Backup servers?

I'm just curious wouldn't it been possible for SE to have Backup servers let say in US to avoid this disaster in japan of the server being shut down for a week or more?

hahahaha no offense just funny. Have seen this a dozen times now. Good idea but would be to costly to do & would not be able to keep it fully updated with live updates. back-up servers are in alot of company's but when you are running servers at the large scale these guys are there only means for a backup is at the main unit in Japan. The do have a backup server in case their current one crashes, but it is not for us to play off of more a backup of the system in case the servers crash and need replacing the have all their work backed up.

this has been beaten to death already in multiple threads here.

In short...off-site failover servers is not practical for a project of this scope, and any backup will have some age on it simply due to the time it takes to complete the backup process. Depending on the method used, they could even be days old. Best case scenario is if they already have a datacenter capable of housing everything, they could take a backup of the data in it's current offline state, then transfer that to another location and bring it back up--but that will take a considerable amount of time to do. We're not talking about just a handful of simple servers here. It is a MASSIVE data center with terabytes of data.

Raist

The way you word the question makes it seem like the disaster is the server being down.
If it helps you to cope, pretend that you JUST got tod on fafnir and now you will begin camping.
Have patience.

square enix should have (and i was told they did) have us based servers i was told this by a gm in game i would like to know what happened to those servers dont get me wrong i know japan is in trouble but at the same time depending on how long it takes to fix it we may be out of service for a year or more and if the reactors do in fact melt down there will be a massive loss of life property and the area will become un inhabitble not to mention the servers where all of our info is stored will be destroyed and we would have no more ffxi so in conclusion to all the rescue and repair teams focus on gettime the reactors safe first our game can wait and once it back up and running backup servers would be a great idea

uhhh, deja vu much?

There ARE servers in California. BUT they are not for gameplay, they are servers for updates etc.... So they are not as big or capable of just throwing the gameplay data on there & power em up.

I think people watch to many movies lol or seem to think that a server can fix in your pocket ^^

put it this way... it took them roughly 12 hours just to rehome the PlayOnline Data recently. That's just the player signin, licensing, messages and such. Now, conswider there are 25 Game servers that house all your character information, as well as all the data for the game, and the front-end for the game itself. That's just two of the key pieces in the chain. It doesn't account for various other servers used to cover various tasks for supporting the service. Some of those support tasks were likely split up into diffrerent regional locations simply for efficiency sake of day to day operations.

It's not going to be as simple as popping a tape in an e-mail server for an automatic scheduled backup that runs each night at 8pm.

Raist

Here's something some fellow techies might appreciate. Found an article on how SE setup their in-house message system that goes into the layout and such--includes a nice layout of the system. What a beast:

http://media.netapp.com/documents/square-enix.pdf

I'd hate to see how the FFXI center is set up...then again, might be nice to put it in proper perspective.

Raist

Ok now that is some creative work. Very smart people work for SE & they are some of the best designers in the world^^

I had no idea they had a workforce of 1,800 people. No where near that. Well that certainly changes things. I am thinking the forklift idea to move the building/s might not be a bad idea after all.
I am kidding about the forklift ok? ^^ :cool:

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Originally Posted by annewandering

I had no idea they had a workforce of 1,800 people. No where near that. Well that certainly changes things. I am thinking the forklift idea to move the building/s might not be a bad idea after all.
I am kidding about the forklift ok? ^^ :cool:

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How could you even think that was a good idea? You do realize what is going on right now? All you can think about is moving the Severs? Do you have any idea how sick I am at reading about people explaining to others what they should write & how they should be thinking.

LOL I am in a great mood

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Originally Posted by NightDagger

There ARE servers in California. BUT they are not for gameplay, they are servers for updates etc.... So they are not as big or capable of just throwing the gameplay data on there & power em up.

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Kinda like you said, California are just relay server, they don't hold as much information as the one in japan.

Best example that i can explain is the latency, if you would be connected direct to the japan server (from US) your lag would be horrible due to all the relay, and SE would also have 0 control on it, so a quick workaround for SE is to put a server somewhere in US (like California). Now instead receive information direct from japan, the japan server sync the info with California server allowing info to be released at same time for user in japan and user in USA.

So ya that server is useless without the master server :( Is of course more then that, but it give you an idea of what that server do. Another way to see it is a radio station and a station that just boost the signal.

I dont think the "size" of the server is to much of an issue, just a lot of hassle setting it up then having to bring them back.

I mean people even do private servers now XD its not massive amounts of data.

From what I've witnessed, the US servers aren't used for actually PLAYING the game. All the servers I saw in my netstat testing weren't in the US--I ran lookups on them before white-listing them and fixing my connectivity issues a few updates ago.

Raist

If there were "backup servers" they would be in a different location in japan, not in the US. Needless to say, the servers are not "incapacitated." they've been specifically turned off by SE, because they wouldn't be able to guarantee service even if they weren't trying to contribute to power conservation.

i don't think its a matter of the severs been to big to move, there was the story on eve on line where the chief exc recounted a story about how they were moving offices in London, and 1 employee got the job to run the sever across the city in the back of a cab during 1 maintenance period. I think its more about having some place with the band width and power requirement set up ready to go.

the servers are not going to be relocated. and backup servers would be out of sync with what i logged out with,

one server farm to rule them all. and a set of servers with backups incase the database gets sick and tired of living.

theres also an issue with dns propogation. wed still be out for a while. itd probably take much longer to move the servers than its worth

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Originally Posted by Ilax

Best example that i can explain is the latency, if you would be connected direct to the japan server (from US) your lag would be horrible due to all the relay, and SE would also have 0 control on it, so a quick workaround for SE is to put a server somewhere in US (like California). Now instead receive information direct from japan, the japan server sync the info with California server allowing info to be released at same time for user in japan and user in USA.

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Yeah, except that is how it works. Japanese players have a significant advantage when it comes to lag.

Not sure how you think that would even work. Going from japan to a server in california to us would be SLOWER than it would to just send the data straight from japan to us.

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Originally Posted by rog

Yeah, except that is how it works. Japanese players have a significant advantage when it comes to lag.

Not sure how you think that would even work. Going from japan to a server in california to us would be SLOWER than it would to just send the data straight from japan to us.

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research is needed before blasting someone. Fibre optic cable is ran throughout the whole world. This cable allows instant data transmission. They also use this for retail. A good example is that when you make a purchase from a store they scan the bar code, when they scan it the signal is sent through fiber optic cable to a remote place like the Phillipe-ans, the code is then found on the central hub & sent back to the store, this is all done at the speed of light (since fiber optic is light signal turned into an electric signal at the end user). Through the use of transmission amplifiers they are able to use this for the man source of data transmission especially in Japan, China, Hong Kong.

The same is done for any kind of signal you would like to transmit. Whether that be internet data or sound, the fibre optic cable is meant to transmit a signal with zero break down in the signal quality.

So in short the world has evolved to the point that satellite signal is used for a lot of things, but fibre optic is the new & improved method of choice. The cost of setting up a system is relatively high but it has become more affordable over the years.

I personally use fibre optic cable in my house for my audio. My home entertainment system is all hooked up through fibre optic cable. The sound quality is just amazing, you hear sounds that you never knew were there. It makes listening to music, watching movies/t.v. ot just playing games much more enjoyable.

So in short, yes it is possible for them to do this with next to no lag. The main problem is that our ISP's are not as good as Japan's ISP's. Japan's internet company's are mostly using fibre optic cable to send the user their internet signal directly to their house. This is by far the fastest & most reliable method to send the internet signal. America & Canada also use fibre optic cable to send their users internet but it is not used by majority of the company's. This is what causes you lag in the game & it is this that gives the JP players an advantage on us.

As previously stated no one has confirmed that the servers in California are even for game play. I have been under the understanding that these are for version updates, logging in, player registration & the such. Heck they could just simply be for testing purposes only.

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Originally Posted by NightDagger

research is needed before blasting someone. Fibre optic cable is ran throughout the whole world. This cable allows instant data transmission.

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I'm afraid i stopped reading when i saw the word instant, without any kind of qualifier.

protip: light does not travel at 300 Mm across fiber optic cables, it's slower. It takes ~40 ms to get from japan to california via fiber optic cable. The east coast of the us is more like 55 ms. That of course assume a single signal, which obviously isn't the case. It will get slowed down as it hops through various servers.

I believe that light travels through fibre optic cable with the proper booster at a rate of approx 2/3 the speed of light. I do know the word "instant" is not the proper word to use, but for the people that do not understand what latency is then it is a close to "instant" as can get. a 20-40ms latency is pretty good considering if you were to go by satellite or radio frequency you would be 100 ms or even higher depending on the distance you are from the repeater.

The amount of data that can be sent over fibre optic is incredible. I was reading that you are now able to reach speeds of 100 Gbit/s compared to 10-20 Gbit/s that older lines/systems are running. This does allow a lot of data to be sent to remote destinations at an extremely fast rate. The 40ms that you are talking about is faster then you blink your eyes. Now you are really making an argument about that?

I know i have bad latency due to the fact that I have to get wireless high speed internet where i live. I have a 75 ft. tower that receives a radio signal from a tower that is no more then 1/2 mile away. my latency ranges from 45-130 ms. I really envy people ho live in large cities getting "true" high speed internet with a latency of 10-20 constantly, that would make my FF gaming experience so much better.

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Originally Posted by NightDagger

The 40ms that you are talking about is faster then you blink your eyes. Now you are really making an argument about that?

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Yes. It takes a bare minimum of 55 ms to get from japan to the east coast, and realistically takes considerably longer. Latencies of over 200 ms are pretty standard. It may not be a huge difference, but there absolutely is a difference.

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Yes. It takes a bare minimum of 55 ms to get from japan to the east coast

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55ms? in a dream world. even 200 is low.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

55ms? in a dream world. even 200 is low.

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Yes, in a dream world. Light travels across fiber optic cables at aprox 200 Mm/s. By bare minimum, i meant theoretical minimum. 200 ms is low, but not unrealistic.