{"id":19686,"date":"2014-09-05T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.shareaholic.com\/?p=19686"},"modified":"2014-09-10T10:56:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:56:48","slug":"disaster-recovery-alpha-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/disaster-recovery-alpha-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"A Service That Refuses to Let Your Site Crash, at Least from a Reader&#8217;s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>More than 1 million downloads later, <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/shareaholic\/\" target=\"_blank\">our WordPress plugin<\/a> continues to support website owners around the globe.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>When Facebook experienced a site wide outage this summer, it is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jeffbercovici\/2014\/06\/19\/that-facebook-outage-only-cost-facebook-about-500k\/\" target=\"_blank\">estimated<\/a> the company lost $500,000 in ad revenue over the half hour the social network went offline.<\/p>\n<p>For publishers, overall traffic took a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joshuadschwartz\/status\/495307358521032704\/\" target=\"_blank\">noticeable<\/a> 3% drop.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Overall web traffic to news sites dropped about 3% during the FB outage <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5A7uHW5Eo3\">pic.twitter.com\/5A7uHW5Eo3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Josh Schwartz (@joshuadschwartz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joshuadschwartz\/statuses\/495307358521032704\">August 1, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>Ouch<\/em>. Naturally, outrage on Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2014\/jun\/19\/facebook-down-global-outage-website-and-apps\" target=\"_blank\">ensued<\/a>. While users were denied their regular dose of Facebook, businesses suffered by losing revenue.<\/p>\n<p>When the world&#8217;s largest social network (and the web&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/social-media-traffic-trends-07-2014\/\" target=\"_blank\">#1 source<\/a> of social referrals) goes offline, there&#8217;s not much you can do other than suffer alongside it. But if your own servers go down for whatever reason, you&#8217;ll need a backup solution\u00a0that ensures the reader experience isn&#8217;t compromised and revenue isn&#8217;t halted.<\/p>\n<h3>A Carbon Copy as Good as the Original<\/h3>\n<p>Nothing can substitute the digital experience you&#8217;ve carefully crafted for your audience over the years, so why try? But when the original isn&#8217;t available, a mirror image will have to do.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2014\/06\/19\/wp-engines-new-product-will-keep-your-website-chugging-along-during-huge-traffic-spikes\/\" target=\"_blank\">first reported<\/a> by <em>VentureBeat<\/em>, premium hosting platform <a href=\"http:\/\/wpengine.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">WP Engine<\/a>\u00a0introduced a new service called <a href=\"http:\/\/wpengine.com\/labs\" target=\"_blank\">S3 Mirror<\/a>, which initially will be best used for disaster recovery (DR), as part of its latest initiative called <a href=\"http:\/\/wpengine.com\/2014\/06\/19\/announcing-wp-engine-alpha-labs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alpha Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to WP Engine,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>S3 Mirror creates an always-on, highly scalable and secure hosting environment containing a \u201csnapshot\u201d of the website in a (recent) moment in time. If the primary website experiences problems for any reason, web traffic can be diverted to S3 so the site is still available.<\/p>\n<p>Besides incidents like full-cluster or full-data-center failure, this is also useful if a site receives an especially large surge of traffic. Whether anticipated or surprising, whether a malicious attack or from planned PR, having an alternative mode for handling traffic of literally\u00a0<em>any<\/em>\u00a0size can make the difference between showing your site to millions of viewers or showing them a blank screen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Over a phone interview, Tomas Puig, Senior Director at Alpha Labs, shared that generally, digital businesses can think in terms of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3021598\/fast-feed\/how-much-revenue-do-top-companies-make-each-second#1\" target=\"_blank\">revenue-per-hour<\/a> or visitors-per-hour (especially for websites that deliver ads). Regardless of the metric you measure for your site&#8217;s success, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB20001424052970204622204580117624046026674\" target=\"_blank\">prolonged outages compromise your brand<\/a>. Even middle-of-the-night outages haunt CTOs&#8217; dreams, despite their sometimes negligible impact on\u00a0key business metrics. That said, Puig recommends, &#8220;buying something consistent, at very least for sake of sanity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All things considered, a defensive strategy is\u00a0just as important as executing aggressive growth strategies for\u00a0promising\u00a0websites.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-20048\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/404-error.png\" alt=\"404 error\" width=\"480\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/404-error.png 764w, https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/404-error-700x329.png 700w, https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/404-error-300x141.png 300w, https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/404-error-400x188.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>For businesses, an outage can, at best, be brushed off. At worst, you land on Infoworld&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/slideshow\/162288\/the-worst-cloud-outages-of-2014-so-far-248874\" target=\"_blank\">worst cloud outages<\/a>&#8221; semi-annual listicle. While\u00a0you can hope for the best, the smartest companies often prepare for the worst.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it would be wise to shop around for\u00a0DR services that work well for your website and fit your budget. Though their offerings differ, alternative DR providers include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/disaster-recovery-planning\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rackspace<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/disaster-recovery\/\" target=\"_blank\">AWS<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/websynthesis.com\/personal-backups-for-s3\/\" target=\"_blank\">Synthesis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Have you tried any of these before? What are your best disaster recovery stories and tips?<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a style=\"text-align: center;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/shareaholic-email-signup\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/shareaholic-newsletter-cta.png\" alt=\"Shareaholic Email Signup\" width=\"300\" height=\"120\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>You&#8217;d look good at our company. Join the team at Shareaholic.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/shareaholic.com\/careers\" target=\"_blank\">See our job openings<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 1 million downloads later, our WordPress plugin continues to support website owners around the globe. When Facebook experienced a site wide outage this&hellip;&nbsp;<br \/><a class=\"continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/disaster-recovery-alpha-labs\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":20030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[606],"tags":[406,748,747,745,749,746],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shareaholic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}