Neil CraigJul 4, 2024
Here's a few of the prep tasks we've done for the UK General Election in/around our team:
- Add extra CDN/peering capacity
- Ensure personal & machine credentials & TLS cert work & won't expire
- Raise service quotas for safety
- Check that deployment pipeline are clean/deployable
- Ask 3rd parties to be extra-vigilant on change requests
- Rehearse failovers to backup systems
- Make sure all logging/metrics are working correctly
Probably mainly/all pretty obvious but maybe useful.
#BBC #GE2024
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
We're expecting a spike on the web and media streams at 10pm BST when the exit poll results are communicated.
Unsure quite how large the spikes will be...that'll depend very much on how close to expectation/prediction the exit polls results are.
There's a good number of us working to cover regular ops but also being available for additional checks/monitoring and escalation paths if needed.
I hope everyone who's working on #GE2024 (and anything else this evening/today) is doing well. 🙌🏻
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
Just noticed we're at ~1.3k RPS from BBC staff and in-house, on-network monitoring...
Lots of eyes on for sure.
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
The first main Breaking News Event (BNE) notification just went out...That caused roughly a 2x traffic spike on www.bbc.co.uk & www.bbc.com but nothing to worry about, waaaaay within bounds.
Let's see what happens when the exit poll results are communicated out.
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
And here's the exit poll: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn09xn9je7lt
General election live: Keir Starmer names new cabinet, with Reeves as chancellor and Rayner as deputy PM

The prime minister appoints his top team after pledging “the work of change begins immediately”.

BBC News
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
The Breaking News Event notification caused roughly a 4x spike versus BAU traffic. Again, still well within the bounds we're comfortable with.
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024

There's also a new feature this election: "Camera at every count" which you can see here if you're able to access iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002177v/watch-your-count-live

The tech behind it is really interesting, essentially it uses a system developed to take advantage of how good mobile phones & networks are these days. We have a live stream from every one of the 385 election counts in the UK & there's an internal representation of them as a mosaic of mosaics.

I wish I could share it but I can't. Sorry.

Watch Your Count Live

Watch as votes are counted across the UK at over 370 locations

BBC iPlayer
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
Fair few people on the #GE2024 live page (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn09xn9je7lt).
I've not kept track of this much, I've been focussing mainly on uptime and performance monitoring but it's been in the region of 250k+ people the last few times I saw it. Doubtless higher when the Breaking NEws Event notification was sent.
General election live: Keir Starmer names new cabinet, with Reeves as chancellor and Rayner as deputy PM

The prime minister appoints his top team after pledging “the work of change begins immediately”.

BBC News
Show threadNeil CraigJul 4, 2024
First #GE2024 result in, Sunderland South - Labour win.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results
UK election results 2024 | Constituency map

Get the latest news and election results in the 2024 General election from BBC News

BBC News
Show threadmarkwalker
@tdp_org Your grafana stats will be interesting reading tomorrow!
Jul 5, 2024 at 1:04amWeb