The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Ebuyer knocked out by own £1 deals site

  • alert
  • print

Servers stunned by stampede of bargain-hunters

By Anna Leach • Get more from this author

Posted in Small Biz, 28th November 2011 13:21 GMT

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

UK gadget retail site Ebuyer has been knocked offline as its £1 laptop deals caused an online stampede that flattened the site's servers.

Ebuyer failed to shore up its web systems ahead of the customer rush and the site was offline for several hours even before the offers officially opened at 11am today.

The tech site's "Cyber Monday" deals - with PCs, laptops, cameras, components and games reduced to £1 - must have proved more popular than expected. In effect, the Ebuyer team launched a DDoS attack on itself.

As of lunchtime Monday the site is still down.

Ebuyer confirmed that traffic for the £1 deals was what sent their site into a tailspin and said that customers were able to start making orders now if they kept refreshing the page. ®

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement

Our award-winning Regcasts have teamed up with training provider QA for the deepest of deep dives into Hyper-V, including a live demo.

Understand VM movement - just click to play, or go here for a bigger version.