Server Backups and Happy Players

[RAIST]

While in basic theory it's a good idea, and how most corporations set up their mission critical servers, it's not practical. I put another post in some other threads about this already trying to layout the scope of it all. Basically, your client is continuously connected to multiple servers at once. When you zone, you will tap maybe 4 servers during the process. The bulk of these servers are all located in one location--in Japan. It had to be done this way simply because logisitcally it could not be done and have it be a truly global environment. If they had the game servers regionalized to different continents, then only those continents would be allowed to play on them (ie, no JP and NA players on the same servers--it would all be NA people only, and JP would have a JP only server).

The communications of the game are not designed to compensate for the lag that would be there if you tried to synchronize 30+ servers in JP with 30+ servers in the US, then another 30+ servers in Europe. And yes, it would be 30+ servers in each location if they didn't split it up--because each site would have to house a complete set of the data, as it would be a global data set. .They would HAVE to restructure the player base to put players in their own region, and isolate them from the players in another region (think Blizzard and the Diabolo series--US West players could not play with US East players...no way, no how...they were completely segregated from each other). You think there is anough of a cry-fest when 16 servers are merged into 8 now? Try splitting everyone up and rehoming them to their own continent, and not allowing them to play with eachother ever again. This would HAVE to be done simply because it would be not only impractical, but not cost effective to run a dedicated fiber-optic network between all these sites to secure the bandwidth, security (hello, credit card information), and reliability of all that data being synchronized world wide in 3 or more locations.

Best case scenario, they can have the servers replicated locally. This would allow them to take one server offline to do a full backup for bare-metal restore scenario, and then bring it back online and resynch the data. This backup could be housed offsite for security. I get the feeling this is sort of how they do it already. When I got hacked years ago, my toon was restored to a state just a few days before I got hacked, which would be in line with a backup of a replicated data set.

While this doesn't provide for quick recovery if they have a catastrophic loss, or (as in this case) are no longer able to run from the current location otherwise--it does reduce the time required to rebuild at an alternate location if they have to. The data is already offsite, in a shutdown state as if the sever had a clean shutdown. Though it may be a day to 72 hours old, it is a clean backup that can be used to bring everything back online elsewhere once the core environment is setup. So..if they have an offsite datacenter capable of handling the load, they can restore and come back up once DNS changes are propogated to point everyone to the new servers. Alternatively (like now for instance) after the game is taken down like it is now, they could do a back up, and move that backup to the new datacenter and restore and bring it up. Granted.. it's not fast, but it is doable.

Raist

[Cenz]

I like many others have a very uneducated perspective on the current situation. Outside of all the crying that i have read about and self centered posts this is the first one that Ive seen that made sense. I may be wrong but i am pretty sure its solely a power issue and until the power is stabilized it wouldn't matter where in the country the servers were. The government itself requested the companies to conserve. I highly doubt SE is happy about not getting the months subscription and i believe they are gonna do everything they possibly can to get the game running asap. Does anyone know for a fact if the actual facility suffered any damage?