the online auction site ebay is very popular. Indeed, it is so popular that its Web servers
deliver hundreds of millions of pages per day. These pages are combination of static HTML
page and dynamically generated Web page. The dynamic page are created from queries run against eBay’s Oracle database, in which it keeps all of the information about all auction under way or have closed within the most recent 30 day. With millions of auction under way at any moment, this database is extremely large. The combination of large database and high-transaction volume make eBay’s web servers operation an important part of company’s success and potential contributor
to its failure. The servers at eBay failed more than 15 items during the first five years
of the company’s life . the worst series of failures kept the site offline for more than a day
a failures that cost eBay an estimated $5 millions .
the company’s stock fell 20 percent in the days following that failure.