23 thoughts on “Windstalker: Nagafen Database Migration Stable, Freeport Server Next!

    1. 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.

    1. 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”).

    1. 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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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*

  3. 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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