[thwarted]

Every other e-commerce site that deals with many millions of visitors a day has had months, if not years, to figure out the touchy parts of their infrastructure and make adjustments while the traffic ramps up.

And how much those months or years of experience were leveraged in figuring out the touchy parts of the infrastructure? This shouldn't have been the first rodeo for anyone involved. There are numerous blog posts, books, videos, etc with ideas, what works, and what doesn't, for running websites of all sizes. Many of them are posted and debated on this very site.