Take a break, holiday homes in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany
This is the first thing you see on www.heerlijkehuisjes.nl. Heerlijke Huisjes is an online rental platform specializing in holiday homes and group accommodations. You can search and book everything from cozy apartments to spacious group houses, from houseboats to farms, both on holiday parks and with private owners. We are proud to ensure that the platform itself never “takes a break.” But what does it take to keep such a large portal, with thousands of daily visitors, up and running?
Heerlijke Huisjes
In 2015, we got in touch with Arjen Dekker, then director of Heerlijke Huisjes, through a sales manager. Arjen was looking for an ICT partner who could keep their complex ICT environment secure and operational. Heerlijke Huisjes has an extensive portal with more than 4,000 holiday homes. Since that request, we have been proud to manage the extensive network of virtual servers behind the Heerlijke Huisjes rental platform.
Shared Hosting
Most websites can share a single virtual server on a physical device, which is called shared hosting. This is perfect for small and medium-sized websites that do not require much memory and disk space and do not heavily load the server. The CPU (processor), RAM (memory), and bandwidth (amount of data that can be transmitted over the connection) are shared. It’s an excellent way to save costs, but definitely not the right solution for Heerlijke Huisjes.
11 Servers!
When a website grows, shared hosting is no longer a suitable solution. Heerlijke Huisjes is a large online platform where a lot happens behind the scenes. We now continuously manage and monitor eleven servers for them. These servers all work together like a well-oiled machine. We have a separate server for the back-office system where all homes and bookings are managed, two servers for Elastic Search so visitors can search everything lightning-fast, a server for all automated tasks such as updating prices and changing rental periods, and recently we added an extra server for APIs. It’s an impressive system that ensures a smooth and seamless experience for both administrators and users.
A Separate API Server to Reduce Impact on Server Capacity
For a platform like Heerlijke Huisjes, everything revolves around efficiency and smooth operation. That’s why we set up a separate API server to relieve server capacity. Heerlijke Huisjes uses various APIs and software integrations to ensure seamless management of listings, bookings, and communications. Think of connections with reservation systems of holiday parks, channel managers, international booking platforms, and payment providers.
Development Server
This year, we took a major step to improve the stability of heerlijkehuisjes.nl by adding a second development environment. This allows developers to test extensively without burdening the server running the live platform. Heerlijke Huisjes has six dedicated developers who have built the entire platform themselves. This makes it extremely flexible and tailored precisely to their needs. We have set up the development environments to closely resemble the live environment. Changes are tested here before being implemented on the live site.
Since Heerlijke Huisjes heavily depends on the rental platform, it is undesirable for the site to go temporarily offline or display incorrect information. This can quickly affect, for example, Google rankings and negatively impact people who are booking a vacation at that moment.
Workstation Management with Backup
In addition to managing the online platform, we also take care of local workstation management. We ensure that approximately 40 workstations run smoothly every day using Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. Heerlijke Huisjes has an image library where external photographers can upload their photos to the Heerlijke Huisjes SharePoint environment. These images are then imported and can be viewed via the website. Very convenient!
For both the servers and the workstations, we manage backups so that all data remains secure and accessible. This provides a worry-free and efficient work environment where everyone can perform optimally.
Internet Connections
For the two Heerlijke Huisjes locations, we manage the internet connections. Both the branch in Grijpskerke (Zeeland) and the headquarters in Steenwijk (Overijssel) are equipped with fast fiber connections from Delta and KPN.
