Preparing for Black Friday: How farfetch.com uses observability to win

FARFETCH, a leading global technology platform in the luxury fashion industry, prepares meticulously for Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, to ensure a seamless customer experience. The platform, which launched in 2008, now supports over 1,400 brands and relies on a robust microservice architecture to manage the surge in traffic. With a team of 1,000 engineers, FARFETCH utilizes observability tools, like New Relic, to monitor and optimize their software and infrastructure, ensuring uptime and performance. The approach involves extensive pre-event preparation, including rigorous testing and implementing contingency plans to handle potential service disruptions. FARFETCH's infrastructure is built on Microsoft Azure, allowing for scalable solutions, and the engineering team works around the clock during peak times to address any issues proactively. The use of dashboards provides a comprehensive view of the system's performance, enabling the team to maintain user experience and business growth effectively.