Case Study: Redcats
| Company | Redcats USA |  "We needed an in-memory solution that would both scale in performance and be highly available." Irina Krechmer Director of Online Development Redcats USA |
| Application | Ecommerce for major clothing retailer | |
| Server configuration | 100+ rack mounted servers, multiple farms & data centers | |
| Reason for deployment | Needed to increase high availability without sacrificing speed and scalability in web server farms | |
| Results | Able to scale without negative impact to performance, fastest fault recovery ever achieved |
Background
Redcats USA is a major online retailer specializing in apparel, lifestyle & domestics and sporting goods. Ecommerce sites serving these brands must be available 24x7, and be highly scalable and reconfigurable to handle special promotions that can result in increased traffic of 10 times the normal level for several hours at a time. Prior to adopting ScaleOut StateServer, Redcats USA used ASP.Net StateServer to store application session-state.
Challenges
ASP.Net StateServer was originally used because at the time it was the most viable solution for providing fast in-memory storage. However, two significant limitations arose. First, it is not a scalable solution. Because a single server handles all state information, it became a performance bottleneck, especially in times of increased traffic. In fact, it was necessary to break up farms into smaller "banks," each with its own StateServer, to achieve acceptable performance. Second, it was a single point of failure for the entire server farm. If the StateServer or the host it ran on went down, no state information was available for any user on any of the servers in the farm. These were not acceptable conditions for Redcats USA and a decision was made to investigate other methods of storing state information. Database solutions were examined, but based on high cost and performance bottlenecks, they were eliminated. Irina Krechmer, Director of Online Development for Redcats USA, summed it up by saying, "We needed an in-memory solution that would both scale in performance and be highly available. That's when we found ScaleOut StateServer."
Results
Francois Gibeau
Manager of Enterprise Engineering
Since deploying ScaleOut StateServer, Redcats USA has seen a marked increase in the availability of its Web sites during normal operations. And when a big promotion is launched creating a large influx of traffic the sites still perform as expected. The ability to add servers for peak hours of use during promotions and then remove them later is easy, making the solution even more valuable.
Even maintenance has been streamlined since servers can be removed "at will" for maintenance without worrying about lost data. That's a real advantage when you are running more than 100 Web servers at any one time. Best of all, ScaleOut StateServer was easy to install and is easy to operate.
Deployment Details
Redcats USA began by testing ScaleOut StateServer on a test farm consisting of six servers running an e-Commerce web site. Installation was accomplished in less than an hour and immediately session state was being stored for the test application. Tests were run for several days under various conditions, including failures.
When all tests showed satisfactory results, the decision was made to deploy it on a small production farm. Since that time, Redcats USA has rolled out ScaleOut StateServer on nearly all of its servers and are now preparing to standardize on it worldwide.
About Redcats USA
Redcats USA is a dynamic, multi-channel, web-driven home-shopping leader, with numerous successful brands in its portfolio: AVENUE, Woman Within, Jessica London, Roaman's, KingSize, and BrylaneHome sold on OneStopPlus.com, The Sportsman's Guide and The Golf Warehouse. Redcats USA offers a wide range of value and quality driven merchandise categories, including men's and women's plus-size apparel, home and lifestyle products, and sporting goods/outdoor gear. Redcats USA is a Redcats company.
About Redcats
Standing at the forefront of fashion, design and e-commerce, Redcats brings together 15 brands in home shopping: Avenue, Woman Within, Jessica London, Roaman's, KingSize, BrylaneHome, OneStopPlus.com, The Sportsman's Guide, The Golf Warehouse, La Redoute, Vertbaudet, Cyrillus, Somewhere, Daxon and Ellos, present in 30 countries. Redcats generated 3.386 billion euros of sales in 2009, including 47% on Internet and employs approximately 16,000 associates. Redcats distribution network combines e-commerce web sites (more than 60) catalogues and stores (more than 600).
Redcats is a PPR Company. For any further information: www.redcats.com
