MercadoLibre.com Keeps the Bids Rolling in with High Availability

Challenges
MercadoLibre.com holds 95% market share for online auctions in Brazil and is also the top e-commerce site in Mexico and Argentina. Since it opened its doors, the Argentinean-based online auction site has drawn bidders from throughout Latin America, achieving a remarkable growth rate of 30% per month. It also quickly outgrew its mainframe-based database system and didn’t want to get trapped in a cycle of having to pay a premium each time it needed more power or capacity.

“Everyone was extremely happy with our rapid expansion except the people in my department who are responsible for supporting it," said Edgardo Sokolowicz, chief technology officer for MercadoLibre.com. The company sought an IT infrastructure that could easily accommodate its hefty growth rate and, since each second can make or break a deal, it required the highest availability.

Solution
"Now that we have Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters on Linux, scaling is as simple as adding a node," Sokolowicz said. "The solution gives us high availability and saved approximately US$500,000 up front because we can use low cost, Intel-based servers. We gained freedom in hardware choices, so we will save even more in the future because we can combine various vendors' equipment to get the best purchase prices."

Yet the savings have meant no reductions in utility or quality--just the opposite, Sokolowicz said. “Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters handles the entire MercadoLibre site," Sokolowicz said. "From registration to sales, our application performance is extremely fast and efficient, with low database and application resource consumption."

MercadoLibre.com selected Oracle Partner Snoop Consulting to assist with deployment, migrating data to Oracle Database, and installing the cluster nodes. “Snoop did a great job and met all our deadlines and objectives,” Sokolowicz said.

Benefits • High availability on less expensive hardware, saved US$500,000 up front • Easily scales by adding nodes to the cluster Copyright © 2004 Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.