This is how the Kikis Kitchen Shop was helped after being overloaded!

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. It is precisely in these cases that it is important to have a strong team of developers at your side who can 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 couple behind the YouTube channel Kikis Kitchen and the associated online store. In the Kikis Kitchen store, you can buy everything related to baking and cooking - from baking tins and 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 in advance on all social media channels and Kiki and Hamza's fans were already visibly excited. So excited, in fact, that the server collapsed under the load at 8pm on Monday evening - no wonder with 50 views per second.

Kikis Kitchen has been an EXWE customer since September and we provide 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 any concerns or problems and optimize online stores to ensure the best possible satisfaction for all store visitors. In emergencies such as Kiki and Hamza's, we are of course available around the clock and are on hand until the problem is solved. We offer 100% personal service and each of our customers has a personal contact person. On Monday evening, it was our two managing directors, Yuri and Chris, who immediately stepped in to solve the problem. Don't yet have a reliable Shopware agency at your side for the management and support of your online store? We at EXWE are a strong partner for you and support you with quick solutions to any problems that arise 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 up to date via Instagram, we were able to ensure that the problem was solved quickly in the background. Below we explain the technical aspects of the problem at Kikis Kitchen and how we revived the online store 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 into errors and bottlenecks in the store. The APM tool had also sent us alerts by email at the same time as Hamza's call, so we already had an idea of where the problem was: The database was overloaded. MySQL databases have a connection limit that defines how many connections may exist in parallel. If there are a lot of users on your store at the same time, a lot of connections will be open at the same time. In Kiki's store, the connection limit was reached and the database did not allow any more connections. The result: users cannot access the store. A typical bottleneck that occurs in the standard Shopware configuration is that the user sessions are managed via the MySQL database. This means that the session has to be queried via the database for every request, which would not be necessary for some content.Our first solution was to outsource the session handling to a Redis database. This is one of the first steps and, depending on the hoster, can be done relatively quickly. With our hosting partner Timme Hosting, a Redis database can be installed with just a few clicks, and you can find the configuration instructions here at Timmehosting. Important: If you use JTL as a website with the JTL Connector, this will lead to problems. You can read exactly why here. In that case, you could try Memcached, but that's a topic for a separate blog post ;-)

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. To further relieve the MySQL database, we quickly configured Shopware's ElasticSearch integration. Fortunately, an ElasticSearch instance is already installed on every Timme managed server, 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 at short notice, because the ElasticSearch database has to 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 given 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 carry out the indexing.

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

Chris Apfelbeck, Managing Director EXWE

OUR ONLINE STORE SUPPORT - ALSO AVAILABLE IN AN EMERGENCY

EXWE offers you full online store support and website support for your business. If you're looking for a professional contact in the field of e-commerce, you've 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. Our experienced programmers are also on hand immediately in the event of an emergency - we are problem finders and problem solvers and are at your side as a strong partner for all issues relating to your online store.