Capacity Planning

When Planning Is Not Enough

Spikes are not the only pitfalls. The continued expansion of day-to-day operations and the ongoing change in orientation from static HTML to dynamically generated pages and increased interactivity led to unforeseen difficulties at microsoft.com. Toward the end of 1996, for example, problems began to emerge at http://home.microsoft.com as users found error messages appearing on their browsers. By May of 1997, the servers had begun to show signs of blocking, as thousands of delayed access requests backed up. Performance of the Internet Start page went downhill gradually for two or three weeks, then suddenly took a nosedive. The site’s existing hardware and software technology was simply unable to keep pace with demand.