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Forums > Home› Neverwinter Discussion › General Discussion (PC)

Why does it take two hours to restart a server?

draqkonisdraqkonis Member Posts: 36 Arc User
in General Discussion (PC)
I know it's just two hours, but when you have limited play time it can seem like a huge chunk. Do they own like the worlds oldest server or something? Might be worth something to a museum and then they could use it to buy a new one with that money :D

Comments

  • myles08807myles08807 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 409 Arc User
    This is, first of all, a very short time, and will probably come out to a bit less than two hours in the end. Secondly, this weekly, 6 to 7 AM Pacific time, downtime has been a feature of the game from the start. There are legitimate discussions about legitimate issues that the forums host every day. This is not one of them.
  • draqkonisdraqkonis Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Wow. I know all that, but thanks for playing!
  • sockmunkeysockmunkey Member Posts: 4,622 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    Generally speaking a restart is a bit more then hitting the reset button and letting things reboot.

    Restarts are really the only time they can do basic server maintenance. Each time the servers start they most likely have a battery of self tests and diagnostics where they scan drive sectors and defrag the file system. And we are not just talking one computer, but dozens.

    2 hours is actually really reasonable.
  • deathbeezdeathbeez Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 789 Arc User
    It's not just a simple flip a hardware switch.
    Clusters, hyper-visors, nested OSes, instance domains, etc.. plus the whole lot of flaky proprietary middle-wear that has dependencies for starting up. Then the system checks..

    Doing a full restart on one of our DB clusters take over 20 hours to finish.
  • draqkonisdraqkonis Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Ah ok! That's a little bit more of what I was looking for. So it's not just a simple restart like they did for the parcel fix they did last week, but includes at least the basic routines. I knew it was more than just a basic on and off, but didn't think about things needing to be done like defraging and drive scans.

    Thanks for the answers! Also deathbeez, 20 hours D: Sometimes I'm glad I didn't progress into the tech field like I originally wanted. Sometimes I forget how much work servers can actually be.
  • saitama#1728 saitama
    saitama#1728
         Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited December 2015
    Well i guess a simple dry restart would take from 5 to maybe 20 minutes, probably they also do some short of maintenance to the server or a defrag and takes a lil bit longer.. Think it this way, which in most cases is true.. the longer=the better
  • draqkonisdraqkonis Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    saitama#1728 said:

    Well i guess a simple dry restart would take from 5 to maybe 20 minutes, probably they also do some short of maintenance to the server or a defrag and takes a lil bit longer.. Think it this way, which in most cases is true.. the longer=the better

    Longer isn't always better. I've seem some pretty nasty mess-ups after a whole day of down time for this type of stuff.

  • saitama#1728 saitama
    saitama#1728
         Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    draqkonis said:

    saitama#1728 said:

    Well i guess a simple dry restart would take from 5 to maybe 20 minutes, probably they also do some short of maintenance to the server or a defrag and takes a lil bit longer.. Think it this way, which in most cases is true.. the longer=the better

    Longer isn't always better. I've seem some pretty nasty mess-ups after a whole day of down time for this type of stuff.

    saitama#1728 said:

    most cases

    and yea of all the company's i know gameforge holds the 1# spot on this matter..

  • ghoulz66ghoulz66 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,748 Arc User
    Not only do they have to feed the hamsters, they have to give them bubble baths, read them stories, shop for their favored feed and alcohol, pet them for 30 minutes, inspect every nook and cranny for chewed wiring.
  • saitama#1728 saitama
    saitama#1728
         Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    ghoulz66 said:

    Not only do they have to feed the hamsters, they have to give them bubble baths, read them stories, shop for their favored feed and alcohol, pet them for 30 minutes, inspect every nook and cranny for chewed wiring.

    thats probably the best example xD
  • cjh1983cjh1983 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 229 Arc User
    No one in the gaming industry has ever heard of 100% availability
  • kreatyvekreatyve Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 10,545 Community Moderator
    Every MMO out there does weekly restarts. As was already pointed out, 2 hours is a very reasonable amount of time.
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  • mentinmindmakermentinmindmaker Member Posts: 1,492 Arc User
    I suspect the actual restart takes at most 15-30 minutes or so.

    The really big messup you can do in the MMORPG industry is to release the server to the players with some serious problem.. for instance if everything on Zen store is free, or mobs suddenly drops rubies on every kill... Very difficult to recover from such things without a rollback, and rollbacks take mass time and are *very* unpopular.

    So most likely much of those two hours are spent doing basic regression tests to make sure there is nothing obviously wrong with the server after reboot.
  • santralafaxsantralafax Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 2,896 Arc User
    mentinmindmaker said:

    I suspect the actual restart takes at most 15-30 minutes or so.

    Because f the need to restart multiple servers, *in order* to ensure dependencies are met, and checks to ensure all is up before releasing to players, I don't think you can even question the first hour, probably 1.5 hours. Two hours does seem a bit long, at least to a player waiting for them to come up.
  • frozenfirevrfrozenfirevr Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,475 Community Moderator
    I'm always sleeping during the maintenance! B)
    FrozenFire
  • mynaammynaam Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 937 Arc User
    They might also do a full scan for mallware and viruses during this time(since doing it during uptime might affect preformance).
    There are more than BIS players in this game
    RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
    FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
    Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)



  • kaknoepkaknoep Member Posts: 27 Arc User
    Have a maintenance for a week for all i care, just fix the spam in PE and horrible lag in iwd and dr, for MONTHS this is a problem and its clear to me either you can't or just don't give a ****.
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  • orkuniuorkuniu Member Posts: 14 Arc User
    For me it can be even 4 hours. The question is, why there is no patch notes?
  • deathbeezdeathbeez Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 789 Arc User
    draqkonis said:

    Also deathbeez, 20 hours D: Sometimes I'm glad I didn't progress into the tech field like I originally wanted. Sometimes I forget how much work servers can actually be.

    They're very large database clusters running MySQL NDB cluster. Probably not a good example.
    But yeah, 20 hours. I basically play NWO while they rebuild. I ain't staying awake for the whole thing :p

    You guys are crazy if you think 2 hours is too long for anything. It's rarely just the host/guest OSes holding up the show.
    I'd rather have a long restart then a "rollback." Lived through one of them? Yeah, they suck.
    Too bad the devs can't show up at your job and tell you you're going too slow LOL. That would be a blast.
    Where is my mocha franco double espresso latte I ordered 38 seconds ago!?





  • reposterzreposterz Member Posts: 293 Arc User
    I think it has something to do with Internet bandwidth, we do not know when hyperspace communications will take place in the future?
  • regenerderegenerde Member Posts: 3,048 Arc User
    Well, it would be nice, if they would add the maintenance time to the running time of an seasonal event...
    I do believe in killing the messenger...
    Want to know why?
    Because it sends a message!
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