News.com article on SL's scalability problems

havent worked on many racks have you? You think you can fit 48 1U computers in a 48U rack? there is much more that needs to fit in there besides just the computers.

anyways, If they really are giving 1 processor core per Sim, its no wonder this 'game' runs so bad, thats extremely low end for the server side.

Idunno, what's so hard about the interface? Maybe I have just been using it for too long.

We have had something sort of like skins for a long time: custom colors. I used to use one called supergreen or ultragreen or something like that, and it was pretty spiffy.

This made me roffle.

What the news.com article was saying is that, at peak usage time for SL (say, in round numbers, 7,500 users online), each sim (on average) is supporting about 3 users. Some have more, some are empty.

The 2,500 (in round numbers) figure is also a bit misleading in that it is the number of CPU cores, not the number of servers. As people have already pointed out, the SL servers currently have either two (class 3) or four (class 4) cores per server.

Besides the CPU per sim, however, there are some other servers in the SL architecture, notably the asset server. This central choke point is probably the main scalability problem that Second Life has, and it will have to be rearchitected if the grid is to grow dramatically (say, by a factor of 10).

That sounds good in theory, but what we'll end up with is many bad interfaces instead of just one. The way to fix this is for LL to hire people who understand interface design and to create something very simple that works for most people, most of the time. Then have the advanced/confusing features available, but not so in-your-face. See much of Apple's software for examples of how this can be done effectively. Then take a look at Lotus Notes for an example on how *not* to do it. lol.

Cheers,
Skip

This is what I've thought. The interface seemed pretty intuitive when I first got here.

i would *LOVE* to have a shell command thingie, and try to get stuff from the inventory...

like OMG!

/home/usr/MaxxMackenzie/inv/pen0rz/ ./xtreme_floppy_pen0rz.object -wear

imagine that! years of development so i can attach an organically correct accesory to my avatar.

awesome.

This is the second most popular story on news.com. That's pretty impressive.

You can also make new icons and change the keys in viewerart.ini to the new keys for the new icons for buttons and stuff.

Is this the same article where Philip poo-poo's people who use a central, asset system? I tried to read that, but couldn't stop laughing. I wish I had his jobber-reality field.

"No, baby. I think guys who say 'baby' are pigs. Let's go to my place, baby."

Tis. I commented on that for you already.

Funny how this thread about an article about SL's scalability has focused on the perceived value of lindens and odd points about the client interface, neither of which have anything to do with the platforms utter lack of scalability to the degree that it would match Google or the Internet must stop typing before the shuddering laughter dislocates my shoulder.

I guess you could call it funny. I mean, I like this scene in Transmetropolitan where a fat guy falls on (and crushes) a puppy, and Spider Jerusalem bellows, "Nobody touch that dog, I'm having it for dinner!" We all laugh at different things.

Personally, I find it distressing that people don't get that "scales like Google" is very different then "the planned messaging system, when put in place, will let us scale the central asset server better" How long did it take to get browsers in a client? How about llHTTPRequest... Gah. llHTTPRequest still doesn't really scale because it bottlenecks through Linden Lab.

They're a far cry from scaling like Google. A far cry.

I don't think the grid approach is scalable. They can make the grid as scalable as they want, but it still won't be economically scalable. Even if they open up the servers, anyone who wants to set up their own 3d worlds will have to pay a rather hefty amount of money for servers that can handle a relativly small amount of users in a rather small space. With the current architecture, computers might be fast enough in 20 years to make large interesting worlds for reasonable amounts of money.

Fixing these problems would completely eliminate the market for land barons and change a lot of other things. I think this makes it unlikely that Linden Lab will even consider the required changes.

Anyway, I think Pandromeda's MojoWorld is worth watching.

This is the best work of literary farce I've read in a long time. Thanks.

Scary, but I have to keep going.

That made my day.

Nothing personal Jarod, but you really have no clue what you're talking about.

That's a bloody lie! That scene was too in Transmetropolitan!

On the contrary, I tend to find that on subjects such as this, very few people have as keen of an understanding of the issues involved as Jarod does. I may not always agree with his opinions, but they are always incredibly well informed and he backs up what he has to say.

There is a news item on that story on Broken Toys: http://www.brokentoys.org/2006/06/07/second-puzzle-pirate-life/

It links to more Puzzle Pirates "I love SL but...": http://thefloggingwillcontinue.com/?p=9

Wendel

Daniel James is a very smart guy. I recommend that blog entry highly. Oh yeah, Terranova also has a few good comments on the article.

You can't scale a "central" asset server. Centralizing means you will always have a bottleneck. Even if they cluster the asset server, and we have 4-in-1 asset servers, we're still all -- all 100,000k++ -- having to hit those four servers. That just doesn't work.

What they've done with the Squids -- and I can't tell you how long this has been in effect -- is a great first step. Having the middle-tier between users/sims and the asset server is a good thing, because once they do finish reworking the back-end, there's a chance that we'll each be able to run an asset server, and the Squids will be smart enough to know whose asset server to hit to get a piece of inventory.

However, as SL's architecture stands now (one asset server to serve them all), it won't scale. It hasn't scaled, not elegantly anyway.

and one server to bring them and in darkness bind them?


seriously, Jarod, can you tell me more about the squids? I missed that and you seem to be the go-to guy on scalability questions, or so I've heard.

As I understand it, Squids act as a kind of cache for sims. It goes something like:

Asset server -> squids -> sim/user

...so that when a user creates something in a sim or when you have something placed in a sim, it rests in the Squid, rather than the sim always having to hit the asset server every time. And this sounds good, this is a nice buffering system, but every Squid still has to hit the same Asset server for new items.

It's a bunch of user/sims talking to a bunch of Squids talking to one asset server. Think of it like a restaurant. Users/sims are like people/tables, Squids are like waiters, and the asset server is the kitchen. You have waiters to act as buffers between the tables and kitchen, they field orders, handle drinks, etc., basically keeping the customers off the cook's back. However, ultimately, there is still only one cook, one kitchen. Now a restaurant can get bigger, and they can add waiters, but at some point one kitchen is not going to be able to support an infinitely large restaurant.

That's why McDonald's has chains. Many customers, many waiters, many kitchens. SL's current model works under the illusion (delusion?) that you wouldn't mind waiting two weeks for your waiter to fly to California, wait in line as your waiter filed through the original McD's kitchen which cooks for every McD's in the world, and then fly back with your hamburger.

So that's why my coffee is too hot!

Thanks, Jarod, that explains quite a bit about why we're seeing the infrastructure problems we're seeing lately. It's very frustrating, and even more so when I don't know exactly what the problem is.

So, next time half of my floor disappears from my house, I'll blame it on McDonald's