We decided to give some simple examples of working with a virtual server in order to avoid mistakes and not meet people with a 503 page, or worse, About: blank and ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT. Remains one day to prepare.
Resource Scaling
A site usually consists of different modules - a database, a web server, a caching system. Each of these modules requires different types and volumes of resources. It is necessary to analyze the volume of resources consumed in advance using stress tests and evaluate the speed of disk I / O, processor time, memory, and the width of the Internet band of your site.
Stress tests can help identify bottlenecks in your system and scale them in advance. So, for example, you can improve the power of your server by increasing the space on your hard drive for the duration of the action, expand the band of the site or increase the RAM of the virtual server. After the action, you can return everything as it was, it is done in your personal account without contacting technical support and takes a couple of minutes, but it is better to do this in advance and during hours of minimal customer activity on the site.
Protect yourself from DDoS attacks in advance
Sites on sales days are falling not only due to the growth in customer flow, but because of DDoS attacks. They can be organized by attackers who want to redirect your traffic to their phishing resources.
DDoS attacks are becoming more sophisticated every day. Hackers use different approaches, resorting simultaneously to DDoS attacks and attacks on application vulnerabilities. In most cases, attacks are accompanied by attempts to hack the site.
It is also important here to prepare in advance and connect an IP address protected from attacks to your server. In UltraVDS, we protect servers not after an attack, but withstand round-the-clock attacks up to 1.5 Tbps! To protect servers from DDoS attacks, a series of filters are used that are connected to the Internet channel with a sufficiently large bandwidth. Filters sequentially analyze the passing traffic, revealing anomalies and non-standard network activity. The analyzed patterns of non-standard traffic include all currently known attack methods, including those implemented using distributed botnets.
To connect a secure address to a virtual server, you must send a request to the provider's support service in advance.
Speed up site loading
During the periods of the campaign, the load on the servers increases, on the sites photos and product cards begin to load for a long time. Also, the loading of pages is weighted by various frameworks, JS-libraries, CSS modules and so on. A potential client can leave the page without receiving a response from the site, even in the case of a better offer than competitors. To check the page loading speed, we suggest using Google DevTools.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help speed up page loading. CDN is a geographically distributed network, which consists of caching nodes - points of presence, they can be located around the world. When entering the site, the client will receive static content not from your server, but from the one that enters the CDN network and is closer to it. By reducing the route between the server and the client, the data on the site loads faster.
You can configure the CDN network yourself if you have VDS on Windows Server Core 2019, for this, use the tools built into the operating system such as Active Directory, DFS, IIS, WinAcme, RSAT. You can also use ready-made solutions, for example, CloudFare’s CDN could solve the problem much faster and cheaper. Plus, this system has additional features: DNS, HTML, CSS, JS compression, many points of presence.
Good luck with your sales.
Black Friday at UltraVDS
We also didn’t miss the traditional discounts on this day and offer Habr users BlackFr promo code with a 15% discount on all our virtual servers from November 28 to December 2 inclusive.
For example, an UltraDSight VDS server with 1 CPU core, 500MB of RAM and 10GB of disk space running Windows Server Core 2019 can be purchased using the BlackFr promotional code with an additional 30% discount for a year for only 55 rubles per month, so the total discount will be 45 % of the current price.
UltraVDS is a modern cloud provider, hundreds of large organizations work with us, including well-known banks, stock brokers, construction and pharmaceutical companies.
