About the Company
Carpages.ca was started in 2004 and is one of the fastest-growing car shopping websites in Canada. With nearly 100,000 vehicles available, Carpages.ca connects 100s of thousands of shoppers with local dealers. Carpages dealer websites, based on the proprietary DealerSite+ platform, currently include over 330 dealer clients.
The Challenge
Carpages.ca has grown organically and their needs have changed over time. They started with a single master-master database replication topology running on bare metal for production workloads, but that has expanded into far more complex, sophisticated requirements. In 2017 they migrated to Kubernetes and chose ProxySQL for a zero downtime switchover from their legacy environment.
As demands grew, a single master-master configuration was no longer sufficient, and Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) was selected for scale and increased high availability. The initial cluster was a roll-your-own solution, which was eventually switched to be managed by the newly released Percona Kubernetes Operator. Staging environments were also migrated to Operator-managed clusters, and new clusters were spun up to meet other growing business needs.
COVID-19 and the resulting impact on the market was also a game-changer. Early in the pandemic, there was a dip in traffic as the economy was shut down. Within the first month, Carpages.ca decided to pivot and introduced a Buy From Home strategy with remote delivery, e-signing, and remote test drives. This concept generated publicity which led to a big spike in online traffic. In the three months following the first lockdown (2020) Carpages.ca experienced a 60% year-on-year (YOY) increase in visits to their marketplace site, with some days exceeding a 100% YoY increase.
The Solution
Carpages.ca is a growing company, with growing demands.
They made the switch from MySQL to Percona Server for MySQL, which had been recommended as a more performant drop-in replacement, and eventually to Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC). This move made it much easier for them to make changes to configuration and manage rolling updates.
The database is their “single source of truth for data.” Everything flows into the database, so it is crucial that it is performant and stable. Not only is it used extensively internally for queries and reporting, but it is also relied on by external third parties. Carpages.ca noted that their environment has become more robust since adopting PXC.
In the past, database changes and growth caused challenges. Having a small DevOps team meant Carpages.ca could not be experts in everything, so choosing Percona Support gave them a cost-effective solution that augmented their own expertise.
Percona Support has been invaluable in resolving issues and identifying and resolving instability. Tim Mirecki – Carpages.ca, Vice President commented, “Percona serves as a ‘DBA in our pocket,’ answering questions in a timely manner, sometimes to very complex problems with many moving parts.” He went on to say, “Percona engineers are very knowledgeable, and have been able to advise on and fix issues underlying issues in the whole platform. In terms of response times and quality it has been great, it’s exceeded my expectations.”
Carpages.ca also recently adopted Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM), which gives a clear overview of the current state of the clusters, and insight into what has happened over time. This helps Percona support engineers identify and fix issues.
Working With Percona
Carpages.ca has been using Percona Server for MySQL for over 10 years as a drop-in alternative to MySQL, and more recently Percona XtraDB Cluster. Growing pressure on their infrastructure demands in early 2021 led them to reach out to Percona to discuss support options to help improve platform resilience.
Carpages.ca did extensive research before choosing Percona, which was recommended by a contact who managed technology in a large infrastructure environment. They appreciated Percona authoritative voice in the marketplace and the thought-leadership and expertise that they put out, including blogs, guides, and webinars.
Mirecki commented, “Percona’s drop-in database software replacement was a big factor as migrations can be tricky! The other option for us would have been Google Cloud SQL – but that would require a migration and does not offer a multi-read cluster solution. We have more control with Percona.”
Although Carpages.ca has only utilized Percona Support for a relatively short period of time they commented that, “Percona has been fantastic to work with.” They particularly appreciated having a dedicated Customer Success Manager to ensure a smooth onboarding and overall satisfaction.
