Posted by Julian Scarlett at 28/11/2011 14:03:15
I have been analysing days/times of online form submissions and payments to try and get a sense of when we should carry out server updates and other maintenance that requires brief periods of service unavailability.
I had expected to see much heavier use during out-of-hours times - after all that's what the website is for isn't it? So you can all apply for xyz in your dressing-gown and slippers over Sunday breakfast or when you wake in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep? Isn't that the behaviour of the 21st century Internet user that we've been led to believe that we need to cater for?
I was quite surprised by the results which don't really support that picture at all.
To summarise:
- The least popular day was Saturday.
- Monday was as busy as the entire weekend. The beginning of the working week was preferred more to the end.
- The period 10am-6pm accounted for two thirds of transactions.
- The period 4pm-6pm accounted for almost 20% of transactions.
Given that our traditional times for server restarts following Windows updates is around about 5pm on a weekday we clearly have something wrong.
What's going to change as a result of this?
As of today we are going to restart forms and payments servers between 7am and 8am. Since that early morning period accounts for only 1.4% of transactions it should see a much better availability of services for the public.
I'd like to say that we're going to do it on a Saturday but I'm afraid that we need our weekends too. When else am I going to pay my Council Tax?
