I covered this on a post in Second Life Answers, but Announcements would have been a better place to mention the GOOD that has come out of the partial region restarts. The short version is that all of our slower "class 2" machines have been retired, and all regions that were running on those systems have been moved to fast "class 4" machines. My post from Second Life Answers is below:
-----
We've had two basic kinds of region restarts over the past few weeks. The rolling restarts, usually handled by Karen, affect all regions and are related to software updates. These happen when necessary to install new software on the sims. The partial region restarts, which are the ones I've posted about in the forums, have occurred in blocks and have been necessary to accommodate hardware upgrades. We're going to have one more small round of these, probably next week. If you care about the technical reasons for the partial region restarts, keep reading. If you just want to know when the next region restart will occur, check back in the forums early next week.
Onto the (slightly) more technical explanation. The grid that powers Second Life is comprised of well over 1000 machines. These machines are divided into classes, where the oldest machines are "class 2" and the newest machines are "class 4". Class 2 machines consume more power and generate much more heat than the class 4 machines. Cooling the bank of class 2 machines has been a ongoing challenge. Sims running on class 2 machines also tend to be slower than their class 4 counterparts. This week, we have completed moving all class 2 regions onto class 4 machines. The move both helps the power/heat issue and provides residents with better sim performance.
While we're retiring the class 2 machines, we're also consolidating some of our hosting footprint. As Second Life has grown, the grid machines have grown out of their original home. To minimize the number of region restarts (and inconvenience to the residents), we're moving machines within the hosting facility into two (instead of four) areas while we also phase out the old hardware. This gives us space to expand as the world continues to grow.
Sorry for the inconvenience caused by these partial region restarts. We've worked to try to minimize the impact, and the end result is a better-performing grid.
-----
There will be one more set of partial region restarts as we finish moving machines, but I don't know exactly when just yet. I'll post with times as soon as that information is available.
~~b