Update: all servers have been upgraded to the better hardware, enjoy! Hey EMC! As you all know we are working towards getting the EMC platform to the new Minecraft 1.5 version. A lot goes into this process and as usual we are going to release as soon as possible without sacrificing the stability of the servers. I wanted to make this post to give some transparency into what is going on with the technology behind Empire Minecraft. Over the past several months Aikar has provided us with many tweaks and improvements to both improve the performance of EMC game servers but also to fix bugs and implement new features (the new vault is awesome!). My life had changed to where I wasn't able to provide near the time into EMC as the early days. But Aikar stepped up to the plate and has been doing an excellent job as our lead developer. The result is the servers are running smoother than ever. In addition as part of the 1.5 update we will soon be adding another world to every server. This world is going to be called “Wastelands” and is like the Wilderness EXCEPT it gets completely reset on a regular basis (exact timing TBD). This has been discussed in previous threads so I won't get into too much detail. So finally the news is that to support the new world, Aikars continued performance improvements, as well as exciting new features we have planned, we are getting all new hardware for the servers that power the EMC platform. We are going all out and each server is going to get a solid state drive, a hefty increase in RAM, and a much better CPU. In a nutshell this means the EMC experience is going to run even smoother. If you are a nerd and want the numbers I will include them in the next post of this thread. In order to get all of this new hardware in place we will experience some short down times for each server over the next few days. We will strive to keep the impact as low as possible, and we (staff) will continue to keep everyone updated (in-game and on the site). So please be patient if you can't get on your favorite SMP for a few minutes or experience other issues.
(FIRST ) As promised here are the specs of the hardware. The Master Database Server handles all of the interaction between the game servers (magic like cross-server vault, website integration, residence management, etc). This server is already VERY beefy and will not change; here are the specs for it: Dual (2) Quad-Core 2.4Ghz e5620 Xeon Westmere 24MB cache 72GB Ram 4 x 450GB SAS (Raid 1+0) Currently we have three game servers, that each handle three of the SMP Minecraft servers (the resources are shared between three servers). Here are the CURRENT specs of those three servers: Quad-Core 3.2Ghz e3-1220 Xeon Sandy Bridge 8MB cache 32GB DDR3 (10GB per SPM Minecraft server) 300GB SAS After the upgrade we will have five game servers, that each handles two SMP Minecraft servers (plus Utopia makes 10). Here are the NEW specs of those five servers: Quad-Core 3.5GHz E3-1270-V2 Ivy Bridge Xeon 8MB cache 32GB DDR3 (16GB per SMP Minecraft server) 500GB SATAIII (Operating System and backups) 60GB Intel Solid State Drive 520 series x 2 (TWO OF THEM, one for each SMP Minecraft Server) The biggest gain is going to be the dedicated SSD drive for each game server. Currently three SMP servers are fighting for one spinning disk and that is our bottleneck. Of course the increase in RAM and CPU clock speed won't hurt either.
Along time ago there was a guy named Justin - a JustinGuy - he became a ninja - and no one saw him sense ... until 'this' day :3
