THE CUSTOMER

The client is an Islamic online channel, which offers young Muslims, their parents, and teachers a meaningful alternative to mainstream digital content. It is an initiative of a private charitable trust.

THE PROBLEM

The client wanted an on-demand online channel but very cost-effective. We offered them a customized WordPress solution. They were concerned about unexpected traffic which might impact performance. They wanted 24/7 support but they did not have the budget for it. We suggested implementing auto-scaling.

FOLIO3 SOLUTION

When we talk about scaling to indefinite traffic we have to come up with some type of horizontal scaling solution, which means we have to keep the elements shared by the web server in a central location. In our case, it was cache, content ( images, etc ) and database. 

We didn’t go with Docker or Kubernetes, as it would increase complexity, as the customer engineering team would not be able to handle it in the long run due to their limited expertise level. Also, we did not have any stack readymade that anyone had experience with.

We decided to opt for simple EC2-Autoscaling, using RDS with read Replica, CDN, and S3 for wp-content images and files to be shared across the web servers. Cache on local storage.

Technologies Involved in Case Study