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  1. #41
    Player
    Evangela's Avatar
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    Mar 2011
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    グリダニア
    Posts
    4,361
    Character
    Evangela Monterossa
    World
    Balmung
    Main Class
    Ninja Lv 90
    New servers should be able to handle more inventory spaces. My inventory is in coma for more than a year or so. I even have to throw away some old raid gears recently.
    (1)

  2. #42
    Player
    Duuude007's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    2,954
    Character
    Duuude Bismarck
    World
    Hyperion
    Main Class
    Armorer Lv 80
    Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
    Are you willing to stagger onward with old server hardware? Servers age, and need refreshed, it's a fact of life with infrastructure.
    Its also likely been happening since day one. It doesn't mean that it will change the nature of ARR core functions, merely more stability between maintenance windows, better error monitoring, and general performance for a constantly growing playerbase.

    And... you consider Montreal and Europe Data centers NOT upgrades? please.

    Priorities will be met, and the checklist will be updated. Internally. Don't expect every little upgrade to affect you personally, or even be publicly reported.
    (0)

  3. #43
    Player
    Magis's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Ul'dah
    Posts
    1,253
    Character
    Magis Luagis
    World
    Excalibur
    Main Class
    Thaumaturge Lv 60
    This isn't the case of just putting more ram in an presto everything is solved.

    A lot of FFXIV's problems is in the code itself not the server.
    (1)

  4. #44
    Player
    Krissey's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    419
    Character
    Krissey Cakes
    World
    Mateus
    Main Class
    Ninja Lv 60
    I'm down to wait for server upgrades. Why not. It could help. Probably would not make things worse.
    (1)

  5. #45
    Player Kosmos992k's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Ul'Dah
    Posts
    4,349
    Character
    Kosmos Meishou
    World
    Behemoth
    Main Class
    Paladin Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Waliel View Post
    I'd just like to point out that this has never been true. I'd also say that three years is pretty fresh for game servers. They're not even at the end of their maintenance contracts most likely.
    Yes, I know. Which is why I wrote this in a follow-up reply earlier;
    we are approaching 3 years, and the 1st anniversary of Heavensward. It just seems to me that now would be a good time for them to begin planning for a server refresh along side the 4.0 expansion; which would make it possible that we would see some of the changes people want to see with that expansion. Given how long it takes for major changes to materialize, I figured now would be a good time to start the conversation.
    Quote Originally Posted by Delmontyb View Post
    Contrary to popular belief, but server upgrades are always happening. Hardware breaks down, get's replaced, sometimes even the whole setup gets replaced as well. That's all depends on the network architecture that they are using.
    Contrary to your contrarian view, if you change the hardware in a LIVE environment, you are risking breaking something in the software, which in turn threatens the service. The whole OS and application Stack on the server is configured for the specific platform. You can't just change hardware in the server on the fly. If something fails, it will be replaced by an identical unit. In a production setting where 24/7 operation is expected, you don't mess with the configuration.

    Changes to server hardware are carefully planned in advance, maintenance is about restoring the system to operation, not stealth upgrades. OS patching is a more continual (and critical) process and with the risks of unpatched exploits on servers, it's routine now to upgrade the OS and patch applications as needed. But the underlying hardware won't change without a good deal of planning, which is why you start planning long before the server hits EoL, or goes out of maintenance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Duuude007 View Post
    And... you consider Montreal and Europe Data centers NOT upgrades? please.
    I'd consider the Eurpean data center an upgrade, since it was in fact an upgrade. Montreal was where the NA/EU data center(s) were based from the start of ARR, although as someone pointed out earlier, the original datacenter infrastructure was not designed to handle as many players as the game got, and had to be scaled up, hastily.

    Quote Originally Posted by Magis View Post
    This isn't the case of just putting more ram in an presto everything is solved.

    A lot of FFXIV's problems is in the code itself not the server.
    Yes, Indeed. However, as Yoshi-P and others have told us time and again the memory budget for character data is very tight. That is partially due to constraints on the client end, but mainly due to the constant write back of character data to the database every 15 (It may actually be even more frequent than that, I can't remember, but 15 seconds has stuck in my head) seconds to provide solid data integrity and rollback support. You could quadruple the number of options for character appearance, and double inventory, and most clients (including the PS3) wouldn't care. However increasing the number of options for character appearance and doubling the inventory would have a large impact on the amount of data each character comprises of, and is being continually re-written to the database. The current architecture supports a certain amount of data in the character, you have to upgrade the actual hardware to significantly alter than bandwidth to support more data in the character.

    Increasing customization options, dye options, glamour options etc... all increase the amount of data stored with a character as well. Sure, weaker clients might not be able to keep up with rendering everything, in which case some enhanced options might not render fully on those platforms, rather like what would happen with a high definition texture pack. But, anything that increased the size of the data set that makes up a character has to be included in the budget for the size of character data that can be handled by the system.

    Of course there is a large software component to making this happen, but the hardware is a limiting factor and upgrading hardware raises the bar on what can be done, facilitating the change in software. The two go hand in hand, but it's a chicken and egg. You can't expand inventory without first increasing the capability (bandwidth) of the game servers to rewrite character data continuously. The only alternative to changing the hardware is to completely rewrite the code and database that handles character data so that it is more efficient and/or stores things differently. To me, it would see that the best solution would be to do both, but that's just me.
    (3)
    Last edited by Kosmos992k; 03-24-2016 at 01:12 AM.

  6. #46
    Player
    Magis's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Ul'dah
    Posts
    1,253
    Character
    Magis Luagis
    World
    Excalibur
    Main Class
    Thaumaturge Lv 60
    Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
    Yes, Indeed. However, as Yoshi-P and others have told us time and again the memory budget for character data is very tight. That is partially due to constraints on the client end, but mainly due to the constant write back of character data to the database every 15 (It may actually be even more frequent than that, I can't remember, but 15 seconds has stuck in my head) seconds to provide solid data integrity and rollback support. You could quadruple the number of options for character appearance, and double inventory, and most clients (including the PS3) wouldn't care. However increasing the number of options for character appearance and doubling the inventory would have a large impact on the amount of data each character comprises of, and is being continually re-written to the database. The current architecture supports a certain amount of data in the character, you have to upgrade the actual hardware to significantly alter than bandwidth to support more data in the character.
    Me and a few other programmers theorized that SE is probably storing the whole game state in memory and saving it all at once in one go every [x] seconds. This is probably split on a per zone basis (IE: S. Gridania is handling all players inside it, while E. Thanalan handles those). Still, other than gamestate data (position, parameterSave, statuses, etc), why would you ever save a character's appearance over and over? Why would you save the inventory over and over? Should that not be done when those event trigger?

    Another interesting quirk of the XIV protocol: All game commands must take a minimum 0x20byte overhead for headers. Won't get into details (since it will prob piss off SE) but for items for example, the game wastes 0x20 bytes per item setting slots. Interestingly 1.0 did this more efficiently but had it's own issues with being convoluted.
    (1)
    Last edited by Magis; 03-24-2016 at 02:45 AM.

  7. #47
    Player Kosmos992k's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Ul'Dah
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    4,349
    Character
    Kosmos Meishou
    World
    Behemoth
    Main Class
    Paladin Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Magis View Post
    Me and a few other programmers theorized that SE is probably storing the whole game state in memory and saving it all at once in one go every [x] seconds. This is probably split on a per zone basis. Still, other than gamestate data (position, parameterSave, statuses, etc), why would you ever save a character's appearance over and over? Why would you save the inventory over and over? Should that not be done when those event trigger?
    Hey, I'm commenting on the basis of the things that they themselves have posted before. Sure it should be trasactional and not backup the entire character every however long. I don't think I would attempt to state save the entire address space of the game every few seconds, the bandwidth to handle that is extreme. Everything that happens that affects a character in any way that requires to be sotred for potential rollback is going to be transaction based. So you could simply store the transaction logs, and do a rollback that way. But, there are a heck of a lot of transactions involved, and it may be simpler to save the blocks of data comprising the character every 15 seconds than pick through transaction logs to rollback individual changes - it's surely a lot easier to code.

    Sometimes the simple, direct (brute force?) solution which appears wasteful on initial examination is actually better than the finesse solution.
    (0)

  8. #48
    Player
    Delmontyb's Avatar
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    Mar 2011
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    1,335
    Character
    Brin Zalazar
    World
    Sargatanas
    Main Class
    Conjurer Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
    Contrary to your contrarian view, if you change the hardware in a LIVE environment, you are risking breaking something in the software, which in turn threatens the service. The whole OS and application Stack on the server is configured for the specific platform. You can't just change hardware in the server on the fly. If something fails, it will be replaced by an identical unit. In a production setting where 24/7 operation is expected, you don't mess with the configuration.

    Changes to server hardware are carefully planned in advance, maintenance is about restoring the system to operation, not stealth upgrades. OS patching is a more continual (and critical) process and with the risks of unpatched exploits on servers, it's routine now to upgrade the OS and patch applications as needed. But the underlying hardware won't change without a good deal of planning, which is why you start planning long before the server hits EoL, or goes out of maintenance.


    We are talking about two different things, because I agree with your points, but nether of us know the setup, because there are plenty of real world environments that get hardware upgrades without the degree of concern that you suggest.

    So you could be right with SE, but then again, there are all kinds of upgrades. Disk Speeds, Network Cards, Processors, that can all get upgraded, and then you have who new servers that can also be tested and put into production. I see this all the time.

    Now, when it comes to the database servers... Oh man, yes, that's where you want to be very, very careful, and take your sweet time, and maybe that's where we'd see a huge improvement overall from the server configuration.

    My point is, nether of us know how SE has it configured, and how they plan to upgrade those servers, etc... Unless you work for them, that is.
    (0)
    Work To Game on YouTube [Guides, and More]...
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    Petition for Microsoft to allow XIV with cross system play:
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  9. #49
    Player
    Kurogaea's Avatar
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    Nov 2014
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    1,365
    Character
    Raifu Kurogaea
    World
    Gilgamesh
    Main Class
    Conjurer Lv 80
    Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
    Are you willing to stagger onward with old server hardware? Servers age, and need refreshed, it's a fact of life with infrastructure.
    So what would this server overhaul do for the players? I'm not too knowledgeable on this stuff. -_-
    (0)

  10. #50
    Player Kaiser-Ace's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    1,966
    Character
    Kai Magnus
    World
    Leviathan
    Main Class
    Dragoon Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Kurogaea View Post
    So what would this server overhaul do for the players? I'm not too knowledgeable on this stuff. -_-
    From what I've gathered, give us about two to three weeks of maintenance while setting back development by about three months.

    Other than that, I don't think it benefits us directly
    (0)

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