This is how we helped Kikis Kitchen Shop after overload!

ATTENTION - SERVER OVERLOADED

The nightmare for every online store owner: You launch a new product on your website and the server is so overloaded that nothing works. This happened to our customer Kikis Kitchen on Monday evening. Exactly in these cases it is important to have a strong developer team on your side, who help you in crisis situations with direct support and get your online store up and running again quickly. Kiki and her husband Hamza are the dream team behind the Youtube channel Kikis Kitchen and the corresponding online store. In Kiki's Kitchen Shop you can buy everything related to baking and cooking - from baking pans to pots to Kiki's own products. And here we come to the culprit or star of the day: Kiki's premium hazelnut cream.

The launch of the product was announced days before on all social media channels and Kiki's and Hamza's fans were already visibly excited in advance. So enthusiastic, in fact, that on Monday evening at 8 p.m. sharp, the server collapsed under the load - no wonder with 50 views per second.

Since September, Kikis Kitchen is part of EXWE's customer base and is supported by us with the monthly service and support for their online store. Normally our developers work in our office hours from 09:00 to 18:00 and support our customers with every concern or problem and optimize online stores so that the best possible satisfaction can be guaranteed for all store visitors. In case of such emergencies as with Kiki and Hamza, we are of course available around the clock and will be there until the problem is solved. We offer 100% personal service and each of our customers has a personal contact person. On Monday evening, that was our two managing directors Yuri and Chris, who immediately stepped in as problem solvers. Don't you have a reliable Shopware agency for the care and support of your online store on your side yet? We at EXWE are a strong partner for you and support you with all occurring problems by means of fast solutions, so that your customers are completely satisfied.

HOW WE SOLVED THE PROBLEM

Hamza reacted just right on Monday evening and called us immediately. While Kiki and Hamza kept their fans updated via Instagram, we were able to work in the background to make sure the issue was resolved quickly. Below we explain the technical aspects of the problem at Kiki's Kitchen and how we revived the online shop after the server overload. This will probably be the most interesting part for the programmers among you.

"To solve the problem, we looked into our Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool, which gives us important insights about errors and bottlenecks in the store. The APM tool had also sent us alerts by mail at the same time as Hamza's call, so we already had an idea where the problem was: The database was overloaded. MySQL databases have a connection limit that defines how many connections can exist in parallel. If there are a lot of users on your store in parallel, there will be a lot of connections in parallel. In the case of Kiki's store, the connection limit was reached and the database did not allow any more connections. The result: users can not call the store. A typical bottleneck that occurs in the standard configuration of Shopware is that the user sessions are managed via the MySQL database. This means that for each request the session must be queried via the database, which would not be necessary for some content. Here was our first approach to solve the problem: outsource the session handling to a Redis database. This is one of the first steps, and depending on the hoster, it can be done relatively quickly. At our hosting partner Timme Hosting a Redis database is installed with a few clicks, the instructions for the configuration can be found here at Timmehosting. Important: If you use JTL as WaWi with the JTL Connector, this will lead to problems. Why exactly you can read here. In that case, you could try it with Memcached, but that's a topic for a separate blog entry ;-)

With Redis as session adapter it worked a bit better, but the response times still left a lot to be desired, because the MySQL database was still under heavy load. So, in order to further relieve the MySQL database, we configured Shopware's ElasticSearch integration without further ado. Fortunately, an ElasticSearch instance is already installed on each of Timme's managed servers, so the configuration was done quickly. You can find the instructions here. In the case of Kikis Kitchen, however, we had to block the store for customers at this point, because the ElasticSearch database must be initially filled with data, which is then indexed. To do this, almost the entire content of the MySQL database had to be read out, which would have taken forever due to the immense number of incoming queries. So we decided to put the online store into maintenance mode for a few minutes, so that the MySQL database could rest and we could do the indexing.

Now all we had to do was deactivate the maintenance mode again and the store was running smoothly again!"

Chris Apfelbeck, Managing Director EXWE

OUR ONLINE STORE SUPPORT - ALSO AVAILABLE IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

EXWE offers you full online store support and website support for your business. If you are looking for a professional partner in the field of e-commerce, you have come to the right place. We support you with our monthly online store support. As a long-standing Shopware partner, we offer you optimal support in the areas of optimization, maintenance and monitoring. We make sure that your online store works quickly and effectively so that you can offer your customers the best possible shopping experience. Even in case of an emergency, our experienced programmers are immediately on the spot - we are problem finders and problem solvers and stand by your side as a strong partner for all topics related to your online store.