In a way, it's too bad they never did go to the distributed server processes design for shards.. in that case Cyan';s end would be a central server that handled auths, the vault, and communicating with the assorted server-shards and providing client synch (as in telling them which servers handled what, seamlessly in a sense). Then Cyan would still host a central "server" for the game, and at the same time their bandwidth and server requirements would drop dramatically.

At the same time, though, that would push onus of hosting onto fans... and while you can get a bunch of people to chip in a few bucks to one spot, you can't get the same numbers to chip in a few bucks to multiple spots. (even if the resulting total donated is the same, you'll get less. It's a psychology thing, everyone assumes 'someone else' will help the other servers) Then the result may well be a bunch of parts shut down at once because no one got enough funding to handle their bandwidth and lower grade servers, and then the whole works comes crashing down without enough people hosting.

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Quote:

the vault

You'd need a distibuted database as well. How does the central server's database keep track of (remember) what's going on on the other servers unless there's something to tell it?

That gives you one shard.

Rusty_Russell wrote:

Quote:

the vault

You'd need a distibuted database as well. How does the central server's database keep track of (remember) what's going on on the other servers unless there's something to tell it?

That gives you one shard.

How did Until Uru work? As far as I know there was one auth server, but was the rest all split up. Why would the auth server need to know what you're doing on other servers? It checked whether you are registered or not, for the rest it doesn't care.

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Auth server / file server / game server. The auth server is a gateway. It governs access: it doesn't know or care about the data. You only need one. You can think of it as an inverted funnel. The file server holds the base client and is read-only. For UU, the auth and file servers remained Cyan's after prologue. This will probably remain true going forwards.

UU was lots of unique shards beyond that, each one with its own database.

Your attention please!
A fellow explorer knowledgeable on the subject and the field has communicated with me his rough estimates of the costs associated with CAVCON. Keep in mind that these are just estimates, based only on guess-work, comparison and experience! They are completely unofficial. However, the explorer told me he got confirmation from someone that these numbers looked likely, and a third-party has also told me that these estimates seem reliable. So I'm posting it out there for analysis by the community. According to these people, it takes into account everything associated with keeping the servers up, including support tickets and so on.

Monthly cost: $900 USD
Monthly donations: $1100-1200 USD
Cost of big update (such as 1.905 but smaller than 1.912): $450-500 USD

So, excluding updates, the monthly gains for CAVCON 4 should be around $200-300 USD per month. An update would dip into the slowly building reserve funds and briefly start a CAVCON 2 state.

If you wish to try to come up with the same figures, here are the details of the math and reasoning behind it:

Quote:

The Amazon AWS stuff you can pretty much read off their website, but you have to take a guess at the server configuration being used: We know it's Windows and I assumed the "Extra Large High Memory On-demand" instance.

In estimating the labour costs, I used the rates my own employer charges as a basis, but assumed that Cyan won't charge "profit", so it would only be salary plus overheads. I then applied that to 1.4 re-starts per month (average) plus some time for answering support tickets, dealing with account issues, etc., to get the monthly running cost.

The fan donations is pure guess-work, though, since there's no gauge as to how much the fans pay. According to him, this is an appropriate number considering the shifting balance between CAVCON 2 and CAVCON 4.

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Lyrositor
Explorer #16601888
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.

Lyrositor wrote:

Your attention please!
A fellow explorer knowledgeable on the subject and the field has communicated with me his rough estimates of the costs associated with CAVCON. Keep in mind that these are just estimates, based only on guess-work, comparison and experience! They are completely unofficial. However, the explorer told me he got confirmation from someone that these numbers looked likely, and a third-party has also told me that these estimates seem reliable. So I'm posting it out there for analysis by the community. According to these people, it takes into account everything associated with keeping the servers up, including support tickets and so on.

Monthly cost: $900 USD
Monthly donations: $1100-1200 USD
Cost of big update (such as 1.905 but smaller than 1.912): $450-500 USD

So, excluding updates, the monthly gains for CAVCON 4 should be around $200-300 USD per month. An update would dip into the slowly building reserve funds and briefly start a CAVCON 2 state.

If you wish to try to come up with the same figures, here are the details of the math and reasoning behind it:

Quote:

The Amazon AWS stuff you can pretty much read off their website, but you have to take a guess at the server configuration being used: We know it's Windows and I assumed the "Extra Large High Memory On-demand" instance.

In estimating the labour costs, I used the rates my own employer charges as a basis, but assumed that Cyan won't charge "profit", so it would only be salary plus overheads. I then applied that to 1.4 re-starts per month (average) plus some time for answering support tickets, dealing with account issues, etc., to get the monthly running cost.

The fan donations is pure guess-work, though, since there's no gauge as to how much the fans pay. According to him, this is an appropriate number considering the shifting balance between CAVCON 2 and CAVCON 4.

Your analysis seems likely (from an IT standpoint) however i think the numbers are drastically low. Server costs will be based on salary costs, bandwidth costs, electrical costs, etc. based on the bandwidth required for the client side, i would assume multiple flexible T3 fiber lines (several thousand/month) electrical costs could be several hundred, etc... When an upgrade occurs, employee costs increase (most likely hourly employees or 1099 contractors in charge of managing it (likely the former), as do bandwidth costs (if using flexible T1 or T3 lines, ISPs charge different rates based on bandwidth used, when an update occurs, more bandwidth is used = higher internet cost).

Based on the frequency and timing of the change from Cavcon 4 to 2 and back, the updates are causing the monthly operational costs to spike above what we are all donating each month, by how much is as good a guess as any.

klaxen wrote:

Your analysis seems likely (from an IT standpoint) however i think the numbers are drastically low. Server costs will be based on salary costs, bandwidth costs, electrical costs, etc. based on the bandwidth required for the client side, i would assume multiple flexible T3 fiber lines (several thousand/month) electrical costs could be several hundred, etc... When an upgrade occurs, employee costs increase (most likely hourly employees or 1099 contractors in charge of managing it (likely the former), as do bandwidth costs (if using flexible T1 or T3 lines, ISPs charge different rates based on bandwidth used, when an update occurs, more bandwidth is used = higher internet cost).

Keep in mind MOUL runs on Amazon EC2. You get charged for uptime of each instance (we can assume at least one is running 24/7, I think) and for each GB of bandwidth (tiered based on total monthly consumption). I would also suspect that any time Cyan contractors or other personnel spends time on MOULa, the staff in question would be paid out of cavcon.

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AdamJohnso wrote:

I would also suspect that any time Cyan contractors or other personnel spends time on MOULa, the staff in question would be paid out of cavcon.

Unless someone from Cyan comments right here, I agree...

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Those numbers seem low to me, but if they are anywhere close to the actual numbers, it simply underscores how far we are from a real "Cavcon 5" scenario.

No update to the CAVCON meter for two weeks… I'm guessing Cyan is very busy with realMyst.

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In the interests of the environment, this post has been constructed entirely from recycled electrons.

Last edited by Mac_Fife on Thu Jun 07, 2012 8:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

/me donates

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How Many Times Does A Myst Player Play Myst Before A Myst Player Decides To Play Myst Again

I will be donating as soon as I can get out of the hole I am in with my bank. I don't want to lose Uru.

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Zacron wrote:

I don't want to lose Uru.

Well actually, we probably won't lose Uru, even if CAVCON goes way down. Once Cyan gives out a license for all its content, it will guarantee that Uru shall never be in danger of extinction (well, almost) because we will be in a situation similar to Untìl Uru.

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Lyrositor
Explorer #16601888
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are mine only and not Guild endorsed.