You might be a bit frustrated if you have been using the app these past couple of weeks. This is especially true if you have been a loyal user for a while. It has been one heck of a week (or two) for solar storms and the Amazing Aurora app. So, you might be wondering what the heck is going on. Well, let me delve into that a bit!
The app has enjoyed steady traffic over the past few years. When I started developing it, it lived on a shared HostGator server. I quickly realized this was not going to work well once the app hit about 100 users in Alaska. So, I moved swiftly to transition the app over to Google's cloud environment and, for the past few years, everything has been running smoothly, for the most part. That is, you guessed it, until last week.
The app saw a 428% increase in traffic from September to October. That is a HUGE jump in a short amount of time. The server began to bog down as more and more traffic came in and it was not able to handle all of it. The solution? Ramp up the hardware and redesign the architecture to handle the influx of traffic. Thus, I set up seven more servers to help share the load, with the intent of each server/set of servers performing specific functions. As of right now, everything is going as planned!
The database servers have already been incorporated and the data migrated over from the old server. I did have to reset some tables involving notifications and preferences to get notifications working again. Outside of just a few hiccups, the move went very well. I will work on transitioning the web server over to its new home (a roomy duplex with a view) over the next several weeks. I have been monitoring the web server performance and, at this point, it looks like it is holding up ok so I have time to get all of that transitioned over.
As always, thanks for being an app user, the patience, and the support. Growth is a good thing, especially for Amazing Aurora!
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