The Accelix online auction system is a flexible solution for supporting
online auctions. The system has been designed to be highly-scalable and
capable of supporting large numbers of bidders in an active auction.
The Accelix auction system is oriented toward lot-based block auctions
where a catalog of items is prepared for entry into the system in advance,
and the auction takes place for all the items in the catalog over a fixed
period of time. An example of a high profile client that uses this product
is Huggins and Scott
Auctions.
Unlike the commodity auction programs that cost a few hundred dollars,
run on Windows servers, and can handle a few hundred people before they
break under load, the Accelix auction system is an enterprise-based
system that runs on several servers in order to distribute database I/O
and web transactions. While it is possible to run the system on a single
server, we generally recommend a minimum of three database servers and
three web servers. These servers should have multi-core processors,
large amounts of memory, and substantial Internet bandwidth. The base
cost for the software is $50,000 USD, plus any modifications required
by the buyer. We provide contract-based support to maintain the system
and handle any technical support issues. It is not unusual for a site
running the Accelix auction system to spend in excess of $100,000 in
hardware and software when bringing up a new auction system.
To help businesses with financing the purchase of the Accelix auction
system, we offer some attractive alternatives for consideration. First,
we can provide a hosted solution for a $1,000 USD setup fee, a three
percent consignment fee, and a three percent buyers fee. This allows
an auction company to start building their business while they earn
money to eventually acquire a system of their own. Second, we can
provide leasing to help qualified purchasers acquire the software and
hardware. Leasing can be very attractive for its tax advantages.
The system relies on several popular "open source" software tools to
support the application. For the operating system, we prefer FreeBSD
UNIX (64 bit). We can also support other types of UNIX operating systems,
including Linux and Sun Solaris, and it may be possible to support
Microsoft Windows Servers, although we would not recommend using Windows
for any high performance application. The software is written in latest
Perl 5.10 language, and runs on the Apache 2.2 web server. The database
servers use MySQL 5.0, although it is also backwards compatible with
earlier releases of MySQL.
The software is designed as a series of CGI programs that run on the
Apache web server. We support multiple web servers, each running their
own copy of the software. Updates are made on the primary web server
and automatically replicated to the secondary web servers every ten
minutes (the period is adjustable). To support a busy auction site,
we recommend at least three high performance web servers. The web
servers are separate from the database servers.
The database servers run MySQL 5.0 using master/slave replication.
Under this configuration, there is one master server that is responsible
for updates (inserts, updates, and deletes), and two or more slave
servers that handle read requests (selects). Updates to the master
server are replicated to the slave servers in under 10 milliseconds.
This system is highly scalable. We can also support an even higher
performance configuration known as NDB clustering without any changes
to the application software. Both master/slave replication and NDB
clustering allow the database to be distributed over multiple servers,
providing a substantial level of redundancy in the event of a hardware
failure.
For more information on our auction system, send email to
, or call us at 301-572-2908.
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