What? More??

[Ayesha Askham]

OK Linden Lab

You have me really confused.  Firstly we are in the midst (we are, aren't we?) of a week of scheduled Maintenance, and now we have this:

Scheduled Server Maintenance

Posted by Status Desk on November 18th, 2014 at 12:10 pm PST

[Posted 12:10 PM PDT, 18 November 2014] We will be performing additional scheduled maintenance on 19 November at approximately 1:00 AM PST. During this time, some residents may experience login issues and residents in-world may be logged off or experience degraded performance. Additionally, during this time Group Chat may fail. Please refrain from rezzing no-copy objects and making L$ transactions during this maintenance. Please check back here for updates.

Now...is this additional to and concurrent with:

[UPDATE] Scheduled Maintenance

Posted by Status Desk on November 17th, 2014 at 07:12 am PST

[Updated 7:12 AM PST, 17 November 2014] The scheduled maintenance is now in progress.

[Posted 10:00 AM PST, 14 November 2014] Beginning Monday, November 17, we will be undertaking a full week of scheduled maintenance.  This maintenance will take place at approximately 7:00 AM each day next week. Each region will be subject to one or more restarts, as its host takes its turn for inspection.  A five-minute warning will be broadcast for each restarting region. Additional warnings will be broadcast to regions where multiple restarts are necessary. Please be cautious about going AFK for extended periods in the middle of build sessions or handling no-copy objects, as you may miss the shutdown warnings. Please keep an eye on this blog for further updates.

My mind is asking "WTF??"

Now, I understand that sometime these things must be done, but really...is this right? :smileyfrustrated:

 

[Arwen Serpente]

Honestly Ayesha, I have no idea how to interpret these Server Maintenance messages. They have been communicated through virturally all my groups as if some kind of major storm is hitting this week. And yet, as of today, Tuesday, halfway through the day, none of the sims that I work or live on has been restarted even once this week. My home sim hasn't been restarted in 14 days. My store sim is restarted by the estate managers every few days as needed. But nothing done by LL maintenance. 

I'm just doing what I do normally since there's been no sign that this maintenance work is underway where I live/work in sl.  I understand your confusion and share it.  I just doubt we'll get much clarification beyond what the grid status says.

[Sephy McCaw]

It's simple, the Wednesday maintenance is asset server maintenance which they do frequently.

 

The week long maintenance is the sim servers, which is why sim are getting restarted more than once.

[Arwen Serpente]

That's helpful Sephy.  Out of curiosity, where does it say asset servers?  I believe you, I just don't see it in the grid status post.

[Ayesha Askham]

Sephy

That is a very authoritative assesment, and I must assume you have knowledge of that in order to make your assertion.  As Arwen asks, where do you get your assuredness from? (I'm not doubting, just curious!)

Since the group chat servers are also receiving attention (or at least from their "on/off" nature I must assume they are) it would seem that the techs are busy bees this week!

Whatever, since I cannot get to simulator User Group meetings inworld, I will bow to yours and Inara's

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/A-week-of-Restarts/td-p/2864926

greater knowlwdge and secure my tinfoil hat a little tighter! :smileytongue:

[Sephy McCaw]

My assumptions come from what the posts say, not being able to log in and user kick indicates that they are doing maintenance on user info, and if i remember right with the new HTTP cloud, they have groups and asset in the same sets.

 

Sims being restarted multiple times would indicate that the servers they are on are being worked on, and when a sim restarts it moves to an available server

[Ayesha Askham]

Scheduled Maintenance

Posted by Status Desk on November 19th, 2014 at 04:39 pm PST

[Posted 4:39 PM PDT, 19 November 2014] We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Thursday, November 20th, 2014 beginning at approximately 8:00am PST. During this time, some residents may experience login issues and residents in-world may be logged off or experience degraded performance. Please refrain from rezzing no-copy objects and making L$ transactions during this maintenance. Please check back here for updates.

I'm tempted to say....what Yet more???  I would have to assume that this is a different sort of maintenance from that already announced.  I would assume...yes.

However, Linden Lab left-hand, I'd like you to meet someone you may not know...Linden Lab right-hand.  I think you two should get acquainted. :smileytongue:

[Nova Convair]

There are the Virtual Servers - each of them runs a sim.
Many of this VS run on a real server - the hardware.

By my observations I have seen that this VS can not be moved on a different hardware server while running. A restart is required for that.

If I got it right what I have seen in one of the announcements there is maintenace on the physical servers.

You can imagine that this will require numerous restarts of the VS when they move on different servers and back.

So nothing special here.

That's my view on this.

[Ardy Lay]

What makes you think the region simulators use hardware virtualization?

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Scheduled Maintenance

Posted by Status Desk on November 19th, 2014 at 04:39 pm PST

[Posted 4:39 PM PDT, 19 November 2014] We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Thursday, November 20th, 2014 beginning at approximately 8:00am PST. During this time, some residents may experience login issues and residents in-world may be logged off or experience degraded performance. Please refrain from rezzing no-copy objects and making L$ transactions during this maintenance. Please check back here for updates.

I'm tempted to say....what Yet more???  I would have to assume that this is a different sort of maintenance from that already announced.  I would assume...yes.

However, Linden Lab left-hand, I'd like you to meet someone you may not know...Linden Lab right-hand.  I think you two should get acquainted. :smileytongue:

---

Shocked! Shocked, I am, that after a maintenance routine that described doing things "as its host takes its turn for inspection", that there would be further maintenance. It's almost as if they had checked the hardware and determined that something needed to be done. Baffling....

[Nova Convair]

---

Ardy Lay wrote:

What makes you think the region simulators use hardware virtualization?

---

I did not say anything about hardware virtualization.

My home sim and 19 others share a physical server machine. Whether  the virtual sim servers run natively or virtualized or virtualized in small groups I dont know and I dont care.

If the server requires a restart then 20 virtual sim servers need to become shut down - moved to another server and get restarted.

Details about your region you can get here: http://gridsurvey.com/index.php

 

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

That does seem to be a basic process: the usual weekly restarts with server code updates show signs of this shift to different hardware with the server address reported by the Viewer's Help/About

I have seen a few other instances of people reporting that stuff the Lindens never mention being bloody obvious if you use standard software tools, such as this. Or the standard internet traceroute to reveal which city the servers are in. You don't have to be any sort of quasi-hacker to use Second Life, nor to discover things like this, and it's as if some people at Linden Labs are trying to preserve an illison of superiority.

But then they tell us to use Facebook…

Anyway, when I started on the intenet we Brits were complaining about how ASCII was "ſ hort of a few characters".And we had Engliſ h leſſ ons in those days.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

That does seem to be a basic process: the usual weekly restarts with server code updates show signs of this shift to different hardware with the server address reported by the Viewer's Help/About

I have seen a few other instances of people reporting that stuff the Lindens never mention being bloody obvious if you use standard software tools, such as this. Or the standard internet traceroute to reveal which city the servers are in. You don't have to be any sort of quasi-hacker to use Second Life, nor to discover things like this, and it's as if some people at Linden Labs are trying to preserve an illison of superiority.

 

---

Maybe the reason they don't see fit to mention it is to the people who are doing the work at the Lab, it IS bloody obvious.

[Ayesha Askham]

Theresa

That it is bloody obvious to them and they don't think to spell it out to those of us who are a bit "hard of thinking" is yet another instance of how little they know their userbase.

Your point about the extra Maintenance is probably spot-on but what a shame they do not see fit to make that clearer.

Is it SO wrong to expect a bit of clarification?  Well, OK...Yes, it probably is.:smileyfrustrated:

[Perrie Juran]

---

Nova Convair wrote:

---

Ardy Lay wrote:

What makes you think the region simulators use hardware virtualization?

---

I did not say anything about hardware virtualization.

My home sim and 19 others share a physical server machine. Whether  the virtual sim servers run natively or virtualized or virtualized in small groups I dont know and I dont care.

If the server requires a restart then 20 virtual sim servers need to become shut down - moved to another server and get restarted.

Details about your region you can get here:

http://gridsurvey.com/index.php

 

---

I'm really curious about what you are saying here.  Especially because you state your home SIM (actually REGION) is on a physical server with 19 others.  Because that makes 20 Regions per Server.  And you see, when you buy a region you buy a clearly defined product.  And LL has stated, 4 Full, 8 Homestead or 16 Open Space Regions per Server.  That is not a number they can randomly change.  Or can they?  That could make for an interesting discussion.

In the Wiki, the last definitions stated were in 2010,

Simulator, which can mean either:

• Sim node (or sim host), the physical server machine simulating one or more regions.
• Sim processes, the processes running on the server machines that simulate regions.

The latter usage is more precise, because multiple processes may run on a single server CPU. In common usage, "sim" may also be used to mean region, though this meaning is deprecated because it is ambiguous. Most accurately, a region is simulated by a sim process running on a sim node.

Definitions by Lil Linden

From Beta Server Office Hours 2010.02.12

• Sim means sim host, or the hardware
• Simulator is the binary that runs on the sim hosts
• Regions run in the simulator

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sim

There used to be a script to Find That Laggy Neighbor but it's gone now.  There are however some very interesting comments on that page.

Also of interest is http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server_architecture .  It's especially interesting if you look at some of the revision history.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Theresa

That it is bloody obvious to them and they don't think to spell it out to those of us who are a bit "hard of thinking" is yet another instance of how little they know their userbase.

Your point about the extra Maintenance is probably spot-on but what a shame they do not see fit to make that clearer.

Is it SO wrong to expect a bit of clarification?  Well, OK...Yes, it probably is.:smileyfrustrated:

---

The only people who really would be entitled to an explanation would be people who have Premium Membership because of the actual services they pay for.  But even then I don't know that LL is obligated though I agree with you that they should communicate better.

For some reason they think public relations after the fact is the better way to go.

While in actuality I really don't need to know what the maintenance entails they do have a customer base who for various and sundry reasons is curious as to what is going on.  And if you don't make 'nice, nice' to your customers it makes for unhappy campers.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Theresa

That it is bloody obvious to them and they don't think to spell it out to those of us who are a bit "hard of thinking" is yet another instance of how little they know their userbase.

Your point about the extra Maintenance is probably spot-on but what a shame they do not see fit to make that clearer.

Is it SO wrong to expect a bit of clarification?  Well, OK...Yes, it probably is.:smileyfrustrated:

---

I was referring to Wolf's statement that Lindens don't tell us things "to create an illusion of superiority."

I once was in a production meeting of a play and the lighting designer told the director, et al. - "I'm using a McCandless setup with pink and brown gels."

Fine.

He knew what he was doing, and as it happened I did too but there was no guarantee anyone else did, and, most importantly, what he said didn't really tell anyone what the lighting would look like.

There's a fine line between giving not enough information and giving too much information and a lot depends on the audience. Exactly how much more useful would "We're checking our backplanes - we may have to do repairs on some of them - we're not sure how many" have been at the beginning of the week than the statement of "We're going to be working on stuff - your region might have to restart" that was given?

[Nova Convair]

There are old entries that tell you about 1 sim per cpu core. But thats a long time ago (in relation to the fast development of this technology)

Look at this thread: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Land/how-can-you-find-out-what-class-of-server-a-sim-is-on-and-how/qaq-p/2178443

Since then LL improved things further, the servers got more powerful the memory became cheaper. Bandwidth costs too btw.

You can do 2 things with the increasing serverpower. Give the sims more cpu power, memory, prims, whatever or stuff more sims on a server.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Nova Convair wrote:

There are old entries that tell you about 1 sim per cpu core. But thats a long time ago (in relation to the fast development of this technology)

Look at this thread:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Land/how-can-you-find-out-what-class-of-server-a-sim-is-on-and-how/qaq-p/2178443

Since then LL improved things further, the servers got more powerful the memory became cheaper. Bandwidth costs too btw.

You can do 2 things with the increasing serverpower. Give the sims more cpu power, memory, prims, whatever or stuff more sims on a server.

 

---

All very interesting.  I got curious and did a little more digging.  If there were ever any "official references" about the number of Sims/Regions per Server they have now been removed.  At lest in my little bit of searching I can't find any. 

I did find a bit more info.

Second Life's Classless Server Scheme

With new class 6 servers on the horizon, the Second Life grid is going to become more heterogeneous, with servers of assorted specifications deployed where it seems most appropriate.

"As we introduce new and better performing hardware," writes Jack Linden, "we can manage the Grid to provide the best hardware where it's most needed. As Landowners your Island will no longer age and end up on older hardware indefinitely - and over time we will move the standard hardware level up for everyone. We will soon be deploying a new specification of server more widely on the Grid, and rather than limiting that hardware to new Islands only, we would prefer to have the freedom to allow existing Landowners to benefit too."

Then we get to the Wiki:  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land

Region

A named 256 m x 256 m (65,536 m²) area hosted by a single simulator process (sim). In common usage, the term "simulator" or "sim" may also refer to a region, but in fact a single server process can host multiple regions....

There is one full region per server host CPU core.

 

This is an interesting Answer thread also, especially the last comment,

"I'd be surprised if the "server hardware" wasn't virtualized or planned to be virtualized in the future. So these questions may not make a lot of sense.

 A better question would be how much CPU, memory, network bandwidth, and storage I/O is available per sim type."

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Server-Deployments/how-many-sims-per-server-full-island-and-Homestead/td-p/279811

Fascinating

 

 

 

[Ardy Lay]

Last time I laid eyes on a Second Life simulator host it was a nifty thing made by Silicon Mechanix.  It was a rack mount chasis that housed 4 distinct computers.  Each of those computers had 2 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, two quad-core Intel Xeon processors and 24 GB of main memory.  It was my understanding that it was to host one Full Region per CPU core.  That was a few years ago.