Windstalker: Nagafen Database Migration Stable, Freeport Server Next!
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter (at 3:45am PDT I might add!):
Nagafen is looking stable, so Freeport server is up next with extended downtime Tuesday from 2am to 2pm PDT. #eq2
— Holly Longdale (@TheWindstalker) March 21, 2015
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Comments (23)
Sunje
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Whats exactly the reason why they have migrated the database?
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Caam
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They were using a database from Oracle to store the game data and paying a licensing fee to use the software. These licensing fees are generally several thousand dollars or more per year, per computer running the database, depending on the size of the computer hosting the database. The replacement database is “open source” (free).
It’s possible that they may end up saving $50 to $100k per year with this update. It’s all about saving money.
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GriffonLady
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Wish they’d done that years ago and kept some of the devs/artists they laid off. /..\
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Feldon
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Think $500k.
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milliebii
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Yep, by the time you add in all the other on costs including training and tools he definitely left of a zero. $500k to $1 million per year.
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Eric T Lewis
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sunje, they are running oracle, it is costly. They are migrating to enterprise database its a cost saving kind of thing. Should save them thousands if not 10 of thousands.
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Noctew
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Probably hundreds of thousands – not immediately but over time. Take a pretty standard 2 CPU Octacore server and you are looking at at least a one time fee of 150.000 USD for the license (and that’s already with very good discounts) plus about 40.000 USD per year for support and upgrades. And I doubt they only have one database server.
The one-time fee is a sunk cost, but look at what they can save in support fees alone…for the kind of data processing EQ2 does, EDB is probably good enough (though I’d recommend Oracle any time for “the real stuff”).
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Adenium
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Oracle is fine to store the addresses of your friends. For real data use DB2.
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Feldon
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I loled.
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Sub
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Me too 😀
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Alphonsus
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I’m glad the migration went well and there were no issues for the 8 people that play on Nagafen…
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One of the 8 guys
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-_-
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GriffonLady
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/gigglesnort >.>
That’s not very nice!
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Charn
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Well, I’d rather they tested it on the 8 people there than 800, or 8000 on other servers. Thank you Nagafen guinea pi . . . errr, players! You’re making the game better for all.
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Dulcenia
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So, all we have so far is a tweet from Holly? Which did not even get retweeted to show up on the forum sidebar.
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Striinger
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I think they are also breaking out the character blob in the restructure. If you’re toon is like a book that must be read every time you zone (and written each time you achieve something), they are making each”chapter” into a different book. That way they only load or write what they need. The result is faster zoning, higher zone capacity and less likely crashes related to zoning.
We buy Oracle enterprise licences at work and they can create unlimited instances and databases, but they pay by the number of users that will access the data. It costs several million dollars per year. DGC may not have worn the whole cost add SOE, but they’d have to negotiate their own terms with Oracle. Instead of jacking with that legal process it was a great time for them to change to a new database.
Some of the licensing ideas above are how MS used to do it, so maybe Oracle has similar models. Either way, they can afford to buy db licences or the people to run it, but not both.
I expect things to get a little bumpy as everything is transitioned from SOE to DGC, but it should all have notable benefits once it’s done.
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Terrius
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Is anyone else slightly nervous that they experimented on Nagafen first (least populated server) and now they are doing Freeport (second highest population)? *crosses fingers that everything goes as planned*
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unclex
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they should just take them all down do the conversion at the same time imho
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Bashem
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I might have missed this is there a list of servers that have been done and not done to see the progress on the database updates for all servers that will be updated? I am assuming all the severs will get an eventual update.
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Feldon
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Nagafen – done
Freeport – tomorrow
All other EQ2 servers – tbd
Every server they migrate saves Daybreak money, so count on all of them.
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Tarb
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@Feldon, I know nothing has been announced but in your opinion do you think there will be an expansion this year with all the changes that have been made?
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Feldon
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Yes.
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Tarb
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I do not think they would be doing this if the game was going to be shut down, this is a good thing 🙂
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