AEM Sites: Resolving storefront performance issues caused by uncached server-side rendering
This article explains how to resolve severe performance degradation on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites B2B and B2C storefronts during high-traffic events, such as go-live, when uncached server-side rendering leads to slow response times and missing results on product pages.
Description description
Environment
- Adobe Experience Manager Sites (production environment; version not specified)
- Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service
Issue/Symptoms
Performance issues can occur on AEM Sites storefronts when server-side rendering calls are not properly cached, especially during periods of high traffic. This can result in long response times or missing content on key pages, such as Product Overview and Product Detail, impacting the ability of users to browse products or place orders.
- Slow response times on B2B and B2C storefronts.
- Product Overview and Product Detail pages may return no results.
- Business operations impacted due to inability to place orders.
Cause
The root cause is typically an uncached server-side rendering call that saturates backend resources under heavy load, leading to degraded storefront performance.
Resolution resolution
Follow the steps below to resolve the issue:
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Assess current environment capacity and add additional resources if immediate stabilization is required during high-traffic events.
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Investigate server-side rendering calls for Product Overview and Product Detail pages to determine if they are being properly cached.
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Use available monitoring tools to identify requests that are not cached or are causing backend saturation (for example, by reviewing request logs or performance dashboards).
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Review and optimize caching strategies:
- Ensure that high-traffic pages are cached at the AEM Dispatcher layer.
- If a CDN is used, verify that caching rules are correctly configured for these endpoints.
- Adjust application logic to maximize cacheability of server-side rendered content where possible.
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After implementing caching improvements, monitor storefront performance to confirm that response times are stable and all high-traffic endpoints are properly cached.
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Periodically review caching configurations and monitor for uncached requests to prevent recurrence during future high-traffic events.