The 5 AM Problem

Learn about how 30 different application server instances can hang within a five-minute window.

Thirty server instances

One of the sites I launched developed a nasty pattern of hanging completely at almost exactly 5 a.m. every day. The site was running on around 30 different instances, so something was happening to make all 30 different application server instances hang within a five-minute window (the resolution of our URL pinger).

Restarting servers

Restarting the application servers ...