis of the traffic profile has shown people are using a variety of platforms to access the site, including mobile phones, PDAs, Sony PlayStations and even the Wii console.
Rob McCarthy, Managing Director at GOSS adds, "The variety of devices used to access Gloucestershire's site suggests a shift in our lifestyles and the ability to access information from anywhere at any time. GOSS has already adjusted to this mode of surfing and working. We have developed a mail-to-web tool that allows a webpage to be uploaded via email or a mobile device. This is invaluable to those working remotely, off-site or stuck in the snow!"
