Data Center Redistribution for Crystal (Two Weeks without being able to log in?)

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The company they rented the servers from most likely changed. I doubt they physically moved servers across the pond. Also take into account the world visiting feature being flipped on. That will add another step to all of this. Ultimately, it does say "Over a two week period."

Remember, Chaos was down for five days and went through something similar. However, Chaos was moved intact from hardware to hardware. In this situation you're removing individual servers from the data center cluster and making an entirely new one. Chaos was already made and just needed to be moved. It didn't become a data center from another data center. They cited two weeks not me.

You are misreading it. It takes more than 24 hours to transfer data across the world. I wasn't talking about physical servers. Thats why Chaos took so long. They also had to do final checks on the servers, make sure the data was transferred without corruption.

It would take longer to move data that far, than to just split the datacenters logically. Thats all they are doing. Changing which lobby and duty finder server they get pointed at.

Proximity makes a huge difference when transferring large amounts of data. You can use 10gig, 40gig, or 100gig within a datacenter itself. Over the atlantic, I'd be shocked if they got anywhere close to 1gig.

[MistakeNot]

So, I have a few questions regarding the Crystal data center changes. According to the images provided to us it states that "Redistribution is scheduled to be carried out over a two week period." Going by this statement and past data center redistribution's such as Chaos data center, which was down for three or five days, does this mean the worlds being moved will be inaccessible for this two week period?

No, the servers will likely be down for a day or two at most while they do maintenance and switch around cables. The two weeks mentioned is the period during which players may redistribute themselves through the free transfers.

It was a quite different situation when they moved the Chaos servers from NA to Europe. In that case they either had to move the physical servers across the Atlantic, or (more likely) copy all the data over a cross-atlanic link. Either of those take time.
For the upcoming data center split all servers will remain in the same room they are in. Only things that will need to change is how cables are connected between switches and routers, and some configuration settings. If it has all been properly prepared it shouldn't take more than a few hours to set things up.

[Anger]

No, the servers will likely be down for a day or two at most while they do maintenance and switch around cables. The two weeks mentioned is the period during which players may redistribute themselves through the free transfers.

It was a quite different situation when they moved the Chaos servers from NA to Europe. In that case they either had to move the physical servers across the Atlantic, or (more likely) copy all the data over a cross-atlanic link. Either of those take time.
For the upcoming data center split all servers will remain in the same room they are in. Only things that will need to change is how cables are connected between switches and routers, and some configuration settings. If it has all been properly prepared it shouldn't take more than a few hours to set things up.

I think it will be longer than a day especially given the wording.

[Kurando]

When the NA datacenters moved to California before SB they were down for 48hrs worth of maintenance, the remaining centers (EU and JP) were only down for 24 hours so anyone on the NA worlds actually got a free day added to their subscription due to the down time. If the upcoming shuffle require longer than a day then I think it would be 48hrs at most, anything longer than that wouldn't make sense at all seeing as the location of the centres aren't changing.

[Kazrah]

I think it will be longer than a day especially given the wording.

Primary maintenance will likely take 24 consecutive hours tops since it's predominantly in-house shuffling in the server room, and then maybe some intermittent emergency maintenance periods for whenever one of the hamster wheels malfunction.

Also have to bear in mind that this is something happening for all three datacenter groups, not just NA, meaning that it'd be less likely for them to do excessive nonstop downtime.

[Haventale]

A more concerning thought for me is which servers are going to be affected by the loss of housing? Servers marked in green text? Servers marked in black text? Servers that are going to the Crystal DC? I'll be fairly pissed off if I'm indeed losing my house over this.

The colours are just showing which DC the servers are currently in. Green is current Aether servers and Black is current Primal. Crystal is made up of black and green because Crystal is made up of servers being moved from Aether and Primal to Crystal.