ELI5: Why the absolute hell did SE not use Azure or AWS as a temporary solution?

[Razkine_Blazehawk]

AWS or Azure can be used as a last resort, if it takes to long for SE to get new servers. It maybe a little complicated to make it run stable, but with the right knowledge and coding it can

[Lanadra]

Oh look.. another know it all who is going to tell the people running the server how they should be running their server. I assume you got some professional experience backing up your professional opinions?

[Semirhage]

Moving something from a datacenter to a cloud provider isn't something you "just" do. There are tons of variables involved, and shifting projects between these two types of platforms is a full time job for full teams of people. Compounding this, FFXIV wasn't designed to run on a public cloud provider. Their backend code isn't organized in a way that AWS or Azure expect things to work. Services don't communicate with cloud servers in mind, etc. It's like going to Chicago and expecting a map of New York to tell you where everything is.

I do this for a living; moving entire projects into the cloud takes months to years for *well* architected projects. I have no doubt they looked at what it'd take to move XIV's ancient spaghetti code onto AWS and concluded it would be easier to just make a new MMO designed on scaling cloud servers from scratch.

[Minsue]

Ask New World players how stable AWS is to actually play on.

Yeah it's not great.

[Thoosa]

https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/19/a...ame-companies/

"to handle the ebbs and flows of demand on cloud-connected data centers"

It seems that the games do not run at 100% on AWS. Second, those games are not MMOs. And third, the server software must be developed in mind that it will propably run in cloud instances. If not then the server software will run very very VERY slow.

A cloud instance is more comparable to a Raspberry Pi than to a Xeon/Epyc-server. But you can rent thousands of those Raspberry Pi-like instances on demand and spawn them very quickly. And that is a problem. It is very unlikely that one cloud instance can handle more than a dozen players at once. And you do not want that only one dozen players are allowed per zone. Because it would not be an MMO anymore. And no, you cannot take 20 cloud instances and make one big instance of them because cloud instances are strictly separated from each other. You need to synchronize them permanently via network. And permanent synchronization creates a lot of network traffic.

Running on AWS may work for small group loot shooter but not for MMOs.

Cheers

Apparently it does: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametec...rpg-migration/

[Komarimono]

Apparently it does: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametec...rpg-migration/

Ah yes, amazons advertising. Here's the truth of the matter. When they did the migration, everyones latency when to heck. Would be fine at first, ping of say 32. Moment a world even happened though? Well over 300, worse for those not near the servers and connecting from afar. New World is also plagued with this, random latency spikes, massive lag and slow down during 50v50 PvP, it's pure laggy chaos.

Even WoW, when it used AWS, people got massive performance loss in latency with again random spikes from no where.

Of course Amazon stated it was peoples ISP, which was proven wrong many a time, and that it was their servers and the spikes coming from their end. But what do you expect when they use Wolfsdale era Xeons (2008 technology) for a lot of their "Servers". Why it's a cloud. They didn't do it to be faster, or superior. They did it so they could keep using ancient(in hardware terms) technology without having to invest into new as often.

[LittleImp]

AWS is horrible, and migrating their services to AWS on such short notice is extremely unrealistic. The amount of resources they would have had to commit to offset a few days of player discomfort were probably assessed by the business division as not being worth it, and would have likely facilitated additional delays.

Source: I am AWS certified.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Source: I am AWS certified.

Thank you for providing us with an opinion of someone who can do more than grasp at straws.

[Zileth]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

Wait what? Are you new to earth?

You do know they been trying to get new servers for some time lol and the semiconductor issue has been going on for amount over a year there a reason why there a shortage in graphics cards and why some car factories had to shut down or why there a bunch of cars just sitting there in lots waiting for chips and a shortage of XBOX and PS5.

The Devs already made plenty of announcements about the server issues and even recently stated que times are going to get worst due to them not able to secure any new hardware for adding new servers. Also they wernt expecting such a huge influx of players during covid and defiantly wernt expecting the flux that got in the past what 2 or 3 months with all the things happening with Blizzard and WoW.

Any way Karen please go off and tell us how you know everything and how snapping your fingers you are able to do better since clearly in this one thread you prove you know nothing and spouting of opinions like they are facts with no research just like half the other people rambling on about cloud servers and SE needs to do something lol. There a reason why people a defending the company to an extent since they are the ones that have done the googling and research and actually read up on things that have happened and is happening around the world and not acting like a Karen

[Eriane_Elis]

People who have no experience doing sysadm shouldn't really comment about how easy or cheap it is to move to the cloud. You do realize that cloud isn't actual clouds right? They cost money, a lot of money. Azure/AWS is expensive, Azure more expensive than AWS but AWS over-complicates everything so good luck not accidentally triggering something that'll cost you thousands in literally minutes. (sorry, personal rant here)

To meme it a little... One does not simply migrate their game over to a different architecture. You can't mix onprem and cloud so easily. Migrating to "the cloud" can take years. I'm not kidding when I say it's not a matter of copy and paste.

Yoshi P. already released a few statements regarding the situation dating back way before the WoW exodus. Again, after the exodus, another statement was made. And again in the past few days. THEY KNEW what would happen and they did all they could to buy new servers to no avail.

People expect things to "just work" in 2021 even though that's unrealistic. That's not how life works. People should have learned their lesson by now, it's been 2 years since the bizzaro world covid hit and yet "everything can be magically perfect".

But to go back to OP's question... It's like if you developed a game for PC but need it for a Mac, or the Playstation. They are different architectures and made differently. You would have to change how the game server functions and how the client interacts with the game server entirely. It just doesn't work unfortunately and all we can do is hope we have a short queue and don't get kicked. The limited availability of servers have punished us all and it's by no fault Square Enix. FF14 started development around 2004 I believe, it's been a long time.