Central Hardware Failing?

Just checked and it is still down. Perhaps some people logged in and are on test grids. SL must be a strange place with no one else in it. Hey, refrain from being too nosy with all those empty homes! But, if you are on - can you feed my cat for me and turn off the lights? Thanks! lol.

Well, somebody did it for me during the last upgrade downtime, and I was really impressed. So now that I have the power to be that nice, I'm going to use it.

Please read what I wrote. The disks weren't laying around for backup purposes, but to replace defect disks in the raid array. With "laying around" I mean locked up as spare parts for emergency cases (harddisk gives up on a weekend). Of course there were regular daily backups, weekly backups locked away in a fireproof safe and monthly backups in addition that the boss took home. All that besides a second server, ready for use, just in case something other than a harddisk would fail.

I don't care much how small LL is. With a network of this size and their number of customers relying on their backup solutions, an outage like this because of a simple hardware failure can't be excused.

But you are assuming that it is purely down to the failure of a defective disk on an array that has caused this issue.

We do not know what has caused this and until Linden Labs tell us exactly what happens it will remain speculation.

You are also assuming that they have no backup procedures in place and no backup systems at all when you do not know that is the case. From what you have written about your previous company, i'd say it's a little bit of paranoid overkill on their part in terms of the backups.

Thats not to say that backups arent needed, they most certainly are needed, but there are far more workable, industry recognised practices that would be sufficient for the cause. We do not know what LL's backup procedures are, nor are they under any obligation to disclose them to us.

Does everyone here realize that anything short of a lightning, earthquake, fire, tornados, hurricanes, and flood is a "Hardware failure" this includes a psycho griefer running into the LL data store with a sledge hammer or a large machine and running the servers over. >_<

Software fails, hardware fails, or it's an "act of god(ess)(s)".

Just the opposite, as the size and complexity of the grid grows, the potential for large scale failure will also rise. As someone who works in a related field, and deals with vendors daily, I can assure you, vendors won't always be jumping through hoops for you no matter *how* big you are. If they get SL back up today, I'll consider that a job well done.

*appluads* Thank you! I've been on the vendor side so yeah I know the procedure as well. I think people forget how easy it is to destory something and with specialized equipment it's not a matter of runnign down to Best Buy or Fry's electronics and getting a new part...or even having backups on file.

*cringe*

Please let us know the name of your former company, so none of us will make the horrendous mistake of becoming their customer.

-peekay

Linden Lab has, by far, the worst uptime and performance of any internet-based service on the planet.

Not only the frequency of downtime, but the months and months this has gone on is....is.....words fail me.

I think it must come down to Philip Rosedale.
He may have had some vision five years ago, but somethings terribly wrong.
I believe that he must be incompetent, too deeply entrenched to get out of the way, and too busy/deluded being God Rockstar Linden.

Yes, he may have had vision, but he doesn't have enough vision to know when something totally sucks.
Possibly worse yet, he knows it sucks and doesn't care.

There have been users apologizing *years* now for Linden Lab:
- The Metaverse has never been done before!
- It's so...hard to do! It's a lot of data! They have *gasp* 20,000 users!! At the same time!!!
- They are working on a new engine!
- Those pesky n00bs and griefers and libsecondlife-ers were unanticipated!
- Get a life you big baby, why throw a tantrum because you didn't get what you pay for?
- They don't make any money! It's essentially a charity!!
- (my favorite) Linden Lab is a *research* company! It's in their name!! It's all just an experiment!

So many have invested so much time, money, hopes and dreams here that it's hard to let go.
We're all out on the ocean and the ship is rusty and full of leaks and nobody wants to jump overboard into the icy emptiness.

A few weeks ago, I had reached my 2nd year in 2nd Life.
Looking back over this time, it's depressing at how the product hasn't progressed;
uptime, performance vs. visual quality and improvements to the engine, customer support, the shift to money/money/money/money/money....

It's all been a slow decline downhill.

I'm preparing my lifeboat and I'm looking forward to getting off this thing before it sinks and spending that couple hundred a month someplace else.

--

Ok heather ya i agree in part but where els do we go there is no other game like second life this is the only one so for me im staying right to the end second life is one of the best i played better than WOW and FFXI ya it has its problems but when u think what u can do on second life i mean no other game offers this freedom do they???

I vote all RL "Furries" within driving distance of LL Offices go and walk around w/ protest signs making the most annoying sound pertaining to your specific animal costume.



Even though I just quoted a joke fragment from this post, it brings to mind a more serious point too

Video game companies have griefe... I mean testing departments who try to "break" the game over and over for hours daily...and after years of development, migraines, late nights, hemorrhoids and troubleshooting, the games STILL have bugs! Given the fact that even Live Help is usually so slow to respond...a lot of people that I have talked to in-world agree with me when I say that LL must be severely understaffed (last Linden Town Hall, anybody?) and therefore unequipped to run SL smoothly at this point.

With the amount of resumes LL must be going through every day, trying to find the most capable and experienced professionals, for the lowest price... it's gonna take a while for these "hiccups" to straighten out. That will only happen when LL is equipped to run SL more smoothly.

C-NET, Text-100, IBM, Dell, Pontiac, and other RL companies with SL Islands and property are the #1 priority.

The big RL companies have such a large common interest in keeping SL alive, whether it's here to stay, or just a "prototype" to them (for example IBM trying to use SL as an aid in forming a standard for 3-d Worlds), that I'm sure they'll cut Linden Labs a good amount of slack. By the same token, these companies take priority over us "Private Residents". What this means for the future of Resident run businesses in-world is a whole other post (when did I start writing novels, ok I'll wrap it up)

As far as the lost islands, etc...that's what all the "cleanup" must be about. Any of us who lose a few thousand L$ worth of items will probably just have to count our losses and forget about it. ISLANDS however is a different story! Good luck to the Residents who own them.

Well, I intend to go on the Beta grid and in 'appearance' I'm going to note down, on paper, all my vital statistics on the slider settings. Then at least I won't change shape.

Oh noes! I hope somebody didn't tell Vektor Linden he warnt so pretty again.

Actually I was picturing Pony Linden do a 'naughty' or "no-no" with the servers.

My old IT teacher for data networks told me how once his boss at this one company kept the backups in the trunk of his car. Handed to him when the boss retired.

He declined to name the company.

But we will come back won't we? Because we want to be part of this "research" or "experiment". We are creating art and forums and many forms of communication. Yes, we pay money for all of this but it gives back to us. I cringe when it all goes off-line and sour because people expect what they pay for and it is a horrible surprise to find the "world" has switched itself off. But all this is very new and very avant-garde. For what I have learned about myself and about others, being off-line a few hours is acceptable. But please, someone, please put my cat outside and keep your paws off my art collection, lol!

Islands should not be lost and/or will be easily recovered due to being bought and recorded by billing if nothing else. Physical island disappearance should not happen unless two things happen.

1) the phsyical machine is gone . If they are saying 5 hours...I doubt this is the case..it be more like 5 days cause a car crashed into the center, etc

2) The main "center" sim is having issues. This was covered back during a grid crash. The crash was a full crash as the server for the "center" sim went down and that knocked all other sims outta alignment. It is possible if there was a fault on this system the sim might be placed out of seeable range. (speculation)

Main grid is back up.

About time.

So that's what offline means.

Not sure why it still says Offline, only thing I know for sure is that it's back up for me and other people.

Yeah people are swarming in

One further point that I think is worth mentioning. SL staffers should be keeping us informed about what is going on. The updates are few and far between and this needs to be addressed. I have got "another life" but I do think that second life needs to be more on the ball about letting us know what is happening. We may be passengers on a sinking ship but I want to know the way to the life boats.

*moves*