from Jan Griesel
We offer plentymarkets Professional as a software as a service solution (SaaS) including free hosting. Our hosting concept is currently being restructured and at the same time we are simplifying the hosting on our own servers.
Our inclusive hosting so far allowed for load balancing based on application servers. This way the breakdown of several application servers could be balanced by other servers. The infrastructure that then follows is mainly composed of these two major components: database server and storage. These two components exist in large numbers and have been optimized against breakdowns. However, even supposedly fail-proof components can break down due to some kind of technical defect and this would affect the availability of the systems stored on the component. This is why we decided to implement a new hosting concept that will provide a higher degree of availability.
Of course, breakdowns can never be completely precluded but with our new hosting concept each database will be replicated on at least one more physically separated database server to ensure data security. Thanks to this concept, even a complete database server breakdown would not cause any large data losses. We are also working on the realization of a similar concept for storage in order to have each file (item images, invoices etc.) stored on at least two physically separated storage servers. This way, the breakdown of a storage server can easily be balanced.
We are currently right in the process of implementing this new technology but we can already see first achievements. As for now, 96% of all databases are already stored on two separated database servers. The migration of stored files takes significantly longer, approximately a few more weeks. The migration does not influence the live operation. Our first aim is to migrate all systems that have a plentymarkets Professional 1,000 tariff and up. Unfortunately, it is not possible to migrate plentymarkets systems to the new storage that still operate in version 4.305. Therefore, we recommend to switch to plentymarkets 4.306 to ensure an operation free of failures.
This new development is especially attractive and interesting as similar concepts are usually only found in enterprise solutions and involve considerable costs for hosting and maintenance. With our new concept we are providing you with an unusual solution in this price segment.
Hosting on your own server hardware
Beside using our own newly extended hosting solution, plentymarkets can also run on your own server hardware. This may be the right solution for you if you yourself can maintain a linux server or if the maintenance is carried out by an external service provider.
plentymarkets is a comprehensive software solution and therefore certain technical requirements for operating it on your own server need to be fulfilled. The minimum requirements that need to be fulfilled for our current version and that may vary depending on the load and the number of simultaneous accesses are the following:
- Debian Linux server with root access (not a so called vServer)
- Hardware raid 1 or 5
- 150 GB SATA HDD, or even better SSD
- 8 GB RAM
- 2 CPU cores with 2.4 GHz each
Of course, operating plentymarkets on a distributed system is also possible. Especially good results can be obtained if the database and the application server are operated separately. This is of special interest for systems with more than 10,000 orders per month and very high access rates.
As you can see, operating your own server hardware involves considerable costs and resources for support and maintenance. If you have serious interest in operating your own server and hosting your plentymarkets system, do not hesitate to send a request ticket to our support department.