Second Life Islands

Second Life Islands Are Extremely Expensive know I just checked and they were about 1,500 U.S $$ Why are they so expensive It doesnt make much sense to me and if it is obvious can you tell me why. All there going to do is go up n up to the point where only certain people can afford them

Server space costs money. A server can only handle a few SL sims, and the setup of each sim requires a programmer to configure the server appropriately.

If you check out the web hosting cost of enterprise level web sites, for instance, you'll see hosting fees of anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand $/mo.

Every time a new island is purchased, LL has to basically buy a new CPU core to run it on - basically, the expensive bits of a new computer. Plus the extra land will create more load on their network and other parts of their system, so they might need to add hardware to those too.

Can't they automate it? I mean, if there will be millions or tens of millions island owners in the future, some automatic process would be profitable to develop.

One island is on a one CPU. One server has maybe 4 CPU, and one server stack has maybe 10 servers. Then one server room has maybe 20 server stacks. That is 4 * 10 * 20 CPU per room = 800 CPUs a room. That would make 800CPUs * US$(295 + 150)/2 = US$178,000 a month + the island land purchase cost 800CPUs * US$(1,675 + 980)/2 = US$1,062,000.

That server room is not a luxury house in Miami Beach, but just a warehouse somewhere in a suburban area, maybe multifloor building, where a warehouse rent would be cheap. So the rent would not be more than maybe worth few islands like US$300 to US$1000 / month + electricity and some engineer and cleaning staff salary. And you do not need high expensive professional doctor or a rocket scientist to install few servers into a stack, if you have instructions written on paper. So I think there is some gap between profits and the possible future optimized costs.

It could not be too difficult to program some code that initializes the island. There cannot be needed one whole man for a whole day banging on things and fixing some configuration typos the next day. It should be like a interactive form, where you (the island owner) feed the parameters, and then 5 minutes, and you would have the island automatically on a preinstalled server. The program could randomize some network address from some network space and so on.

This 5 minutes start up time would be much better than a week, which would then attract more people buying an island, because they would get their hands on it right away - and because the cost optimization had made the island price lower.

So only 6 of these rooms to host SL, not including all the non-region servers they have running? Not too bad...

When the island cost increase was announced back in October, LL pretty much openly admitted it had to do with market demand and them realizing that corporate customers would pay a lot more than the old cost of $1250 set up and $195 a month tier.

Exactly. It IS costly for them to set up a new island, but the current prices do not reflect the cost, but what people/companies are currently willing to pay. Mainland tier will be next.

There's only one problem with this, they would have to have spare CPUs lying around waiting for someone to buy them. It today's world of Just-in-time inventories and narrow profit margins, it doesn't make sense to buy millions of dollars of computer equipment and have it sitting idle, waiting for a purchase that may or may not ever come. LL's current system is more sensible from a business standpoint, someone places an order, they then purchase the hardware, assuming no hardware is currently available.

You're joking, right? You can't really BELIEVE that, can you? Not if you know anything about computers.

Server rooms are EXPENSIVE. They must be climate controlled because servers run hot and need constant cooling so they don't go down. They also need a clean, consistent electrical current because power spikes can fry components. Drops in power can also take the server down, which loses data and can take hours to get back online, so every server rack requires top-quality UPS backup and the entire facility requires generators and backup generators.

Then there's that little detail about setting backup mechanisms and schedules, which requires lots of other equipment, which ALSO need cooling and energy and backup power sources.

And then you need highly paid IT guys to monitor all this equipment because despite your assumption, not just any bozo can do this stuff. Every time my company has cheaped out by hiring a warm body IT guy, we've paid for it with massive meltdowns, lost data, and incredibly angry customers.

Yes, normal warehouse would cost maybe US$200 a month per room, but I said US$300 to US$1000 a month per room. And if it is somewhat higher still, then 800CPUs are bringing much more money than that. The server room does not need to be a space laboratory of some kind either. And as some engineers are expensive, they do not cost but maybe US$10,000 a month max, less in Europe. You could have like a couple senior engineers that cost more, and then a group of younger engineers that do what the seniors tell them to do. And the installation of the servers is not that difficult, you can use plain engineers on that.

And you get good discounts on the servers and backup usp, when you buy roomfulls of them. Hardware does not cost much nowadays, those machines do not need to be Deep Blues each.

Then, there is a constant demand for new islands. So instead of following the new server demand one week behind, you could forecast new servers for a week's demand, and preinstall them. Then the servers could get new owners almost right away, when they are put into the grid, because there is a constant flow of new island owners. LL is right now using most new servers for new islands, right?

And if not anything else, then the island configuration and installation could be automated anyway, so there would not be a week's banging on things, which would make the need for a configurator person vanish.

Ok, I drew most the numbers more or less from my hat, but you get the point, right?

Obviously.

Where do you live Kratex? You can't get a decent apartment in a major US city for $1000 a month, much less a server room hosting hundreds of CPUs. According to the latest Economic Statistics page, there are over 3500 islands. Plus asset server, login servers and supporting hardware of which you and I know nothing. SL needs to be located in a major US city, as it requires infrastructure like fat data pipes, reliable power, skilled people, etc.

It would be nice if we could all pull some numbers out of a hat and solve all of SLs problems. But it just too complex an issue for Forum pundits to solve.

Max

Also don't forget that when you add a new island, you don't just create the need for a new sim server for the island. You also create needs for new asset and inventory servers to store the things you're going to be putting on the island, and the things you'll have in inventory while you're building it. And SL as a whole, as you've probably noticed over the past few days, already badly needs new search database and user database servers added to those clusters too. Adding an island can send ripples across the whole system.

Word. As a comparison, our clients usually own one or two dedicated servers in a hosting center for enterprise level web sites. Their hosting costs for TWO servers on a rack is several thousand dollars a month.

There are a limited number of hosting facilities of this magnitude in the DC area, where land is very expensive. But there is no way that a similar hosting facility would find a highly skilled workforce pool in rural areas where land is cheaper. Hell, we can't seem to find ONE medium level IT person and we're only 3 hours away from DC.

Funny how people complain that SL is always crashing, only to have someone blithely suggest that LL should stick several hundred servers in a cheap warehouse and let some low-tech hire read configuration instructions off a xerox sheet. LOL!

I don't know about these things, but I am always impressed when I see the system-room here at company. The tempature and alike are regulated.

All the flashing lights make me feel as Captain Kirk on the bridge of The Enterprise .

Anyway, once the systemadminstrator explained to me what everything is. Very impressive.

He said to me, that the boss may think that his office the heart of the company... but pull this away and all activity in the company drops dead (I know he exaggerated a bit... bit still).

Morwen.

Yes, well think about pulling one cable out of the asset servers and SL will surely be down.

And whoa, is that expensive or what to live in America, if a flat costs US$1000 a month. Well, be it US$20,000 a month for a server room, and I am still right.

And I would think that if you just advertise it, then lots of high tech people would gladly move into less urban areas of America just to enjoy peace and nature. The only problem is there are no jobs in less urban areas, but if you create the jobs, then there will be.

I think the area does not need to be in the middle of New York, I am sure they pull big cables near the big cities too. We live the year 2007, there are cables almost everywhere.

As an educational establishment, we rely totally on our network. Only a few hundred workstations but a creaking plethora of servers, cabling, hubs, boosters, switches and an extremely over-worked and recently 'rationalised' technical team.
If I mentioned Kratax's suggestion of having a roomful of servers 'just on the off-chance' I know very well what kind of reaction I'd get from our System Administrator!

Also super computers are just a cluster of servers, so there are examples in RL.

So if some company has developed in time with different kinds of various systems and is quite complex, then SL is just a lots of similar servers for the islands. Of course they need the asset servers too, but I am sure LL can figure out how to scale it without needing to build the whole system from scratch every 25.000 new concurrent users. That is what scalability is for. They need the scalability in any case, if they are going to grow to be a major system with tens of millions of users.

Kratax, $1000/mo is LOW rent for an urban area. Unless you're willing to live in neighborhoods with a high crime rate or some other major inconvenience.

And there are some powerful disincentives for high tech people to move to rural areas: schools are often substandard and underfunded, medical facilities are limited, doctors are limited, and these areas can often be very conservative and intolerant.

So anyone who is gay, Jewish, Black or liberal is going to think twice before moving their family to such an area. And if you have two working adults in the family, there is no guarantee that your spouse will find a job of equivalent appeal in the area.

You are unfamiliar with American society in general and high tech infrastructure in particular. I applaud your desire to understand the issues that SL faces, but don't keep making assumptions when you're lacking basic facts. It simply increases your puzzlement.

Cool, well, live and learn. I think I am not going to move into America after all, that is if at all. Unless the salaries are sky high too like the rents seem to be. But that price does not change anything I said, because even as higher it is minimal compared to the income. And of course you get smaller apartments at lower price. A server room does not need to be a house for a rich and big family.

Yes, now I understand, USD is cheap compared to Euro. US$1000 = €772.96. But still you do not need to be in the middle of a city. You can, if you want, though.



Maybe, but I still think that there are less expensive areas for business too. Not everybody has to be located into highly expensive skyscrapers. There are also areas where people live in real houses and which are nice, not crime ridden. It is definetely not so that all the criminals live in houses, and all good people live in skyscrapers. And nice houses can have nice industrial zones around them.

Business creates business, so there will be other work too for the spouses.



I know some things about high tech infrastructure and I know some things about societies. And it is fine to try to understand things, because that way you learn. If everybody just stops thinking because they might miss a fact or two, then what kind of a world would that be? I have understood that Americans love trying to do things, even if they miss a lot of facts. That is why they are so successful, because they keep trying.

That is why leasing exists. That much of an up-front cost, especially since the increase, is ridiculous. It obviously should not be a $0 "setup fee" since there is labor involved, but I fail to see why LL doesn't do what the largest hosting companies in the world do and lease hardware.

Yes, you can move to less expensive areas for business but it doesn't mean that the cost of doing business will go down significantly. You need the proper support and infrastructure to work. The less expensive area might has less rent.. but how about the network structure? will the area have enough fiber optics cable for all the network traffic.. if not who going to build it?

It is easy to get connectivity for a few hundred houses since it is unlikely that they will all connect to the net 24/7 unloading and downloading data. But here we are talking about few hundreds of computer constantly connected with huge traffic. Can a small town network/telephone company handle this scale of jobs?

And can you get good support from local network company to support such an operation? Will they have enough people around to service you if something go wrong? Also, how about the hardware vendor, do they have enough service people around to replace parts and service machine? If my Cisco router drop dead, how long will Cisco takes to send someone to service or replace it? will it take 2 days or 2 hours and how much will they charge f I need knowledgeable network engineer come to my LOW COST area to debug my problem.

Are you going to tell me that once my company open a data center there, all the hardware vendors will move to there to serve me and create a lot of jobs?

The remind me my experience in Europe, I went to this conference held in some small town in Europe. My presentation poster was damaged during transit and I need to print a new one. The only print shop in town say it will take one day to reprint it, so I left the file with them and plan to pick it out the next day. The next morning they call my hotel and told me they won't able to print it because they are missing some fonts used in my slides. So I end up travel to the closest major city (1.5 hr each way, 3 hr total) and got it print just in time for my presentation. My point is yes you pay less rent but you are going to pay in some other way.


I guess you don't has a spouse...
I could imagine what my wife reaction is if I tell her to quit her job in the city and relocate with me to some small town and found an accountant job that pay half what she make.

Mebbe she could stay where she is and communicate through SL

Seriously though Kratax, your suggestion of moving entire SL to a low cost area requiring staff, support industries, upgrading fibre comms etc would be building a kind of Lindenville.

This would be a hugely time consuming and expensive job. And how long would SL be shut down whilst this is implimented? How many of us would patiently wait to log in whilst this is happening? How many would divert to some forthcoming competitor, losing SL the lead it has at the moment?

How long before other industries and services move into the area to jump on the bandwagon?
.... and how long before land prices get hiked up due to the development thus turning your Lindenville into another San Jose?

Linden Lab are manically sticking sticky plasters on a hugely evolving phenomena. To keep their expanding userbase interested, it must be the only thing they can do.

Hindsight and hypothesis is good, but who could afford to build something that takes todays capacity 'from scratch' .. just on the off-chance it would be a hit?

Sorry for trolling .... hate trolls!

I think my only real moan over Linden pricing is the lack of billing flexibility on tier levels.

With basic premium membership you get the option to pay monthly, quarterly, or annually. The longer time period does deliver a price discount.

So on tier levels it would also be nice to have the option to pay quarterly or annually, with of course an appropriate discount. I think that could be attractive to some land trades and Island owners who need to be able to plan ahead.

That additional facility might also help Linden Labs day-to-day cash flow if for example they have some Island owners paying annual server or tier levels

Regards

John

I can see your point John but what I think might be a major flaw with that is whereas the choice of being premium or not is fairly solid and someone taking a year's subs has done and that's it for a year, tier and land total can and probably for most is, very flexible.

During the course of that year, the member could buy further plots, decide to rent instead, deed tier to group, in fact join or leave groups.

I think administering that would merely add to LL's list of things to do.
Maybe the maths would make it worthwhile ... I don't do maths these days