Load tests and infrastructure optimisation for Siecportali.pl

Siecportali.pl is a modern CMS platform created by VIVA MEDIA Ltd from Włocławek, whose dedicated CMS systems are currently used by 117 news portals throughout Poland. This number is growing every month. The platform proves its reliability year on year, serving around 6 million users looking for the latest information. As a long-standing technical partner of siecportali.pl, we were pleased to support the company in its preparations for handling one of the most important media events of the year - the second round of the parliamentary elections.

Challenge: Preparing for Peak User Traffic

The second round of elections is always a special moment for news portals, which have to be prepared to handle hundreds of thousands of users at the same time who are looking for the latest turnout data, forecasts, and results. siecportali.pl knew that only a perfectly optimized infrastructure would ensure uninterrupted service availability at such a critical time. We were therefore asked to carry out advanced load tests and infrastructure optimization to guarantee the stability and speed of the CMS-based portals.

Testing and optimization of infrastructure

Our activities began with a thorough analysis of Siecportali. pl's infrastructure. Initial load tests showed that the existing solutions reached their limit at 1,100 queries per second and that the homepage's loading time averaged 8 seconds. In addition, 6% of queries ended in errors, which was unacceptable with the expected increase in traffic.

In response to these challenges, we implemented several improvements:

1. We replaced the Redis servers and increased the PHP-FPM limits, immediately improving performance, raising the limit to 2,000 queries per second.
2. Increasing the connection limits to Redis and Sentinel and scaling the kernel parameters on the Redis databases further improved performance to 3,500 queries per second.
3. Implementing persistent connections to Redis significantly reduced the number of TCP connections in the TIME_WAIT state, which affected system stability.
4. Optimizing the Maria DB database and reconfiguring the systems in Cloudflare further improved the portals' speed and reliability.

Thanks to these measures, the homepage's average loading time was reduced to 2.4 seconds, and the number of queries handled per second increased to 3,500, with minimal errors (0.00003%). The achieved parameters gave complete confidence to Siecportali.pl's services would work uninterruptedly, even during peak election times.

Ongoing Cooperation and Monitoring

Our cooperation with siecportali.pl includes ongoing administrative care in addition to one-off infrastructure optimization. By regularly monitoring the environment and reacting quickly to potential problems, we ensure the continued stability of the CMS platform.

siecportali.pl is synonymous with modernity and reliability in content management. Thanks to our technical support, the platform can meet even the most significant challenges, guaranteeing users access to the latest information without disruption.

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