Chapter 104: Black Friday (4)

The situation monitor was installed and the number of users were being counted in real-time. The sales of Black Friday wasn’t only on the day itself.
Traditionally, the sales would be on the entire week of the week that Black Friday is on.
Some companies did their sales from the 1st of November. They would increase their discounts as they neared Black Friday.
The strategy this year was to explode their discounts with a ‘boom!’ on Black Friday itself after raising the consumers’ expectant psychology gradually by increasing the discounts gradually.
“How many now?”
“50 million.”
“Don’t let your guard down just because there’s some room.”
“Yes.”
The people who were monitoring the server had worry written all over their faces.
In truth, no one had to monitor anything since they would all be automatically monitored.
Also, the system where it would send a message or an e-mail when their was an overload, was implemented as well.
Not only that, there was even a system ready where the overloaded server would expand and contract.
Despite all these, they couldn’t take their eyes off the screen.
Meaning, it was that important.

YongHo was also looking at the monitor.
He had only heard about Black Fridays and now that he had checked himself, the prices really made him flip his eyes.
“Oooh, it’s definitely cheap alright.”
YongHo also couldn’t help but be surprised after seeing the prices.
There was even a laptop that would usually be a million won, sold at 300 thousand won. However, what YongHo was looking for wasn’t electronic devices like those.
“What are you planning to buy?”
While he was in the middle of looking at the screen, Na DaeBang popped out from behind him.
He seemed bored while working.
“Well, I’m looking to see if there’s anything to send home.”
“Hyung-nim, you’re looking to buy your parents clothes, right?”
Na DaeBang’s predictions were on the mark. Just by seeing YongHo flinching, he knew.
“Well, yeah. It will be winter soon so I may as well present them a set of warm clothes.”
“You earn so much money, you should go to a department store to buy those things.”
Na DaeBang’s words provoked YongHo.
“I will buy one there too and on here!”
“And you’re not prepared despite having said that you’re buying one here. Do you see this?”
Na DaeBang flapped a piece of A4 paper in front of YongHo’s eyes.
“What’s that?”
“The rate of discount on clothing and on which time they discount on!”
“H, how did you get your hands on that?”
YongHo seemed honestly surprised. This was so-called insider information. A list that a normal consumer would never know, was in Na DaeBang’s hands.
“Who am I? You know me. Well, then, shall we start shopping?”
“Y, yeah.”
Thanks to Na DaeBang, YongHo could buy good quality products at a cheap price.
From clothes to robot vacuum cleaners, and even massaging tools. He sent them all to his house in Korea.
‘This will do, right?’
He felt that he had never fulfilled his filial duty and that always weighed on his mind.
He felt that those weights had been lifted a little.

An ordinary salaryman of Korea had no choice but to go to the website at least once.
Since the time when foreign delivery had become the norm, the road to buying good quality products at a reasonable price had opened.
They could go on the website itself to buy, and there was a thing called substitute purchasing. If one had a slight interest, then they would be able to spend their money wisely with a little bit of effort.
Choi HyeJin was no exception.
“Should I buy a laptop?”
Choi HyeJin also found out that there was something called the Black Friday while looking up various things on the internet to replace her old laptop.
“Whoa? Isn’t this where oppa works?”
The oppa she was talking about was Na DaeBang, who was helping out YongHo’s shopping right now.
“Seems like they’re busy since it’s those sales and all.”
There was no other choice, as some foreign sales-related community had complaint posts coming up little by little.
It’s too slow.
Clicking on some products gives me an error.
The connection suddenly got cut off.
And such complaints of the people who made their accounts and accessed the website just for Black Friday, were spreading out through the community.
“Well, it’s his punishment for leaving me.”
As the number of Korean users increased, the number of complaint posts were increasing as well.
However, this wasn’t only happening in Korea. Many places around the world were now proceeding onto America, where there was a massive sale, through the internet.

Accordingly, the number of users only increased. Now it was about to go over the 10 millions into the 100 millions.
“We’re past 90 million.”
“Server status?”
“No problems yet.”
“Scale out status?”
“Progressing.”
“Good.”
Steve seemed satisfied by the monitoring employee’s words as he drank.
This was the most nervous moment in the year.
If there was an infinite amount of hardware equipment, then they could just pour in all the resources to accept users.
However, each of those nipped away from the budget.
Technology was developing by the day, and the company wanted to replace hardware with software technology.
That, was achievement.
If something required 100 servers last year, this year, they had to decrease it to 90.
The cost of 10 servers would be saved, and that would be an achievement.
Higher achievements were better.
That was how the incentives would increase, and the position within the company would be solidified.
“95 million… We will be past 100 million soon.”
As the years went by, the number of users on the website increased. That would lead to more sales.
If the sales increased and the budget decreased, then the profit would naturally increase.
That would fill Steve’s stomach in the form of an incentive.

“Scaling out in progress.”
Before the number of users increased, there was a need to prepare beforehand.
They would increase the number of servers before the number of users went past 100 million. They brought in all their equipment.
Even those used for testing were brought in to divert traffic this week.

Scale out success.

Another ten servers were added.
And the number of users increased as well.
The traffic(The amount of data sent to the server) would increase exponentially according to the number of increased users.
All activities done by a user on the website was considered traffic.
One click to see the product, reloading the page because one thought it was slow, all increased traffic.
“Scaling out was completed.”
Until now, there weren’t any problems.
The peak time where the number of users would be highest was the day of Black Friday itself.
All of the people here were waiting for that day to pass.

However, that was only a wish for those related.
“Yes. Of course I’m doing well. I sent you some clothes and a massage tool so receive it well when it gets there.”
“You musn’t be earning that much, why are you sending me such things?”
“It’s alright. My salary increased a lot nowadays.”
“So, when are you coming back to Korea?’
“A little longer.”
“……”
A little bit of silence flowed after YongHo’s words. YongHo read his mother’s disappointment in those moments.
“I will go back after I do a little more. The company wants me to stay.”
“A while ago, someone who called herself your former team leader came to our house.”
“Huh?”
“Her name was Jeong DanBi.”
“Ah, aaah……”
“When are you planning to marry?”
“Ah, mom, I think I need to go back, something urgent came up.”
“Yes, son. Go back.”
He wanted to talk more, but the moment marriage talk came out, YongHo hurriedly finished the call.
‘Team Leader Jeong DanBi, eh…’
This was a name he hadn’t heard for a long time. Now, the time he left that place was nearing one year.
Korea was just about to go into winter. This place wasn’t that cold, but perhaps due to habit, YongHo pulled in his clothes.

“We’re going past 150 million users.”
To be exact, they were counting the number of users who logged in at least once.
That number of users was increasing gradually.
There were also many people who used the website without logging in.
“How many more can we use?”
“50 is possible but 30 of those aren’t tested……”
Steve’s question made the employee blur the end of his words. The scale of the company was quite big, so the equipment was sufficient.
However, they weren’t tested yet.
“…What were you doing until now?”
“Thanks to one of us leaving the company a few days ago, we didn’t have enough people.”
“Really… there’s time now so go test it.”
Steve said it simply, but testing wasn’t an easy process either.
Even if the specs of the servers were the same, it was unknown which issue may occur during an overload.
As such, the actual commercialized program must be installed, and test had to be done in various environments and various loads.
Sometimes, they also needed to monitor the server after they put a large amount of bad traffic using something called DDoS.
A minimum amount of time was needed to to go through those processes.
And to do that, time was absolutely insufficient.

***

Like how he got his hands on some information that others would have a hard time looking for, Na DaeBang’s footprints were always very wide.
“The Black Friday TF team’s atmosphere isn’t good.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Tomorrow’s the day, but it seems like they ran out of equipment too. So, they were using untested ones… what are they planning to do when there’s a problem…”
“The almighty Chief is there, so would anything happen at all?”
“Well, that’s true.”
“But you, did you finish developing the image processing library?”
“Hyung-nim, you do know that all employees have to be on standby on D-Day.”
Na DaeBang spoke while jumping in fright. As he had said, on D-Day, Black Friday, all employees had to monitor the situation.”
That one error when the number of users increased explosively was very fatal, so the schedule was naturally pushed one day back.”
“Well, you can talk well.”
YongHo spoke while clicking his tongue. However, he didn’t say anything more either.

Snap.
A few overloaded servers sparked and stopped working.
Even if there was a 1% chance of a server breakdown, that meant one would break when operating 100 of them.
Operating a data center that operated not 100 but 500 or more, hardware breakdowns were everyday life.
However, the day that happened just happened to be on the day that was different from normal.
“*Sigh*… So the untested equipment will be put in from now, you mean?”
“Yes……”
Steve’s prediction came true. The number of users kept increasing without end.
After the internet spread throughout the world, people could access the web using not just PCs but mobile phones.
This meant that the load the server had to endure had became bigger. This sucked in equipment like a black hole.
Moreover, the original hardware was snapping out one by one.
The employee thought that this wasn’t something that only they could cover.
“Shouldn’t we ask for help?”
“Help? From who?”
“From the rumors, Mr.YongHo seemed so capable……”
“You’re saying we should let an unconfirmed rumor take over the system?”
“At this rate, we might have to limit the number of users……”
They couldn’t paralyze the entire server.
Their method was to keep a fixed amount of users.
If it became like that, some users would fundamentally be unable to access the web automatically.
“……”
“Let’s at least ask if there’s any methods.”
However, there was no need for that.
YongHo was coincidentally walking towards Steve and the employees.
“Am I late?”
“How did you get……”
YongHo spoke while putting down the laptop on his side.
“Let’s first fix the problem.”
Crrrack, crrack.
Stretching his fingers about twice, YongHo started typing.