20 September 2006

We finally got the new server

Today our host installed the new server in the datacenter, and me and Learner were playing with it. We (actually, more him than me) made it so that we can have over 1K connections at the same time. The default limit is 1K, but at least on FreeBSD 6.1 (and some other versins as well) it is trivial to increase the limit. All you need to do is compile the SDL_net and your application with a special flag, and that's it.

We also tested the limit, and we were able to successfully create 2K connections. Not bad at all.
This new server is a dual Xeon 4Ghz, 1GB RAM, and 3 36 GB HDDs. The OS is FreeBSD 6.1
Apart for having to make some very minor header modifications, it seems that everything is working fine. I want to have a 1 week testing first, so we made that new server the official test server, shuting down the port 2001 test server. The idea is to check if everything is stable, as we are using a new OS version and a totally new hardware.

After everything is tested, we will have to migrate the servers, which will be done like this:
1. We will modify the downloads to include the new address in el.ini
2. We will announce everyone a day or two in advance on how to modify their el.ini to store the new address.
3. The day of the migration, we will shut down the old server, do the backups, transfer the data and stuff, then change the opening screen to tell everyone to modify their el.ini to change the address. After a few days, the old server will be totally offline, to encourage people to go on the new server. A proeminent message will also appear on the main page of our website, for those who missed the warnings and don't read the forums.

On an unrelated note, yesterday I told the players that all the hydrogenium bars donations for the invasion warning system will be matched by me. So far, they donated over 80 bars, which is quite impressive, so with my matched donations, there will be about 200 bars out of 500. So maybe in a month or so it will be done :)

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