What do you do when your website needs to handle 11 million hits per day—and instantly scale to over 1 million hits per minute during breaking news?

For most teams, this isn’t just a stretch goal—it’s a full-blown infrastructure crisis.

But for one U.S. government news agency operating one of the world’s most visited English-language news sites, it was simply a daily reality.

Their requirements went far beyond what most platforms can handle. They needed:

• Zero downtime deployments
  
• Sub-2 second response times
  
• Scalability for sudden viral spikes
  
• Federal-grade security
  
• Cost savings compared to traditional hosting
  

So they partnered with DevPanel to design, build, and implement an enterprise-grade AWS infrastructure solution that could do what 99% of teams can’t.

👉 Download the full technical case study PDF →

The High-Traffic Hosting Crisis

The news agency’s previous hosting setup was buckling under pressure—costing nearly $1 million/year while struggling to keep up with performance demands.

The challenges weren’t theoretical:

• Breaking news created instant traffic spikes up to 1 million hits per minute
  
• Database connections maxed out regularly
  
• CDN misconfigurations left origin servers exposed
  
• Code deployments risked disrupting millions of users
  
• Internal teams lacked the DevOps expertise to rearchitect the system
  

What they needed wasn’t more servers—it was an entirely new strategy.

DevPanel’s Mission: Build What Others Can’t

DevPanel was brought in to architect a multi-AZ, auto-scaling AWS environment with:

• Blue/green deployment capability
  
• Connection-optimized database design
  
• CDN efficiency > 70%
  
• Auto-scaling response tuned for viral traffic patterns
  
• Built-in rollback procedures
  
• Real-time monitoring and DDoS protection
  

The result was an infrastructure capable of scaling from thousands to millions of requests per minute—automatically, reliably, and securely.

Key Results (at a Glance)

Requirement	Result Delivered
Daily traffic	11M+ hits/day
Viral traffic spikes	1M+ hits/minute handled with auto-scaling
Deployment downtime	Zero (via blue/green deployment)
CDN Edge Efficiency	74% edge-to-origin ratio with Akamai
Performance	10% faster vs prior setup
Hosting cost	Cut by more than 75%
Rollbacks	One-click, instant failback
Security	Government-grade with full auditability

What Makes This Architecture Different?

Most teams underestimate the real challenges behind high-traffic infrastructure. Here are four that DevPanel helped overcome:

1. Database Bottlenecks Come First

At 11M+ hits/day, database connections are your first failure point. Standard setups can’t handle this. DevPanel implemented:

• Multi-AZ distributed databases
  
• Connection pooling and read replicas
  
• Query optimization tailored for news content
  

2. CDN Configuration Is a Business-Critical Decision

The difference between 50% and 74% edge-to-origin ratio? Millions of unnecessary requests hitting your origin.

DevPanel:

• Tuned Akamai for dynamic content
  
• Designed intelligent caching + invalidation
  
• Reduced backend strain during viral events
  

3. Auto-Scaling Isn’t Just a Checkbox

Most “auto-scaling” configs fail under real-world pressure. Traffic doesn’t gradually increase—it surges.

DevPanel:

• Tuned scaling policies for instant reaction
  
• Simulated real-world viral spikes to optimize thresholds
  
• Prevented cascade failures from bursty traffic
  

4. Zero Downtime Deployments Require Total Redesign

To go blue/green at scale, you need:

• Full duplicate infrastructure
  
• Load balancer orchestration
  
• Database migration safeguards
  
• Rollback automation
  

DevPanel delivered all of this, tested it, and validated it under 1M+ hits/minute load.

Blue/Green Deployment That Actually Works

Many teams aspire to zero-downtime deployments—but DevPanel made it real under the heaviest loads imaginable.

• Live traffic served from the “blue” environment
  
• New code tested in the “green” environment under simulated heavy traffic
  
• Health checks + load balancer switching ensure safe transitions
  
• Instant rollback in case of post-launch errors
  

Even under 11M+ daily hits, switching environments caused no service interruptions.

CDN Optimization: 74% Edge Efficiency with Akamai

Caching is easy to do wrong. Especially for constantly updating content like news.

DevPanel configured Akamai to:

• Keep content fresh
  
• Maximize edge caching
  
• Throttle edge-to-origin traffic during spikes
  
• Balance cache-hit ratios with editorial control
  

At this scale, even a 1% improvement in cache efficiency translates to hundreds of thousands of origin requests saved daily.

Database Design: The Hidden Bottleneck

The database isn’t just a backend component—it’s the central pillar of performance.

DevPanel delivered:

• Read-optimized replication for content-heavy workloads
  
• Multi-AZ failover protection
  
• Connection pooling for concurrency surges
  
• High-throughput query tuning
  

This prevented service collapse even during 1.78 million hits/minute load tests.

Performance Testing and Real-World Results

• 1.78 million hits per minute sustained during test spikes
  
• 10% faster response times over prior production setup
  
• Zero downtime during simulated deployments
  
• Auto-scaling activated within seconds
  

These weren’t theoretical numbers—they were captured using real-world load simulation tools and monitoring dashboards.

Beyond Tech: Operational & Strategic Impact

It’s not just about better infrastructure. It’s about empowering teams.

• DevPanel’s platform provides point-and-click management of this entire AWS setup
  
• Teams no longer need deep DevOps expertise
  
• One-click rollback, deployment automation, and monitoring tools reduce stress and risk
  
• DevPanel support handles edge cases and escalations
  

Could Your Infrastructure Handle This?

Ask yourself:

• Can your setup withstand 1M hits per minute—right now?
  
• Do you have rollback strategies in place that don’t take hours?
  
• Can your team architect a blue/green deployment that works at enterprise scale?
  
• Are you relying on overprovisioning instead of smart scaling?
  
• Could DevPanel save you 75% on hosting while improving performance?
  

If you’re not sure—or if you’re dealing with similar challenges—this case study will give you clarity.

👉 Download the full “11M Daily Hits + 1M Spikes per Minute” case study →

Let’s Talk

DevPanel isn’t for everyone. But if you’re responsible for high-traffic, high-visibility, high-risk websites, and you need an AWS-native solution that works out of the box—this is what we do best.

📬 contact@devpanel.com
🌐 https://www.devpanel.com
📅 Request a 15-minute call to see if this architecture is right for your organization