Cluster move complete, a few bugs to fix

[Dark0ne]

We successfully completed the move of our databases over to a new centralised cluster yesterday with the final site, Fallout 3 Nexus, moved in the afternoon. Moving the databases off the same servers that actually serve the site’s pages has freed up resources on the servers that can go towards handling more concurrent connections and as such I’m hoping you’re finding the browsing experience on the sites this weekend, especially on Skyrim Nexus, are much more satisfactory.

 

There are currently a few known bugs on the sites that we’ll be working on sorting over the next week. You do not need to report these errors to us as we already know about them:

 

• Problems with people either being unable to login or being unable to stay logged in through page loads. Generally what happens is you enter your username and password, click the submit button, the main page loads but you’re still not logged in. No error messages are shown. We’re not sure why this isn’t working for some people while it’s working for the majority but we’ll look in to fixing that first.
  
• People have reported the file servers sometimes report themselves as being overloaded or “struggling” despite other people downloading the same file perfectly fine. Assumed that any NMM downloading errors are of a similar ilk for the same people (e.g. if manually downloading fails so does downloading through NMM).
  
• Issues with the Image Share not posting images and linking to the correct forum topics.
  

 

If you’re experiencing a problem that’s not on that list then by all means report it.

 

While I’m very pleased that the cluster has worked out well I’m still not happy. I want to be in a position where there’s not one single point of failure for the sites so if a server goes down the sites still run perfectly. I also want to be in a position where increasing capacity is as simple as buying new servers. The old system wasn’t that simple, and I want a system that is that simple. Right now we’re serving about 700 concurrent connections/second to the sites (not the file servers, they do loads more than that) and we’re hitting that limit regularly. I want to be able to serve twice that much. We’ve spent over £33,000 ($50,000) on the database cluster and I’ve now outlayed a further £18,000 ($28,000) on several static content servers that will serve all the images and static pages and a further £40,000 ($61,000) on moving all our page serving in to a specially developed cloud server system utilising 48 CPU cores and 192GB or RAM across 6 virtual servers, load balanced by two extra virtual servers to ensure redundancy. On top of that we’ve got to continue paying the billls on the old servers until everything is moved over, so we’re essentially paying double the amount it normally costs to keep things going from a hardware standpoint. Don’t get me started on bandwidth or the file servers where we’ve got another 3 file servers on order at the moment. When you wonder where the Premium Membership money goes; this is where it goes.

 

I’m happy with how things have gone so far and I’m looking forward to a point where we can stop dealing with making the sites run properly and get on with making the sites better and expanding the network. Frankly, if I were to have another year like this current one I’d seriously consider throwing in the towel. So fingers very much crossed.

[AurianaValoria1]

Congratulations on the successful move....here's hoping the difficulties get worked out with ease. :)

[thenobody0]

On the forums when I use Find Content on my own profile it no longer shows my latest posts. It seems to have stopped updating at 25 July even though it says Search limited from 28-July 12.

[sylvju48]

Not sure where to report bugs, yet it seems the move cleared the mods I have been tracking. On the same topic, the front page feature for file tracking has yet to notify me of anything going on with my tracked mods, yet the tracking center displays uploads fine. Both are not large problems. Keep up the great service your providing.

[ArjyYu]

File tracking centre on Dragon Age Nexus states that I'm currently not tracking any files - but I had 2 or 3 pages of them up until recently

 

fortunately, my tracking centre on Skyrim Nexus seems to function normally

[Ahvaren]

"a specially developed cloud server system utilising 48 CPU cores and 192GB or RAM across 6 virtual servers, load balanced by two extra virtual servers to ensure redundancy."

 

So basically, just enough to play Metro 2033 on max settings.

 

Good luck. I hope the next year goes more smoothly for you.

[Stromgarde]

Thanks for all the work you've been putting into stabilizing the service over the last week.

 

I've also lost my tracking centre content on Oblivion Nexus. I'm just wondering if this is something that will pop back at some point, or whether it is lost. I can recreate it if it is lost, but I didn't want to start recreating it from scratch and then potentially overwrite something if it's going to be coming back. Thank you.

[lpha]

"Generally what happens is you enter your username and password, click the submit button, the main page loads but you’re still not logged in. No error messages are shown. We’re not sure why this isn’t working for some people while it’s working for the majority but we’ll look in to fixing that first."

 

I removed my cookies and now everything is working fine. ;)

[Ironman5000]

Everything seems to running much better so far without any errors, good job with the switch over :D

[Druuler]

Like a few other folks here, I am noticing some problems with the File Tracking Centers. Fallout 3 Nexus FTC is fine, but most of my tracked files on the FNV Nexus are missing, and all of the ones on the Oblivion Nexus are gone.

 

Here is hoping no other issues crop up for the team to handle, large or small.