Breaking News: Second Life's Cloud Servers Degrading, Lag And Other Issues To Get Significantly Worse

 Update: April Fools

In a stunning development, Linden Lab announced an unexpected and severe problem with the Amazon Cloud Servers that now house Second Life's data. The servers have been deteriorating and glitching, and the problem is going to get much worse.

"It turns out the servers that Amazon provided us with weren't meant to take the strain of a virtual world as active as Second Life is," the statement by the Lab explained, "Not only are we not getting the performance improvements we were hoping for, the lag and other issues such as teleport fails and inventory issues have been slowly getting worse over the past few months."

The statement went on to say that the servers are starting to deteriorate faster,  and so the issues will start to get even worse, and fast. It's estimated that within two weeks, viewers will need four to five times to load information around an avatar after TPing or logging on. Crashes an teleport fails will be several more times likely to happen as well, and items will start vanishing from inventories. Within three weeks, viewers will take ten times as long to process information after logging on or teleporting. That is if people can log on or teleport at all as fails will start to keep people from doing so for five to ten minutes. And within a month, Second Life will become unusable to those without newer and more powerful computers.

Linden Lab is working with Amazon to get better servers and transfer the data to them, but this will take time. For now, the Lab is offering a downloadable code that will allow the servers to better recognize users and their data and not suffer quite as much lag.

For more information and to download the code: Click Here. 

Bixyl Shuftan
 

EOTB: "The Migration Of Second Life To The Cloud Is Now Complete!"

 
On Tuesday January 5, Linden Lab announced on the official blog they had completed the move of Second Life data from their old servers to the Amazon Cloud servers.

As the new year begins, we have some exciting news to share. The migration of Second Life to the cloud is now complete!

All the interconnected services and databases that collectively provide you with Second Life have been migrated to Amazon’s cloud servers. The "uplift" to the cloud will help bring better simulator performance and also improves our ability to diagnose problems and scale our systems for future growth and improvements.  

They showed a picture of "the former cage in our colocation facility that housed our servers since 2009, now cleaned out and completely empty." They also showed a video of the old hardware being destroyed.

Many have asked us what happened to the “old” hardware that steadily served up Second Life for so many years. Most of it was too old to have any value and has been scrapped, but it is important to note that as part of our standard security protocols, all of the drives have been shredded and destroyed. Thanks for all the memories, old friends!

While the physical move is complete, there remain some optimization tweaks that we will continue to make to further improve performance over the coming weeks, and of course there are always bugs to hunt. We are truly grateful for your patience, especially during the final few weeks of 2020 as we worked furiously to finish the last parts of this migration.

Of the video, Zidders Roofurry would post in the comments with song lyrics:

Oh grind up the homes where the avatars roamed
and the neko's and furries once played.
Where ever was 'heard' many a virtual word
and via Windlight our stars were displayed.

Roam, roam SL's range
as the servers to clouds are all changed.
Now afloat with our words our dreams fly like a bird
And our Second Life is Amazon conveyed.

To see the Linden blog post in full, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

"We Are Now In The Cloud"

 
It's been about a month since April Linden announced that the data from all the sims (aside from a few Linden ones) had been moved to Cloud servers. But there was still some work to be done. This week, there was some more news about the last stages of the move. On Tuesday, it was announced that "as part of our overall migration to the cloud, some of our web publishing tools ... may be unavailable for our internal editorial team." And so the Second Life Destination Guide was getting a temporary freeze on updates. Also on Tuesday, according to Inara Pey, at the Simulator User Group meeting April and Oz Linden had stated all Second Life systems and service were now running on Amazon Cloud Servers. So the Lab was clearing all of it's equipment from it's "former co-location facility in Arizona."

At the Wednesday Third Party Viewer Meeting, supposedly Oz Linden was more direct, "Actually, we disconnected the datacenter last night ... everything is now running in AWS."

It's not an announcement that's being celebrated by all. There's been a number of glitches on the Grid lately, and Inara Pey stated in the same article that the Lab was working to fix an issue on the map. While the move to the Cloud may be done, the job of taking care of the bugs and glitches as a result of the move remains.

Source: Modem World , SL forums 

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: In The Cloud

 

Taken at Sunweaver Bay. It was a couple weeks ago that all sims were finally moved to cloud servers. But given this chair, it had to be done.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

April Linden Announces All Sims Moved To The Cloud

 

It was just about a week ago in which it was announced half the sims had their data moved to the Cloud. So with all the time that had been done before, one would probably expect quite a bit of time before the other half were moved. Well, that's not quite what happened. Yesterday, Thursday November 19, April announced that all of the sims now had their data moved to Cloud servers.

The team just finished up moving all of the regions to the cloud! We did it, before our goal of Thanksgiving!!! Uplift isn't done, we still have things to move, but getting the regions done FEELS SO GOOD!

As April stated, this isn't the end of the work on the Cloud move. And there's still glitching going on. For instance, there were issues with group chat, teleporting, and reading the world map. But it is a notable milestone that hopefully will lead to an improved Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Fourmilab Cloud Halo, A Way Of Seeing If A Sim Has Gone To The Cloud

 

One of the big things in Second Life going on is the move of sim data to Amazon Cloud servers, also known as the move to the Cloud or the uplift to the Cloud. It was recently announced that just over half the sims were now uplifted. So how does one tell if a sim has gone to the Cloud? For most residents, there usually isn't a quick way. But there is one quick way that all one needs is a visit to the Second Life Marketplace, the Fourmilab Cloud Halo.

It is possible to determine whether a region is on an original host or the cloud by examining the host name of the simulation, but many users aren't familiar with the arcana of doing so. Fourmilab Cloud Halo is a light-hearted attachment which makes it easy to see the hosting status wherever you happen to visit and alert you to changes when you arrive in a new region.

There's no known location inworld to get the Cloud Halo. The sole known place is on Marketplace. Fortunately the item is free, so just "purchase" and the Halo folder will appear in your "Recieved Items." To put it on, just "add it." You may need to edit and adjust the height a little. Once it's worn, should the sim be uplifted into the Cloud, the halo should briefly glow and there should be a few seconds of harp music. If the sim data is still in the old servers, the halo appears as dull metal and there's a moment of "sad trombone" music. After five seconds, the halo will fade from view. Going from sim to sim, either by flying or running around or teleporting, the halo remains unchanged if the sim entered is the same as the one you just came from. If it's different, it briefly appears with the opposing appearance and music as last time. So it "appears only when you change to or from the Cloud."

The Cloud Halo comes with a user guide notecard, that allows for some adjustments. Trying it out, it did the "wah-wah" sound and faded after briefly appearing as metal. It took some time flying around, but eventually it lit up and did the harp sounds. Besides the pictures I took, one can also check out a Youtube.

John Walker (Fourmilab Resident) is the man behind the Cloud Halo. He has a number of other products on Marketplace, all of them free.

To get the Cloud Halo, Click Here: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Fourmilab-Cloud-Halo/20555301

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au

Bixyl Shuftan

Number of Sims Moved to The Cloud Passes 50%

 

Of the move of sim data to Cloud servers, a noteable milestone was achieved a few days ago, at least according to Daniel Voyager. In his blog, he reported that Stawberry Linden had told him that April Linden had told her that half the sims now had their data in The Cloud.

Hi Daniel, this is Strawberry. I have confirmed with our Sr. Engineering Manager, April Linden, that over half the regions in Second Life are now running in the cloud.

Since this was a few days ago, The Lab has no doubt continued it's work. How long will it take until the move is complete? Daniel Voyager himmself thought it would be "six weeks or so."

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog
Image Source: Linden Lab