Sim Owners Take Note-- Your Sims Are Sharing Servers

Wayfinder,

Which sim exactly are you concerned about?

Is it always lagging? If I go there now, will I be lagged? How will I be lagged?

What client FPS do you consider lag?

Or is it sim FPS? Time dilation? Sim Physics?

Let us know, maybe we can visit your sim and offer some free analysis.

I'd also like to reiterate that I am on a quad cpu SIM and it's the fastest sim I have ever been on.

So again we come to an empasse:

1) You say something is wrong, and demand that the lindens fix it immediately, without providing any real data. (before you say, again, that you DID provide data, I don't see it, don't see where it's posted, and therefore can only conclude it does not exist)

2) Other people you label as "experts" with quotes state time and again that the problem is on your end.

3) You reject their reality and substitute your own.



If you can't help them pinpoint the nebulous problem you're experiencing, and instead demand, ad nauseum, that they fix "it", whatever "it" is, then they can't help you much.

This entire thread you continue to imply that there is "something" wrong. Well, you gotta be more concrete than that. If a customer comes up to me and says "this thingie is broken, fix it", and then offers no other information, I state that I can't help them until they help me out.



Are they? under what contract did they sign that compells them to do such a thing for your benefit, or for anyone's benefit at that?



Asking how many hard drives are on the server is irrelevent; the servers DONT ACCESS THE HARD DRIVES IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES. It's analogous to asking how many blinky lights are on the case.



Fair enough, feel free to tier down and never spend another dime in SL, really. you seem obscenely unhappy with their customer service and public attempts to help you. you are the customer, you are not compelled to pay the tier fees.

I would be less critical of this mess if I could see some data of these problems everyone allgedly keeps experiencing. But, they are never forthcoming. And my own personal experiences on private sims seems to imply otherwise that the problem is indeed on the user's end, rather than on the linden's end.

Most folks reading this thread seem to agree.

Post data, help us understand you. Or, tier down, or whatever.

LF

Flipper, one of the themes of this thread-- a theme that has been repeatedly pointed out by several users-- is that of proper customer support.

You are suggesting that proper customer support at this point would be to place a client that purchased 3 sims in the last 6 months on technology that is more than 2 years old and considered substandard by this year's models.

When people purchase a sim, they are told that they will be placed on the best equipment available on the market at the time. The best equipment available on the market at the time of our sim purchases was at the very least a 4ghz single processor-- or alternately-- a fairly inexpensive dual-core processor, which in my experience would have just rocked in a single-sim server environment.

As far as requiring a client to sign a document promising to never again complain about lag-- are you seriously presenting this as a professional solution to a business problem? Are we to believe then that shared servers are the only cause of lag on the grid, that there are no server software or other programming bottlenecks which result in unacceptable performance? (If so, then why the need for 1.7?)

Are you earnestly suggesting that clients legally agree to never voice concerns/complaints when they continue to experience performance issues? Is this how you would run a customer service department in a service-oriented company-- by restricting customer feedback?

Is it any wonder that we discard such reponses to client concerns.

If you do not wish suggestions to "fall on deaf ears"... then those suggestions should be made with positive customer satisfaction in mind rather than actions that would without doubt be viewed by many users as unfriendly on the part of the server company. The idea is to solve problems-- not further complicate matters.

I think given the low price of the hardware, software, and bandwidth as well as the ability to resell the islands, as well as the leading edge nature of this software, comes with the implicit arrangement that we need to be somewhat capable, technically speaking.

If you're not capable of figuring out some of these problems yourself, perhaps you have purchased the wrong product

There are plenty of opportunities to visit other islands and get a sense of the lag and performance you can expect.


Anyways, I am doubtful you're suffering from a shared hardware problem.

What you could be suffering from, though, is a network problem. I have seen situations where servers in a network are improperly configured and end up with network bottlenecks to other servers on the same network.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that

a) we can't debug ourselves
b) is not solved globally, but has to be solved (and tested) everytime a new set of servers are put in.


Basically, with 1000+ servers, SL needs to have quite a few switches and routers set up. Each of these switches and routers need to be patched and configured correctly. The odds of this happening aren't that fantastic.

Also, you could be suffering from a bad hardware / configuration problem on your particular server.

These are the issues I'd be targetting myself .. complaining about global architectural issues is probably not very fruitful because I'm sure the folks at LL have got a handle on those.

But.. again. Which sim exactly are you having a problem with?

Blaze, no disrespect, but you're getting in on the tail end of a 12+ page in-depth forum conversation and rehashing things that have already been presented. You have twice now asked what sims are involved. If you don't know that, you have not read prior information sufficiently and do not have the basis to impugn our motives or expertise in these matters. We do not have the time, desire, need or intent to rehash issues that have already been discussed to exhaustion.

So basicly you are saying that no matter what LL does at this point, you will only accept the answer of it is our problem? Why should LL show you anything if you are just going to ignore it anyway?

When I bought Faded Reality island and then reality faded island I was given the impression that they were on their own servers. After multiple problems that never seemed to be answered or fixed amongst other reasons I finally just gave up in frustration and sold them off. Learning that these expensive parcels are not on their own servers finalized my decision to never buy an island sim again. IMO its best to be on the mainland.

Mar

Dnate, do you ever pause to try to answer your own questions before you ask them?

I'm answering this post Dnate (though God knows why) then that's it. No more. (I hope I didn't say that before. Then I'd feel goofy. Nevertheless...)

Linden Lab has had significant time (since last April and in the case of other clients-- before then) to answer our questions. They have REFUSED to answer simple, rational questions on this forum... questions not only from me, but other clients as well. They have sidestepped inquiries and demands and given customers valid reason to distrust further statements. Once distrust is established, further statements and even presented "data" becomes invalid and unacceptable-- because we have no way of knowing whether that evidence is based on actual fact and accomplishment. Trust has been broken.

Once things reach that stage, from that point on, more than just data is required, because at that point even the data becomes suspicious. The time for LL to expect reasonable trust and an air of co-operation was months ago when we first brought our concerns to them-- not now that we've had to come to the forums and basically blow the lid off company practices. Even then, LL had opportunity to respond with direct, candid, factual answers. They did not. The time for such is past. At this point, more is required to satisfy customer inquiries. The only two things I can think of at this time that will prove satisfactory is either a) elimination of concerns (ie, the lag and bugs goes away, period-- highly unlikely) or b) Impartial validation of experiments either by mutually approved third-party sources, or by jointly-conducted experimentation-- neither of which is indicated to come about.

So at that point, we stop talking and listening. We have reached an impasse. The only response at that point is to either conduct an official (ie legal) inquiry... or wait for Town Hall and watch future Linden Lab resolution to the matter. I think Dnate, you should be able to predict our preferred course of action. No one would benefit from a legal battle. So we're going to wait, see what LL does, and hopefully, stop fielding any more of this stuff on forums with whoever else decides to post yet additional unresearched personal opinions here.

As I said before, not going to waste more time on such posts. (OH NO! I'm wasting time on THIS post! Be sure to point that out!!!! This thread isn't nearly long enough already.)

Actually this is incorrect. The P4 2.8 gHz machines were purchased a bit over a year ago, not 2 years ago. I joined almost exactly two years ago when all machines on the grid were 2.26 gHz machines, and they remained that way for quite some time.



This is also incorrect. Linden Lab stated they will be placed on the best equipment option on the market at the time FOR A CERTAIN COST. The current best option for that cost was putting two sims on a dual-CPU Opteron server, and is now four sims on a quad-CPU server configuration. Under your analysis, perhaps we should all be given Sun Fire E25K servers. They're the best equipment available, not what you name, and only run in the $1-$3 million range. Yes, a ridiculous example, but one that underlines my point.



No, that suggestion was made somewhat in jest, but considering you haven't attempted to try the experiment I suggested earlier - to find out if the problem was with the content in your sim, or the server itself - the point is moot. As for LL's customer service level, Lee has tried, at great length, to satisfy you. I don't think that is possible if you're not willing to help LL help you find the problem. My bet is still on a badly written script.

Good luck. Regards,

-Flip

For the record, just about ALL sims are now sharing servers, not just the islands. In my two years in SL, I've seen the best performance from the sims that share servers, as they each have their own CPU; the single sim servers were much worse performance wise.

If you do some hunting, you'll find a town hall where Cory Linden talks about an analysis done by Chromal Brodsky between the original 2.26 gHz machines, the next wave of 2.8 gHz hyperthreaded machines, and the (then new) dual-CPU, 2 sim Opteron servers. The Opterons won hands down.

Regards,

-Flip

I don't know why I keep it up, I should have stopped pages ago too... but I cannot stop.

Yeah, I knew the answer to my question, it was meant to be a more retorical question then one I expected you to answer, after all you said you were stopping

I still find it funny that anyone the disagrees with you has nothing but "unresearched personal opinions." All of the other sim owners that disagree with you their statements are opinions, but if they agree with you, it is fact. I have not seen any data from anyone, including you (no matter what you say, I know it is just not me that doesn't see the data you claim to have posted), so why is it some I am just suppost to take as fact, and other I am just suppost to brush off? How can I tell which is which? It seems to me that some of the other sim owners that have been around longer then you seem to see no issue with the newer hardware like you claim there is? Would they not see it more then you because they have had more time to see issues on the sims? Lee has stated, "What more do you want?" and you just ignore him.

I find it funny that "I'm not sure I'd believe data if it was presented to me with a notary public stamp" but a town hall can make you happy. Also, all this talk about legal battles is just hogwash anyway. You admit not having the data anymore. Hate to say it, but your word holds no meaning in a court of law.

.

Went to elfenglen.

Simulator object usage: 13501 out of 15000

That's just wack man. You want good performance, cut your object usage by a lot.



Anyhow: Physics FPS: 42.3

What physics objects are you running?

Bagofants, we know this information *appears* to be a statement from Linden Lab that sims each have a dedicated server. However, this information is invalid, because:

1) It's your imagination
2) Linden Lab simply never made such claims
3) You're just a rabble-rouser
4) It doesn't make any difference, because the new dual-processor servers run oh, so much faster (we say so!) and no... there are no bottlenecks in shared resources.

Our servers are running perfectly and without any problems, so any experience of difficulty must be caused by your content-- which really needs to be handled on your end. After all, you're paying the bills.

So please avoid confusing the issue with current, relevant facts. Nevertheless, thank you for you sim setup fees, which did help to improve LL bank accounts.

No kidding. Don't you think that sort of makes the problem rather obvious?

Your scripts are probably fine. I presume you don't use too many listeners / timers / etc.

The problem is that you're just too high prim.

And besides, this dedicated server stuff is completely nonsense.

Are you saying if I put you on my Commodore 64 you'd be all happy?

Obviously not.

Your complaint shouldn't be dedicated versus non, your complaint should be cheap crappy hardware versus advanced high performance hardware.

Going dedicated isn't going to help - going high performance (shared or not) could.

Thanks for your analysis of ElvenGlen.

Regarding your suggestion that we're using to many prims, let me make a counter-suggestion:
Go out in your car and remove a piston. Those extra pistons are using up too much gasoline, which of course is why your fuel prices are so high at the pumps right now. It's your fault for using all 6 pistons. Same with the fuses in your home: please go remove a few. They're causing the Electric Company's power grid to run low.

If using 13,501 prims out of an available 15,000 is too much and we need to cut object usage "by a lot"... please help us to take this step by answering these questions for us:

Who should we tell to remove their home and leave the sim?
Which merchants should we shut down?
Which half of our gardens would you recommend eliminating?
Should we knock out the bottom half or top half of the castle?
Perhaps if we eliminated one half the sim it would run better? Whaddya think?

What do you suggest we need to get prims down to? We're told a sim can support 15000 objects. You believe this is false? So what should we cut down to... maybe 12000? 9000? 2000?

What happens when we do so and still experience performance problems? What will you folks next choose to focus on as clients causing the problem rather than server/software issues?

Also, if we only use say, 60% of the allowance of prims on the sim so that SL servers can run better... will Linden Lab pro-rate our bill for us and credit us for the unused prims?

Maybe we should just cut out ALL physics objects so that the sim runs faster-- totally stagnant yes-- but faster.

"An empty sim is an efficient sim."

I can see that logic. Makes total sense.


(edited by me right after posting to remove excessively trite remarks caused by growing impatience with groundless posts. LOL)

I have an idea though, because you know, you do have me somewhat intrigued.

How about we find some sims that share the same server and then completely wreck one of the sims and measure performance in the other.

We could write an object rezzor that rezzes, say, 15000 temporary on rez prims (kind of like you might find in a major gunfight) in one sim

and then have someone do an operation in the other sim. They could do it over and over again and measure the difference in time and performance of that operation.

Blaze's analysis is pretty much spot on, if you are seeing a physics fps below 45, then you have a content issue you need to fix, it's not a shared server issue, but rather the content within your sims. Permenent physics where you have collisions involved is very likely to cause something like this.

Additionally, while you can use up to 15,000 prims. It's best to use only around 10,000 or so; depending on the complexity of the prims (whether they are scripted, have physics, etc), right now, I'd be betting that you do have a content problem, rather than anything else -- any Linden with access to the profiler will be able to tell you what objects are causing lag. (It quite possibly could be one or two very laggy objects; I've seen it happen before, and I suspect I'll see it again).

-Adam

SHHHHH BLAZE! Hush! You don't want to mess up LL's statements that our scripts are one of the primary causes of our problems! This uncommon exercise of logic and insight just really messes things up. Come on guy, if you're going to tow the company line... ya gotta do it all the way!

Yes, that's me, mr toe the company line.

4500 posts and I still have no reputation. sigh.

anyways, i still think it would be a cool experiment to load-test a shared sim and see what impact it has on its neighbour.

Adam, I appreciate the respectful and thoughtful response. Thanks. Such is becoming increasingly rare these days. So I'll answer with what I hope is equal respect.


LAGGY OBJECTS/SCRIPTS
If the only problem was "two very laggy objects"... people would never experience system-wide slowdown-- and the fact is, people do. Regularly. Sim-wise... if an entire sim can be slowed down by such objects, then as I've stated before... Linden Lab does not have proper safeguards in place. Now we're told that 1.7 is supposed to fix these problems. GREAT! But it's not fixing content... it's fixing server side issues-- which up to this time have obviously not handled content correctly.

Under no circumstance should I, as a sim owner, have to face sim-wide lag because some newbie unknowingly opens an ama-omega particle nuke. Under no circumstance should my sim lag because 15 avatars come visiting, all wearing badly programmed AO devices. And if safeguards are not in place-- those are server side issues and are not the fault of the client for having "too much content". The system should detect bad asset usage and shut it down-- or at the least relegate them to a limited timeslot (which I've heard is what they're doing in 1.7... so there you are. But why correct server issues if there were none? It's all smokescreen folks).

These are basic computer concepts for server systems. I frankly find it astounding that some of these users here aren't aware of this kindergarten stuff... and especially astounding that LL hasn't incorporated these principles before now. But even given that, I find it astounding that when clients point this out, LL performs a complete act of denial rather than taking the professional course of admitting and fixing the problem.

How do I know these things? Well, for one, that's my field. Unlike some "experts" here... I've got years of experience debugging system problems and that tends to give a person a "feel" for what's likely to be wrong with a system based on observable performance. But another, more common sense fact requires no education or experience at all: our sim runs pretty well... content and all... when something isn't going haywire server side. If it were content... it would never work. And if random content brought into the sim without our knowledge affects OUR sim's performance... then Linden Lab needs to take steps SERVER SIDE to fix that problem, because that is what we're paying them the big bucks to do. I repeat... we're paying them... not the other way around (some $10,000 this year, at last count).


RESPONSIBLITY/FEES
We're not responsible for performing system tests and maintenance for Linden Lab (nor to be frank, are we responsible for providing them data-- although we surely have done so). It works the other way. When we have sim problems, they owe us data. And they flat well owe us more than generalized claims and ignoring the issues we bring to their attention.

Think about it: 1,000 sims. Minimum $195.oo/mo/sim. Total monthly income: $195,000... annually $2.34 million (Actually more, because smaller plots of land cost quite a bit more than full sims and smaller plots cover about 1/2 of SL from what I can tell). Now call me silly, but I think those fees warrant better performance and customer service. And if that requires going the far step and replacing every server in the building every 2 years to meet performance issues (I know many companies that do exactly that)... and if that requires providing each client the latest technology so that their sims continue to run efficiently... then that's the cost of doing business in this field.


NUMBER OF PRIMS/OBJECTS
Yes, I agree with you that the more objects on the sim... the lower overall performance. It's pretty much a given that a sim with 13,501 prims is going to be more "laggy" than a sim with 2000 prims. No denying that.

However, is 13,501 too much? Obviously that's not the case, because if it were our sim would NEVER perform well... and the fact is that it often does. Logical deduction concludes that the number of objects on our sim is not the primary factor in unacceptable sim lag... because that number of objects is always there.

PHYSICS/DATA HANDLING
As far as physics... yes I agree that if there are too many physics objects in a land, they'll cause problems. However, physics changes from time to time. System performance issues on our sim have been happening ever since April 26/27 of this year-- and that is when they noticeably and perceptively started. If I were in charge of a company, the moment a client reported that I would get down to finding out what was it that just changed server side and either locate the problem-- or eliminate that as a possibility. That was not done in our case and we have experienced performance issues ever since, despite going over our sim with a fine-tooth comb (and I mean we went over it every square meter-- several times).

Adam, for years I worked as a systems analyst. I'm not making these claims off the top of my head or due to lack of expertise as some (descriptions withheld) people here have indicated. I recognize server-side issues when I see them. There are even other areas of evidence that I'd bring up in this forum-- but this is not a forum on lag issues.

Yes Adam, CONTENT DOES AFFECT SIM PERFORMANCE. I know that. I've stated it here several times. I've also stated that his NOT what is causing the random, erratic, performance problems we're experiencing on our sims and in fact (contrary to LL claims) all over Second Life. I will point out that these performance issues have been experienced by other sim owners as well... INCLUDING THOSE WITH FAR LESS CONTENT on their sims than we have. It seems that LL is finally dealing with some of those issues in v1.7-- but if that's the case people, stop denying that the issues exist. Stop blaming client content.

In every forum I've seen pointing out apparent server-side problems, self-appointed experts claim "well, there must be something wrong with your content, because NO WAY it's SERVER issues!".

Only response I have to that is... sigh. There's no convincing those who refuse to be convinced. Pity the employer who hires such "experts". (and I exclude you in this observation Adam. Again, thanks for the decent post and best wishes to you).

Ever consider that 4500 posts might be just a tad excessive?

But in truth, yeah, I totally agree with you. In fact, I made exactly that same suggestion a few pages back when I presented three standard logic-based tests to easily determine the facts of server performance. Your suggestion above is right on the button. And myself, if I had been Linden Lab, that's the first step I would have offered when sim lag issues were first presented months ago (and even before that by other users)... a multiple observer, stress load test. Failing to take such a simple action merely served to increase user suspicion and broaden the gap of failing customer communications and relations.

But then like I mentioned... at this point in the game, after all the denials and obvious smoke-screens, I wouldn't trust there to not be someone sitting server-side with a finger on the "skew data" button. I mean, call me paranoid, but I think evidence of side-step and changing statements has been pretty much established at this point. Once provider-client trust is broken, that can be pretty hard to re-establish. And if anyone thinks that is not the case, then I recommend you read back a few pages and find where LL claims and statements do not agree with posted facts-- 'We never said that sims were put on dedicated servers'. Yes, this was said, which is what has been addressed this entire post.

well it's not like they need to know when and where we're doing the load test.

And truth is, I suspect they'd be as interested in the results of such a test as much as we are.

Perhaps they've already done anumber of such tests themselves.