

Ask HN: How do you survive a HN launch? - martin-adams

Every so often a site hits the homepage and gets taken offline.  Anyone got tips on how to test a site for load before it goes viral?
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veesahni
Take a look at apache benchmark (
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html> ) which can help get a
general idea of what your server can take.

Generally speaking, for blog-type content that's typically served to HN, it's
best to ensure that each visit doesn't equate to a db query (either via a
caching mechanism, or by using a blogging platform that's not db based)..

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martin-adams
Great thanks. It'll be interesting to know what load my application will fall
over with.

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ucflibrary
Using AWS or similar, you can upgrade to a huge server for just a few hours,
then downgrade it once the traffic tapers.

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xauronx
What would a micro instance do if the load increases to that degree? Does it
actually crash or try to do some scaling? I'm a bit green to aws.

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AznHisoka
It might shut itself down due to too much load. In my experience, I find you
can surpass the maximum load by 2 or even 3 times with no problem. But any
more than that, and it will just shut down.

