Blizzard. Allow me to share the High Availability Architecture Concept

Community General Discussion
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There is a very important concept for Cloud Services, which is called “High Availability”, and basically the way you design your Infrastructure is such that the Service being provided while is tolerant to failure, it minimizes the downtime.

Although a service can go off, its ok, one will pop up. This often aims for 99.9% availability, although there are others that models in which maximum downtime is about

This is in contrast to for example Fault Tolerant which are systems in which they cannot afford to fail, like Air control towers or hearth rate monitors, etc.

So my question for Blizzard, is why has a High Availability Architecture not been implemented for WOW ?, You could easily “patch” on a server, have a mirror server, then the the patching as seamingly easy as just having to relog, and having an extra server hanghing just in case.

I know this costs money, you need good Cloud Architects and Engineers and the infrastructure, but for real, your standard has to change regarding maintenance.

Why is it still ok at 2023 to have this long maintenance and downtime ? No one is asking for 99.9999999% (nine nines) which are basically milliseconds per year. But a good 99.9% would be good to aim.

That would mean 10 minute downtime per week. And i think im being extremely generous here.

Why are Blizzard’s standards, still 20 years behind when it comes to infrastructure ? This is a serious question.

The implementation of such a high available system is one yaml document away and blizzard’s good will. The technology is there since several years ago

P.S. I hope this post doesnt get banned for “Innapropriate”

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Couldn’t agree more. I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years and in this day in age of everything being virtualized (VMs, containers, microservices) there’s really no excuse for having this much downtime for a company of this scale. Most software companies can go from Dev, to QA, to pre-prod, to prod, at the click of a mouse. Blizz could literally have all of their environments patched prior to Tuesday and do a cutover in a matter of minutes.

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Yeah, exactly, this is what really bothers me, the technology is there and its easily accesible. We are not getting it because of two things.

-Blizzard Customers that are way too permisive with this and not demand it. Just gotta see any post about this how gets swarmed by fanboys defenders.

-Saving some bucks, being quite cheap.

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Is this the thread where all the neckbeards complain they can’t log in for 2-3 hours instead of just going outside and touching some grass?

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See my second point ?

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This isn’t my area of expertise, but I assume the overhead needed for replicating and then migrating data between servers is an expense they aren’t willing to pay, and there’s increased potential for data loss. Assuming the game’s ancient engine can even accommodate something like this.

I dunno. A few hours of maintenance and some upset forum posts probably don’t justify the effort.

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I love the “anyone who doesn’t agree with me is wrong” defense. A good ol classic one that is.
Here’s my tip: if you don’t like it, unsub. Problem solved.

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Right? “Anyone who does not agree with me is clearly just a brainless fanboy!”

I doubt it’s as simple as the TC is trying to make it sound.

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Can i get an english translation?

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Have you ever done an application upgrade online? How do you avoid inconsistancies between 2 game version? How do you switch a live connected player from the patch 10.0 to 10.1?

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you are making some generalizations. There are people that may have only this timeslot available. Others like me that moved to Europe but still have their characters on US realms, so every Tuesday maintenance is primetime.

Yeah, blizzard doesnt care. But why would they when they have the likes of you who just dont demand anything or will justify any just demand as being pretentious.

It really isnt much to ask.

No data loss. As the Data doesnt move. Its the “Computational Server” which needs to be provisioned.

Yes, its an extra expense. But not as expensive, as they would replicate just for the seamless transition. They dont even have to have it on premise. They could use any cloud services provider for this.

Nice ad-hominem. Anything else ?

I said, you make the relog. Guild Wars 2 already does this. They even give you a set ammount of time for you to disconnect and relog with the newer build. Im not even asking anything fancy like GW2, but they could have at 7:01 a newer patched server if they really wanted

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Sounds like their problem then, not Blizzard’s. Blizzard picked this time slot as it was the least active time of any time during the week. Someone will always be inconvenienced by maintenance so why not ensure it’s the lowest number of people?

You really have no basis for that. No one here knows how Blizzard’s server architecture works but it’s been fine until now, why change it?

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OP reads like academic-level knowledge of HA concepts with no real-world experience on the subject.

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Don’t know.
Just know ten years ago Tuesday maint could last the whole day. Now it’s just a few hours. Same with every other game. Seems to be an improvement to me :dracthyr_shrug:

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Because time changes and technology evolves.

Any competent Cloud Architect knows it can be done. I am a competent Cloud Architect. Yes they could have a very old architecture that makes infrastructure provisioning heavier. Like for example not having any decoupled services. It still doesnt mean they could not provide at the minimum, an extra server for the seamless transition.

Everything of this is extremely automated nowadays, from the DevOps pipeline up to the Cloud Infrastructure.

There really is no reason or excuse valid to have this in 2023. Only being cheap, and undemanding customers.

Im Speaking to a non technical audience, but whatever

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Op, I suggest you talk that over with Blizzard ,maybe in facebook or discord most people here see those tech word fly over their heads mean nothing but gibberish.

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Or because it doesn’t matter. Go touch grass or go do something else from WoW for once. Sunlight isn’t that bad.

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If it did not matter, how come you have multiple people complaining on the forums, and it may not matter TO YOU.

It does to me and several others.

But even if it in reality wasnt such a big deal. Its industry standard. Is blizzard just simply ok NOT being up to industry’s standard ?

I would care if i was blizzard. It gives certain clout being at the very least up to standards.

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You addressed it to the company that developed the game though. I do find the idea that nobody at Blizzard knows how their game or server administration works is a funny one.

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Whose standards do all video companies do the same?