Asherons Call: Upcoming Hardware Upgrades

[big]Hardware Upgrades[/big]
posted on 02-Aug-2004
As many of you are already aware, on the morning of Monday July 25th one of our server clusters suffered a major hardware failure. This server cluster maintained the databases for the worlds of Frostfell, Leafcull, Solclaim and Thistledown. Over the course of Monday and Tuesday our Operations personnel worked to resolve the issue.

The final resolution to the hardware failure was to bring the old server cluster down permanently and move all worlds to alternate hardware. We restored all four worlds from the backup taken on the morning of Sunday July 24th and brought them back online.

Some of you may be wondering why this occurred. Didn't we just migrate to new hardware back in April? The answer is that only four worlds were moved to new hardware - Darktide, Morningthaw, Harvestgain and Wintersebb. We had known for some time that the server hardware maintaining the databases for those four worlds needed to be replaced; the hardware failure that occurred in April simply required us to accelerate our schedule. However our second cluster - the one that failed on Monday - had not given us any signs of needing to be replaced.

Once the worlds were up and running, we were able to take a step back and look at the long-term consequences of the incident. While the alternate hardware is capable of running the four worlds, the performance and reliability of the cluster isn't where we want it to be.

After much discussion between the team and our IT folks, we've decided to place an order for brand-new hardware. This will help ensure the long-term health and stability of these four worlds. We've also asked that the purchase and installation of this hardware be expedited.

Currently we expect to have the hardware installed and ready by the end of August. At that point we can begin migrating the worlds to the new hardware, just as we did for four worlds in April. Each world will need to come down for at least several hours to complete this task. We'll be sure to give you advance notice of a week or more prior to migrating any individual world.

To summarize, the silver lining of the recent hardware failure and rollback is that all four worlds affected will be running on brand-new database hardware by early September. This is part of our commitment to the long-term health and stability of Asheron's Call.

We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue to make upgrades and improvements.

Alex Beckers
Turbine Entertainment Software
Asheron's Call Online Community Relations