There’s plenty of components concerned. Our server binaries can solely run for therefore lengthy whereas remaining secure, that means we should run upkeep on them if solely to restart them in order that they will release any held system sources and clear any unhealthy states the server could have gotten into throughout play. We often additionally have to push content material updates, service patches, bug fixes, and so forth which require restarting the server binaries after updating. This tends to place a tough higher restrict on how lengthy we are able to preserve our servers operating, often within the weeks to months vary. Sometimes we need to run upkeep as little as potential so gamers can play as a lot as they need.
That mentioned, we’ve got additionally developed intelligent methods of hiding server upkeep in order that gamers do not discover it. For instance, we are able to have “rolling” server upkeep, the place we spin up a brand new server of the precise sort that we’re taking down, then direct all new logins to the brand new server so the outdated server is minimize off from everyone however the gamers presently on it. We then wait a number of hours for all of the gamers on the server that is about to go right down to log off. As soon as there’s no one left, we are able to safely take the server down, apply no matter updates we’d like, after which convey it again up once more and permit site visitors onto it as soon as extra. We are able to do that in an enormous cycle, with the gamers seeing solely that they wanted to log again in in some unspecified time in the future and no precise downtime.
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