Load testing?

As a newbie around these parts I was really enjoying learning building, texturing, animating and scripting... until the update was deployed.

I was getting excited about the day (which I'd thought was coming soon) when I'd start the search for a place to rent space for a vendor for my goods, and eventually rent space for a store and maybe even buy land someday.

But this update experience has got me questioning whether to bother committing time, energy, hope, and eventually money, to SL. It's got me reconsidering writing a proposal for an in world presence for the RL company I work for.

Here's 3 questions, the answer to which will help me decide whether I'm going to ride out the current storm and stick around, or put my AV out of his misery and wait until the next big thing comes along:

Was any load testing* done on this update before it was deployed?

If not, are there now plans in place to load test all patches and updates before deploying them in the future?

Is a rollback to pre-update being even remotely considered?

Thanks in advance for any answers and thanks for your hard work during this trying time.

Peace,
~Talthybius Brevity

*Where load testing = simulating 13,000ish concurrent logins on staging/testing servers

Now I see why you asked your other question, Talthybius!

You may wish to dig deep into the forum search archives. Why?

Well, a long time back, we did a thing called a Log-A-Thon 5000 on the Preview grid. Only 3500 Residents showed up! We did some more but they really didn't give us the load we were looking for.

We find ourselves now in the unique position of testing real-world load of a virtual world. Some things just can't be simulated, and frankly, a lot of Resis don't wanna be bothered coming to Beta Test Grid — they tell me, "Someone ELSE can do the testing!"

We all make our choices, right?

We extensively test a lot of things... one time, there was this horrible occlusion culling bug that caused bad crashiness, and Brent Linden nailed it. That's one of numerous examples which never made it out on the Live Production Grid. But as I've said, time and time again here, what *does* make it out gets complained about, and that's the way it is.

Just like how I answer 99 emails, or Linden Answers, and the 100th always calls me out on it, "Why didn't you answer mine?"

I can't get 'em all, but getting most is better than one.

We can't rollback the grid to a previous version (consider all the new features which aren't backwards-compatible, and how that's like horrificially running over a beloved pet with your car not once, but twice!) Also a popular question. What we did do, as you may have read on the Official Linden Blog, is we did revert to an older version of database code... it didn't help.

And oh! For anyone who's curious about our update process, be sure to read Phoenix Linden's Anatomy of a Preview and Kelly Linden's Anatomy of an Update. They're available here:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/02/anatomy-of-a-second-life-update/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/02/09/anatomy-of-a-preview/

Be well and have a wonderful day, I hope things'll get smoother.