Gaming Site Can Scale to 250,000 Requests per

Second and Improve Player Experience

“Every second counts for a player waiting to place a bet, and by using in-memory OLTP in SQL Server 2014 Customer: .party Website: www.bwinparty.com we provide a faster-loading site and a faster overall Customer Size: 2,000 employees Country or Region: experience, so players can place more bets and play Industry: Media and entertainment- games more smoothly.” Website: www.bwinparty.com Rick Kutschera, Manager of Database Engineering, bwin.party

Customer Profile Online digital entertainment company bwin.party provides Leading company bwin.party processes more than 1 million online gaming and other offerings to almost 2 million people. bets on 40 sports each day. The company Because the organization needed a better ability to support is owned by bwin.party digital entertainment, the world’s largest online rapid business growth and improve website performance, it gaming company. deployed an in-memory online transaction processing (OLTP)

Software and Services solution in Microsoft SQL Server 2014. The company can now  Microsoft Server Product Portfolio handle 250,000 requests per second and can offer players a − Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise faster, smoother gaming experience. bwin.party also expects to − Microsoft SQL Server 2014 save as much as US$100,000 on hardware costs and is increasing Enterprise revenue.

Business Needs merger, bwin.party consolidated its two bwin.party is the world’s largest regulated high-traffic websites, which led to serious online gaming company. Hundreds of scalability issues when players from both thousands of people visit the company’s sites were directed to a single site that website every day, placing more than 1 now supported dozens of games from million bets on a range of sports, each of the two companies. “We didn’t games, and . have the right technology to scale to support all the new users,” says Rick For more information about other The company was formed from a merger Kutschera, Manager of Database Microsoft customer successes, please visit: in late 2010 between online gambling Engineering at bwin.party. “The gaming www.microsoft.com/casestudies giants bwin and Party Gaming. After the system only allowed us to handle about

15,000 requests per second. That’s not a lot desperate we were to solve our scalability delays when loading pages or playing when you consider our growth rates.” problem.” games. “Every second counts for a player Placing a single bet in a game required waiting to place a bet, and by using in- approximately 50 batch requests per The company expected the solution to memory OLTP in SQL Server 2014 we second. But due to the higher peak loads, double the number of requests per provide faster-loading site and a faster the company needed the system’s session second, from 15,000 to 30,000. “We were overall experience, so players can place state server to support 30,000 batch amazed during the first test run that we more bets and play games more smoothly. requests per second. actually hit 150,000 requests per second,” That helps us provide a stronger customer Kutschera says. experience overall.” As a result of the company’s scalability issues, web servers timed out more often, Soon after, bwin.party integrated the Reduces Hardware Costs and Boosts and the site would go down for several solution with its existing SQL Server 2012 Revenue minutes at a time. “That lack of availability implementation. bwin.party expects to reduce hardware meant that players couldn’t place bets, and operating costs when in-memory OLTP in they had a poor experience,” says Benefits SQL Server 2014 is officially launched. Kutschera. “Because this business is so Using in-memory OLTP in SQL Server “Once this becomes a more widely used competitive, we depend on positive 2014, bwin.party can support close to 20 system, it will be maintenance-free for us customer experiences. So having any times the number of current site users and and that will save us a lot of money in the performance issues at all was unacceptable can ensure that players have a faster, long run,” says Kutschera. “I’ll be able to to us, and it also meant that we could lose better experience. The company is also run in-memory OLTP on less hardware, money because fewer bets were being saving money and growing revenue. which could save us as much as $100,000 a placed.” year. Previously, we had to throw hardware Scales to Handle 250,000 Player at scalability and performance problems. Although the company had recently Requests per Second But now I can throw software at those deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With in-memory OLTP, the bwin.party problems.” Enterprise software and subsequently gaming system can scale to 250,000 installed additional hardware, it still wasn’t requests per second, giving the company Additionally, because the solution enough to address the problem. “We kept the ability to easily handle new players on supports a higher number of players, trying to optimize the system to make it the website. “With SQL Server 2014, we bwin.party has seen more bets coming more scalable, but we really needed a can support close to 20 times the number into the system. “By using in-memory completely new solution to help us do that of players on our site if we need to,” says OLTP we have definitely seen an increase better.” Kutschera. “If the United States were to in players, which translates to more legalize online gambling again, we would revenue for the company,” says Kutschera. triple our number of users in one day and “But the biggest thing has been the Solution we’d have the right technology in place to scalability. Our system has never been as After discussions with Microsoft, bwin.party do that without any performance issues. I fast or performed as well as it has with SQL deployed an in-memory online transaction even think we’d still be fine if the entire Server 2014. This is the solution we were processing (OLTP) solution in SQL Server world legalized online gambling.” waiting for, and it’s a winning bet for us.” 2014. The solution uses main memory optimization and also uses no-locking/no- Gives Gamers a Faster, Smoother latching concurrency control mechanisms to Playing Experience remove bottlenecks that are caused by On the company’s former website, the scaling up. standard system response time for players was 50 milliseconds. Using in-memory bwin.party decided to test in-memory OLTP OLTP, that number has improved to 2–3 shortly after seeing the technology for the milliseconds. “The player experience is first time, becoming one of the earliest faster and much better with SQL Server Microsoft customers to use the solution in a 2014,” says Kutschera. production environment. “We hadn’t even seen the software bits yet, but we knew we With much faster performance, players wanted it,” says Kutschera. “That’s how visiting the bwin.party site no longer have

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Document published March 2014