There’s lots of elements concerned. Our server binaries can solely run for thus lengthy whereas remaining secure, that means we should run upkeep on them if solely to restart them in order that they’ll liberate any held system assets and clear any unhealthy states the server could have gotten into throughout play. We normally 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 will maintain our servers operating, normally within the weeks to months vary. Sometimes we wish to run upkeep as little as doable so gamers can play as a lot as they need.
That mentioned, we have now additionally developed intelligent methods of hiding server upkeep in order that gamers do not discover it. For instance, we will 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 previous 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 all the way down to log off. As soon as there’s no one left, we will safely take the server down, apply no matter updates we want, after which carry it again up once more and permit visitors onto it as soon as extra. We will do that in a giant cycle, with the gamers seeing solely that they wanted to log again in sooner or later and no precise downtime.
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