Case Study: University of Nevada, Las Vegas achieves flawless, scalable debate-night website performance with Pantheon

UNLV Rocks the Presidential Debate with Unstoppable Drupal Hosting & Performance

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) faced a critical hosting challenge when it was selected to host the final 2016 presidential debate: its web infrastructure was locally hosted, prone to outages and heavy maintenance demands, and not built to absorb the massive traffic spike and scrutiny the event would bring. With the web team already stretched thin, UNLV needed a reliable, scalable platform that would eliminate server administration headaches and ensure the site stayed up and fast during the national spotlight.

UNLV migrated to Pantheon in a rapid, supported rollout, adopting a platform that supports Drupal and WordPress, autoscaling, security protections, and test-to-live workflows. During the debate the site handled a 10x traffic surge without performance loss, giving the team peace of mind, freeing them from infrastructure duties, improving site speed and stability, and enabling process changes so nontechnical staff can manage content independently.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Joe Winton

Director of Web & Digital Marketing