Backup servers?

[Winner]

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?

[NightDagger]

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.

[RAIST]

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

[Blaize122]

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.

[merlox]

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

[Sureal]

uhhh, deja vu much?

[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.

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

[Ilax]

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.

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.

[rog]

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.

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.

[NightDagger]

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.

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.