The other big one that usually requires downtime is network. You may not be touching your game servers all that often but if you need to do a major OS upgrade on a load balancer or switch, that’s going to mean everything behind it loses connectivity - and unless you’re talking one of the big hitters like WoW, they’re probably not funding redundant dual network paths to allow you to take it down without downtime
If you are running metal, and the health of your entire network relies on a single load balancer or a single network switch, you’re far from being production-ready from a redundancy and scaling perspective.
I don’t disagree, but at the same time running a whole setup that is fully ready for hot swap live failover whenever you have maintenance tasks to do is potentially just not desirable when you have the option of just taking the environment down instead - after all, gamers are pretty much conditioned to expect it at this point
running a whole setup that is fully ready for hot swap live failover whenever you have maintenance tasks to do
This is basically “ready for production 101.” It’s even easier to run an entire service on a computer under a desk, but this isn’t how you run stuff in production.
Even if it’s “easier” in the short term, you’ll be paying more for not being production-ready in the long term (and get a reputation for not having good uptime).
Yeah I feel you’re widely overestimating the setup that’s in place for smaller online games companies. We’re not talking about Activision or some high-frequency fixed income trading firm here. “Give me something that people can play on that costs as close to nothing as possible” is usually the main driver
The other big one that usually requires downtime is network. You may not be touching your game servers all that often but if you need to do a major OS upgrade on a load balancer or switch, that’s going to mean everything behind it loses connectivity - and unless you’re talking one of the big hitters like WoW, they’re probably not funding redundant dual network paths to allow you to take it down without downtime
If you are running metal, and the health of your entire network relies on a single load balancer or a single network switch, you’re far from being production-ready from a redundancy and scaling perspective.
I don’t disagree, but at the same time running a whole setup that is fully ready for hot swap live failover whenever you have maintenance tasks to do is potentially just not desirable when you have the option of just taking the environment down instead - after all, gamers are pretty much conditioned to expect it at this point
This is basically “ready for production 101.” It’s even easier to run an entire service on a computer under a desk, but this isn’t how you run stuff in production.
Even if it’s “easier” in the short term, you’ll be paying more for not being production-ready in the long term (and get a reputation for not having good uptime).
Yeah I feel you’re widely overestimating the setup that’s in place for smaller online games companies. We’re not talking about Activision or some high-frequency fixed income trading firm here. “Give me something that people can play on that costs as close to nothing as possible” is usually the main driver
Gross