Recommended Flash Sales Cloud Solution Architecture
Solution description
- 1. Auto scaling of computing network resources:
- During online flash sales, all users' service requests are forwarded to the server cluster for flash sales through Server Load Balancer. Resources on ECS are automatically scaled by Alibaba Cloud's Auto Scaling service within a certain period or according to the preset service load, so as to meet the requests for server resources during flash sales. Alibaba Cloud's pay-as-you-go mode with no bandwidth limit can efficiently respond to the burst network traffic during flash sales.
- 2. Peak load shifting and database horizontal scaling:
- During online flash sales, databases will often become new bottlenecks after the bottlenecks with the network and application servers are solved. Alibaba Cloud's Message Service can be used for the implementation of the queue mechanism, decoupling users' flash sale requests from the back-end processor, so as to shift peak load arising from massive concurrent requests. The flash sales results are written into Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for RDS. When the concurrent requests cannot be supported with one database, Distributed Relational Database Service (DRDS) can be used. Through distributed database technology, the user's database capacity is horizontally scaled to effectively support massive concurrent requests.
- 3. Read/write splitting and static/dynamic splitting:
- This can improve user experience and effectively reduce the network pressure on the user's main website. This can improve user experience and effectively reduce the network pressure of the user's main Website.
Solution Driven
Problems of Traditional IT Modes
Alibaba Cloud Flash Sales Cloud Solution
Slow reaction in scaling IT resources, unable to keep up with demands
Auto scaling at low cost
During online flash sales, users' access to Internet may increase by several times or even dozens of times. It would be difficult to obtain massive network, server and database resources within a short period of time where traditional IT development modes (such as through purchase or IDC hosting) are used. Most of these IT resources are left idle after the flash sales, and IT costs are squandered.
Alibaba Cloud ECS is billed by the hour. It can support massive user service requests in the peak hours. The ECS resources purchased before the flash sales are released after the flash sales, and thus the server costs are greatly reduced. Alibaba Cloud's Server Load Balancer provides services billed by bandwidth and by traffic. The two billing modes can be switched within one day. During the flash sales, the Server Load Balancer can support the huge network traffic caused by massive user requests (regardless of the bandwidth amount) and the service is billed by bandwidth. After the flash sales, the service is billed by traffic, and thus the network costs are greatly reduced.
System overload during online flash sales
Support for concurrent accesses
The massive user requests during flash sales, especially in the initial stage, often result in network congestion, application server block, and database crash. Thus, most users' orders failed to be processed. The massive user requests during flash sales, especially in the initial stages, often result in network congestion, application server block and database crashes, thereby resulting in users' orders failing to be processed.This greatly affects the user experience and damages the business's reputation. It also renders the entire marketing activity unsuccessful, as less value is generated from marketing costs invested.
The customer can create an auto scalable system architecture based on Alibaba Cloud products, including Server Load Balancer, Auto Scaling, Message Service, ApsaraDB for Memcache and Distributed Relational Database Service, to support massive concurrent access during flash sales.
Network attack vulnerability
Optimal network experience
Usually, network attacks peak during online flash sales. The service system breaks down due to malicious attacks from certain users or competitors, and this negatively affects flash sales activities.
Alibaba Cloud's data centers in various regions provide multi-line access through Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). During the flash sales, users can access the network through either a PC terminal or a mobile terminal and enjoy the optimal user experience. Anti-DDoS can effectively defend the user against various network attacks (DDoS attacks in particular) and protect network security during flash sales.