Major Infrastructure Upgrades!

 

Hello everyone,

It has been a long time in the making but we are finally ready make the move to a new datacenter where we will have much bigger hardware and faster networks. We will make the move Jan 3, 2023 at 1600 UTC.

Let's get right to the changes, first I will talk about the hardware/network.

• Our application servers are now our own. Meaning we won't share with any other customers like what happens in the cloud environment.  All CPU and ram is ours to use exclusively.  The application servers have a total of 128 CPU cores and 512 gig's of ram. That is just our starting point. ;)
• Our external network to the internet will be a full 1Gbe with an upgrade path to 10Gbe at the turn of a switch.
• The internal network has the same capacity. However this is not a shared network like in a Cloud, the full bandwidth is for the exclusive use of  the games.
• All hard drives in the storage array are all SSD managed by a hardware raid controller. The array has fault tolerance built in so we have further protection against accidental data loss. The read performance is going to rock!  As with everything something has to give and that is the write performance.  It will be faster than what we have currently but not by a huge amount.
• The sftp server will have its own internet connection therefor huge upload and downloads will not affect game play performance.
• The removal of a load balancer means one less hop in the path that your connections have to make.  The performance improvement will be unnoticeable by itself but when you add up all the other improvements it becomes meaning full.

Now lets talk about the software changes.  I have made both additions and removals to the website functionality.

• Terms of service have been updated.  Please read them.  Lots of  changes.
• Removed the "Reset Server" functionality.  It is never used and it is a potentially a dangerous feature to have in case someone gains access to an account.
• Removed S3 management.  There is only a hand full of people that use a S3 bucket to store their data.  These people are generally tech savvy and don't need the wizard to set things up.  As well I only accommodated a few providers.  S3 will continue to work you just have to manually configure it.
• Changed password requirements.  You must now use at least one upper case letter, one number and be at least 8 characters long.  Special characters will no longer be supported.  They  mess up the sftp server. Only change it if your are having troubles.
• Changed the archive type for the recovery points.  We will move to a zip file instead of a tar file.  We did this to facilitate a  new feature.
• Changed the logged in time from infinite to one hour. We had to do this to help prevent scripting of the website.  If you get bumped out simply log back in.
• Added the ability to download your backup/restore point as a single zip file.  This will make it much easier to keep a current backup of your data at home. Please use it.
• Added the ability to park your account.  This means you can pay a small storage fee to keep your account on the servers but not playable.  This is ideal for people that don't have active games running but don't want to shutdown their server.
• Added the foundry version number to the bottom of the website. This will help people quickly see what version they are currently at.

That is all I can think of right now. I am sure I will be posting follow up information as  I remember it. My hope is to give the best possible experience to you at the most cost effective price.  Please come find me (G Pa Dax) in Discord if you have any questions or concerns.

May your games always be fun,
Pencils forever sharp,
and your rules books at the ready.

G Pa Dax (Brad)