Tyche Shepherd

I've just finished another Mainland Census which I'll write up in the next few days but one key finding is that most Mainland simulators are now running 8 Full regions instead of the normal 4 . The 700 odd mainland homesteads are being run up to 16 to a simulator, whilst Linden Home regions (which are all full regions) are hosted at the old rate of 4 per simulator.

The shared IP address distribution of full regions is as follows

539 regions have no shared IPs
310 have 1 other region sharing
186 have 2 other regions sharing
112 - 3 other regions
160 - 4 other regions
258 - 5 other regions
966 - 6 other regions
3072 -7 other regions

so 80% are sharing with 4 or more other regions - Here is an image to show one group of 8 server neighbours



I checked back to my last census in December and it looks like the main roll out of these newer simulators has occurred since then when 26% of full regions were sharing IP address with more than 3 other regions.


The sharing is just based on Mainland regions - I don't have current data if any of these are sharing simulators with private estates though I don't think they are . In a few days time I'll be running my monthly private estate survey so will check to see if these 8 full region simulators have been rolled out amongst private estates.

__________________

Lucifer Baphomet

no wonder SL blows

__________________

Ann Otoole

What massive suckage. Suckage of dollars from the pockets of ... nm i'm one of them...

Sid Nagy

It feels like they are squeezing out the last dollars before they trow the towel in and run.

__________________
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Fred Rookstown

That's what M is. He's not a CEO, he's a liquidator.

__________________

HEX

CLASS 6 IS REAL!

__________________

Ann Otoole

Most would prefer to have their bits hosted inside 7 of 9.

DanielRavenNest

Its not necessarily a rip. The older servers were dual core/dual CPU opteron servers, so 4 cores per server and 4 regions per server, thus 1 region per core. They have said they are putting in Intel Nehalem based servers, which are quad core processors, so if its quad core/dual CPU Xeons, it would still be 1 region per core. The relative performance would depend on the rest of the details (speed per core, memory, networking, etc).

Amphithetre Andalso

Wake me when they're running 16 cores.

__________________

Eata

I can't imagine simulators are light on I/O when they are in use and with 8 things could get very intense.

Siggy

The cost for 'sim setup' hasn't gone down though

__________________
And as it was in the beginning, so too shall it be in the end. That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names.

Eata

This explains why they were so keen to upgrade all the simulator classes. It's much cheaper to stick more simulators on a smaller amount of expensive hardware than few on a lot of cheap hardware.

Ann Otoole

Except two years ago that "cheap hardware" cost what the "new hardware" costs now. Getting 8 on a box was what script limits are all about. Had not a damn thing to do with making SL better. Only to do with "scaling" on a power point slide.

Jenn Luke

Yep makes me pretty annoyed and I knew this was the reason.

Eata

Er, that's really grasping at straws. If you have enough scripts to be running out of RAM you have a lot of problems no matter how many sims per box.

Pussycat Catnap

STFU while we actualize your revenue stream.

Ciaran Laval

Yet if you want to squeeze more sims per server then you introduce these limits. We don't know if eight per server is due to LL upgrading to servers capable of doing it or if it's to increase revenue but it's plain wrong to charge people the old rate if it doesn't need to be charged.

Cristalle

Are we really objecting to LL making money, or are we just objecting to tier not going down? I have no problem with LL making money by finding cost savings, but not at a performance hit. Are we seeing a performance hit as a result of this? If we're paying the same amount for the same performance, should we really be griping?

Pussycat Catnap

Its the idea that they've got no problem consolidating us onto second rate equipment and kind of sliding us off of the Grid through slow intentional attrition.

What I find out of place though... is that if mainland is now stacked in piles of 8, except for the new Linden Homes, then why is it the Linden Home regions dying from lag and not the rest of mainland?

It seems like the result turned out to the be the opposite of the intent.

Cristalle

Where is there evidence that we're performing any worse than we have in the last year or two? I don't see it. Before we cast stones, we better make sure that our facts are straight.

Zatoichi Mauo

Because the lindies can't builds teh prims.

Hypatia Callisto

I don't think so. Something is up with those Linden Homes sims. I suspect they aren't the same level of equipment as the mainland sims are.

If mainland is indeed on dual cpu Nehalem servers, they may well still be one sim to a core and perhaps even faster than they were before.

__________________
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Ann Otoole

It is more like once there are too many sims on one hosed (more than 3) all the timings go to hell, the queues get hosed up so stuff won't rez, the rubber banding while you walk, etc. And it is totally random. Restarting the sim till you get on a quiet host fixes it. Until the next wacky combat sim or bot club or whatever lands and everything goes to hell again.

WarKirby Magojiro

Mainland is still in need of more tools for effective management.

Most notable for me, the top colliders thing needs to be PUBLICLY exposed, to anyone and everyone, in any region anywhere. I'm getting annoyed having to call liasons out to fix ferox because someone left out a physical barrel rezzer at 3123m on another parcel, and I don't have several hours to comb the 268435456 cubic metres of sky in the sim to find it manually.

On a related note, emerald's area search still sucks. The last version at least had a checkbox to look for nearby physical objects, though I'm not sure if it actually worked.

I'm perfectrly fine with sharing limited resources, and I suspect it wouldn't be anywhere near a problem if we had the proper tools and restrictions in place to prevent resource abuse

__________________

WarKirby Magojiro

I'd be interested to know why you come to this conclusion.