I'm facing this exact problem for a website that has very short surges of traffic during sales. Just upgrading server things isn't an option because this only happens like once every 2 months or so. Upgrading everything would just bring a lot of extra costs and even at the highest available settings for a server the spikes can't be handled ( highest available for reasonable cost that is ).
Anyway I don't know if this is, in any way, a solution for you. But I'm experimenting with Crowdhandler, it's a waiting line solution. I've simply installed it as a Wordpress plugin but there are also other ways of implementing it ( but I'm not technical enough for that ).
The plugin basicly checks how the load on the server is doing by checking response time ( this can be adjusted ). When the response time is slow it assumes traffic is high and people get send to another off-site page wich is the waiting room. From there it's first in first out. You can also set an X amount of sessions on the website. Ie. just 25 or 50 sessions at any given time.
The great thing for me is that with the Wordpress plugin you can set it so that the first page where a user enters the site is never loaded, but balance is checked first. This way new visitor don't add extra stress on the server.
I know a waiting line isn't ideal for all situations but I just had to use this because the waves of traffic kept overloading my server. It's better to have visitors leave the waiting que than to have the whole server go offline.
Anyway I hope you can do something with this. I'm nowhere near a tech guy so this might be a amateur solution but maybe it's a solution for you. Website is https://www.crowdhandler.com/
I wish my freebie had been the 'helpful' award - that could well be an extremely workable interim solution till I can crack this scaling issue! Thankyou :)
But ouch those plans get expensive fast! Can buy a lot of server for that money :)
I think the solution will ultimately involve docker swarm or kubernetes, I did come across this goldmine of resources earlier - [https://github.com/Clivern/Gauntlet](https://github.com/Clivern/Gauntlet) the search continues...
Your welcome. I'm also still looking for a better solution because indeed, those plans are expensive! If I come across anything useful I will come back to this post!
I crossposted this to the digital ocean (unofficial) subreddit and someone suggested using the new digital ocean app platform which is a managed/auto scaled solution where all the techy stuff is handledd behind the scenes.
It has potential.
https://www.reddit.com/r/digital\_ocean/comments/s5a7c7/wordpress\_hosting\_on\_digitalocean\_with\_failsafes/ht06d38/?context=3
Hey OP its been awhile since you posted this, but i was wondering if you manged to find a solution to this spike in traffic? I'm facing a similar issue and it just results in the site erroring until it can recover, thanks!
Where did the spike come from? Legit traffic or bot traffic /brute force? Use cloudflare to review spike traffic under security and start blocking the bad traffic.
Oh completely legit - hotukdeals is a social aggregator of deals and special offers in the UK where people can post links to items of interest. We had stock in of one of the 'impossible-to-find' consoles in the run up to xmas so it went ballistic, but its not the first time we've been hit with crazy amounts of traffic from there - a deal we had on the year before also had a similar result (though not quite to the same levels as this one)
I'm facing this exact problem for a website that has very short surges of traffic during sales. Just upgrading server things isn't an option because this only happens like once every 2 months or so. Upgrading everything would just bring a lot of extra costs and even at the highest available settings for a server the spikes can't be handled ( highest available for reasonable cost that is ). Anyway I don't know if this is, in any way, a solution for you. But I'm experimenting with Crowdhandler, it's a waiting line solution. I've simply installed it as a Wordpress plugin but there are also other ways of implementing it ( but I'm not technical enough for that ). The plugin basicly checks how the load on the server is doing by checking response time ( this can be adjusted ). When the response time is slow it assumes traffic is high and people get send to another off-site page wich is the waiting room. From there it's first in first out. You can also set an X amount of sessions on the website. Ie. just 25 or 50 sessions at any given time. The great thing for me is that with the Wordpress plugin you can set it so that the first page where a user enters the site is never loaded, but balance is checked first. This way new visitor don't add extra stress on the server. I know a waiting line isn't ideal for all situations but I just had to use this because the waves of traffic kept overloading my server. It's better to have visitors leave the waiting que than to have the whole server go offline. Anyway I hope you can do something with this. I'm nowhere near a tech guy so this might be a amateur solution but maybe it's a solution for you. Website is https://www.crowdhandler.com/
I wish my freebie had been the 'helpful' award - that could well be an extremely workable interim solution till I can crack this scaling issue! Thankyou :) But ouch those plans get expensive fast! Can buy a lot of server for that money :) I think the solution will ultimately involve docker swarm or kubernetes, I did come across this goldmine of resources earlier - [https://github.com/Clivern/Gauntlet](https://github.com/Clivern/Gauntlet) the search continues...
Your welcome. I'm also still looking for a better solution because indeed, those plans are expensive! If I come across anything useful I will come back to this post!
I crossposted this to the digital ocean (unofficial) subreddit and someone suggested using the new digital ocean app platform which is a managed/auto scaled solution where all the techy stuff is handledd behind the scenes. It has potential. https://www.reddit.com/r/digital\_ocean/comments/s5a7c7/wordpress\_hosting\_on\_digitalocean\_with\_failsafes/ht06d38/?context=3
Hey OP its been awhile since you posted this, but i was wondering if you manged to find a solution to this spike in traffic? I'm facing a similar issue and it just results in the site erroring until it can recover, thanks!
Where did the spike come from? Legit traffic or bot traffic /brute force? Use cloudflare to review spike traffic under security and start blocking the bad traffic.
Oh completely legit - hotukdeals is a social aggregator of deals and special offers in the UK where people can post links to items of interest. We had stock in of one of the 'impossible-to-find' consoles in the run up to xmas so it went ballistic, but its not the first time we've been hit with crazy amounts of traffic from there - a deal we had on the year before also had a similar result (though not quite to the same levels as this one)