The Nationwide Tv Awards (NTAs) is a prestigious awards ceremony within the UK that celebrates excellence in tv programming. Thought of one of the outstanding occasions within the British tv business, the awards recognise excellent performances, productions, and programmes throughout completely different tv genres. The NTAs are distinctive in that winners are chosen by the British public by way of numerous voting strategies, together with on-line, phone, and postal voting. The outcomes are then offered stay on ITV.
For the previous 4 years, the NTAs have entrusted Hyve Managed Hosting with a essential activity: sustaining a strong infrastructure for on-line votingsystem. The problem resides in dealing with the surge in site visitors throughout peak voting durations main as much as the ceremony. In 2023, Hyve wanted to make sure a seamless expertise for each member of the British public who wished to solid their vote.
Leveraging its experience in cloud expertise to ship a scalable and dependable answer, Hyve offered safe and dependable server infrastructure to host the NTAs’ on-line voting platform. Hyve additionally carried out a dynamic scaling technique to mechanically modify sources based mostly on real-time site visitors calls for, making certain clean operation even throughout peak voting durations.
The issue:
Yearly, the NTAs expertise a big surge in web site site visitors through the voting window within the lead-up to the ceremony, as tens of millions of viewers try and take part on-line. This annual site visitors spike can overload the servers, inflicting crashes and hindering the voting course of. Such downtime can severely influence the system’s credibility and lift questions in regards to the equity of all the award ceremony.
Overwhelmed servers wrestle to deal with an inflow of site visitors, leading to sluggish loading instances, error messages, and, in the end, the positioning crashing utterly. These points don’t simply go away voters fuming – they discourage participation, probably undermining each the general pleasure and the legitimacy of the awards. Downtime throughout voting may also harm the NTAs’ fame, resulting in damaging publicity and eroding belief with viewers and business insiders.
Along with the rapid influence on the voting course of, server overload and downtime pose logistical challenges for the NTAs and its broadcast companion, Indigo Tv. Delays in voting outcomes and disruptions within the stay broadcast of the ceremony can disrupt scheduling and manufacturing plans, affecting the general viewer expertise and the success of the occasion.
So, making certain the reliability and scalability of the voting platform was paramount for the NTAs to uphold the integrity of the awards, keep viewer confidence, and ship a seamless voting expertise for tens of millions of individuals throughout the nation.
The answer:
To deal with this problem, Hyve devised a bespoke load-balanced cloud platform designed to deal with the anticipated enhance in web site site visitors through the voting interval.
Final 12 months, server sources had been elevated by 24 instances their regular ranges inside the two voting home windows to accommodate the elevated heavy site visitors from the members of the British public taking part within the votes. Sources had been then dialled again to regular ranges as soon as site visitors subsided in between voting levels, to chop out utilizing pointless cloud sources and due to this fact scale back prices for the client.
In addition to making a bespoke, scalable cloud answer for the NTAs to ensure 100% community uptime, Hyve’s assist workforce was additionally available to constantly monitor the servers even after sources had been raised to new ranges. Hyve set in place alert thresholds for the servers as a precaution ought to the NTAs web site expertise unprecedented ranges of site visitors and wish to extend sources.
The flexibility to scale cloud sources dynamically on digital servers additionally helped streamline the voting interval for Indigo Tv as nothing new wanted to be launched past their present {hardware}, that means that new logins or IPs weren’t required when voting commenced.
The problem:
The primary problem was to anticipating site visitors surges. To handle this, Hyve set threshold alerts for its servers to ramp up sources in response to unprecedented ranges of web site site visitors. This proactive strategy ensured clean voting processes even throughout peak durations.
The second problem was value administration. To stop pointless prices, Hyve dialled again server sources as soon as the voting interval ended, making certain sources had been allotted effectively.
Lastly, there was the problem of Indigo’s compatibility. Hyve dynamically scaled cloud sources on digital servers, streamlining the voting course of for Indigo Tv with out requiring new {hardware} or logins.
The end result:
Behind the scenes of the NTAs, a seamless collaboration with Hyve ensured a clean voting course of all through the ceremony. The occasion celebrated a various vary of winners throughout classes, honouring the perfect of British tv. Kim Turberville, the NTAs’ government producer, expressed her appreciation for Hyve’s essential contribution to the occasion’s success. This partnership displays Hyve’s dedication to creating tailor-made cloud options, fostering a belief that retains the NTAs workforce coming again 12 months after 12 months.
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