Maintaining the status quo
Sometimes running a MMO is not only about adding new stuff, but taking care so that the current stuff works, and works good.
For example, for some unknown reason, our forums were taking an unreasonable amount of CPU time, and we tracked the problem to the MySQL server, but it might run deeper than that.
Either way, our host asked us to shut it down, because it was killing all the sites on that machine. Currently the forums are down, but Learner will put them on his machine in a few hours, and later on, when the new dedicated server is available, we will move the whole site there. We expect to be able to do so in a week or less.
Just like the game server, the web server will also be in France, but in a different data-center, and hosted by a different company. The good thing is that we have unlimited bandwidth for a flat fee of about 50 USD/month, which is very reasonable.
Soon after that, we will have to move the game server as well, from one machine to another, on the same data-center. The new server will be a dual P4 Xeon, 3 GHZ, 1GB RAM. So much better than the dual P3 1 Ghz that we are using now.
This in itself is a pretty complex operation, because we will have to set it up in such a way that we can have more than 1024 connections from the same process.
So a lot of work and tests will be needed.
And this are only the technical problems, the human problems are constant and more overwhelming. Who said it isn't fun to run a MMO?
For example, for some unknown reason, our forums were taking an unreasonable amount of CPU time, and we tracked the problem to the MySQL server, but it might run deeper than that.
Either way, our host asked us to shut it down, because it was killing all the sites on that machine. Currently the forums are down, but Learner will put them on his machine in a few hours, and later on, when the new dedicated server is available, we will move the whole site there. We expect to be able to do so in a week or less.
Just like the game server, the web server will also be in France, but in a different data-center, and hosted by a different company. The good thing is that we have unlimited bandwidth for a flat fee of about 50 USD/month, which is very reasonable.
Soon after that, we will have to move the game server as well, from one machine to another, on the same data-center. The new server will be a dual P4 Xeon, 3 GHZ, 1GB RAM. So much better than the dual P3 1 Ghz that we are using now.
This in itself is a pretty complex operation, because we will have to set it up in such a way that we can have more than 1024 connections from the same process.
So a lot of work and tests will be needed.
And this are only the technical problems, the human problems are constant and more overwhelming. Who said it isn't fun to run a MMO?
posted by Radu at 2:07 PM
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