Download Trade Me Group

TRADE ME GROUP
New Zealand’s largest online marketplace
ensures continuity for 24/7 operations
OVERVIEW
Founded in 1999, Trade Me is the largest online marketplace in New Zealand. The
company operates an online auction and classified business, with about 2.2 million
listings onsite and 250,000 new items listed each day. It also operates travel,
accommodation, dating and advertising businesses. Headquartered in Wellington
and with offices in Auckland and Christchurch, Trade Me has more than 300
employees and 3 million registered members, and is listed on the New Zealand
Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange.
ESSENTIALS
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Recently, Trade Me’s five-year-old HP StorageWorks EVA 8000 Enterprise Virtual
Industry
Retail
Arrays reached end-of-life and were facing performance and capacity constraints. As
an online business that requires 24-hour availability, the company could not afford
transaction delays or any system downtime.
Business Challenges

Support increased user traffic
while maintaining website
performance

Ensure business continuity, and
recovery of critical systems and
To address these issues, Trade Me needed a storage solution that could handle evergrowing volumes of transaction data and member information. The company also
wanted to replicate three core databases between its production and disaster
recovery sites quickly, safely and efficiently. A robust storage and replication
solution would help Trade Me ensure its online auction and classifieds services
delivered a seamless, enjoyable experience to its members.
databases, in the event of a
EMC STORAGE AND REPLICATION SOLUTIONS ENSURE
disaster
AVAILABILITY AND SEAMLESS USER EXPERIENCE
Trade Me evaluated solutions from several vendors based on two requirements.
Solutions

EMC Symmetrix VMAX

EMC RecoverPoint
“The first was performance – getting the lowest latency and the maximum number
of IOPs at the right price,” says Matt van Deventer, Head of Infrastructure, Trade
Me. “The second was the ability to replicate our core SQL databases between our
two data centres and fail over quickly and easily.”
Trade Me has a unique environment in terms of the way its three core databases
talk to each other and need to be in sync during failovers. EMC built a scaled-down
replica of Trade Me’s environment in its labs in Singapore to test EMC®
RecoverPoint and EMC Symmetrix® VMAX™.
“The test proved the EMC solutions would work in the real world,” comments van
Deventer. “We had varying degrees of success with other vendors, but from a
technology and capability perspective, we felt EMC offered the best solution. The
EMC team in New Zealand and internationally was great to deal with and had
experience in large-scale, mission-critical environments, which gave us confidence
that we could start to build a relationship with them.”
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Key Benefits


Trade Me then began installing the EMC solutions. EMC provided a dedicated project
Created seamless transaction
manager to help develop a timeline for the hardware installation and configuration
experience for users
and database migration. “While we did most of the work ourselves, having EMC to
Increased the number of web pages
served
updates throughout the project.”

Halved web page load time

Reduced database replication time
from up to four hours to under one
hour
look after project management was fantastic,” says van Deventer. “The team showed
great attention and follow-through; everything was clear and they provided regular
Trade Me installed one EMC Symmetrix VMAX storage array with 3TB of capacity in
each of its Wellington and Auckland data centres. The two centres are linked by a 1GB
network connection. The company runs a transactional database and two other
databases that underpin the Trade Me application on the EMC storage arrays.
EMC also helped Trade Me deploy EMC RecoverPoint and trained the company's
storage and database administrators on managing the solution.
“We also needed expert technical support from a team that understood the value of
technology infrastructure to our business and could respond accordingly,” says van
Deventer. “We quickly realized that only EMC had this capability.”
“The faster our members can search, browse or
navigate our site, the more items they will buy or
list for sale, which increases our revenue.”
Matt van Deventer
Head of Infrastructure, Trade Me Group
FASTER, MORE RELIABLE WEBSITE PERFORMANCE
By running its three core databases on EMC Symmetrix VMAX, Trade Me has
improved the performance of its website and ensured members have a seamless
transaction experience. The Trade Me website receives 60 million page impressions
and generates 6TB of network traffic a day.
“The databases are the most fundamental part of our infrastructure – they contain
information about all the transactions that take place on the website, including
auction items, classifieds and member details,” comments van Deventer. “After
implementing the EMC solution, we increased the number of web pages we served,
while improving load times on our most frequently visited pages. Some pages were
loading twice as fast, from 200 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds.
“There is a correlation between the speed of the site and our bottom line,” says van
Deventer. “The faster our members can search, browse and navigate our site, the
more items they will buy or list for sale, which increases our revenue.”
SEAMLESS REPLICATION BETWEEN DATA CENTRES
Prior to implementing the EMC solution, Trade Me’s failover process was largely
manual, involving backing up data to a storage system in the production data centre
then sending the data over a private link to a storage system in the disaster recovery
site. This failover process could involve up to 12 people and involved custom
logshipping, meaning the organization would have to undertake the laborious process
of re-replicating its core databases at the disaster recovery site.
“We wanted to reduce database replication time from up to four hours to one hour,
and cut data loss from five minutes (in a worst-case scenario) to seconds,” says van
Deventer. “This would minimize disruptions in the event of a disaster.”
By implementing EMC RecoverPoint, Trade Me has improved the speed, reliability and
resilience of its disaster recovery capabilities.
“In the past, we had to redo any replication when we brought databases to standby at
either end but with EMC RecoverPoint, we have a snapshot of the database at
whatever point in time we choose, so the replication starts again straightaway," says
van Deventer.
“We can now move between the production and disaster recovery sites in under an
hour and have done that twice under a planned scenario,” he adds. “We’re aiming to
get that time down to between 20 and 30 minutes. If we suffer any data loss, it’s kept
to less than 10 seconds, even in peak periods.”
Another benefit is that the whole failover process could be managed by two people,
eliminating the need for Trade Me to have 10 to 12 key IT personnel on hand to
initiate failovers.
“As an online operation, if our website goes down, our business stops,” says van
Deventer. “Having a system that enables us to recover from failures quickly and
safely is of huge importance and benefit to us,” he adds.
SUPPORT JUST A PHONE CALL AWAY
Trade Me has signed up for five years of EMC support , which includes assistance in
the event of hardware failures or software issues, and help with updates and
upgrades.
“If we have any problems with our EMC infrastructure, we know we can get
replacements and advice quickly and easily,” says van Deventer. “We have peace of
mind that if things go wrong or if we have any questions, there are good people we
can count on to help us out,” he concludes.
CONTACT US
To learn more about how EMC2
products, services, and solutions
can help solve your business and IT
challenges, contact your local
representative or authorized
reseller—or visit us at
www.EMC.com.
EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, Symmetrix and VMAX are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC
Corporation in the United States and other countries. © Copyright 2013 EMC Corporation. All
rights reserved. Published in the USA. 06/13. Customer Profile H11972.
www.EMC.com
EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The
information is subject to change without notice.