RKS Server Move Thread [again, sorry!]

PY004

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Hello everyone!

We have another server host move coming up. I know, it does seem frequent, but I see no other choice at this moment. We have been trying our best to provide the MSC community with reliable servers while also keeping our costs down. Unfortunately, our current server host (Ubiquity Servers) seems to have way too much issues with their network lately. I know they're not a high availability data center such as Peer1/ServerBeach (our really old hosts), or Colocrossing; but there's a point when the cheaper costs are not worth it. As of this moment, our monthly availability for the Chicago servers has fallen below 99.8% (we consider any situation with packet loss >= 10% to be a complete loss of connectivity as it interferes with VoIP communications), and the monthly availability for the NYC servers have fallen below 99.9%. The Dallas server has also been affected by random lag spikes which gives it a reliability of 99.5%. Although these values seem like high reliability, 99.9% availability translates to approximately 45 minutes in a month during which the server had zero, or degraded internet connectivity.

Now in an effort to provide you with better reliability, RKS is moving all servers from Ubiquity Servers to various other datacenters. These data centers are much higher quality, and I actually have servers hosted there for other business purposes. They have a much higher reliability (for example, one server I have in the Chicago location is currently averaging 99.99999% reliability over the last 365 days, equating to just 2 seconds of downtime during the past 365 days). Hopefully this will eliminate loss of connectivity to FN that has happened numerous times I am sure, as well as being dropped out of a server all of a sudden when the server suddenly loses connectivity to the internet.

Not all servers are effected by this move. We are only moving servers in Ubiquity Servers data centers. So although FN and MSC will go down temporarily, the MSC website will stay up for the entire duration. The following are our plans for the server move.

Server Restructuring
Odyssey and Daedalus (Chicago Servers) will move to the Chicago SteadFast datacenter.
Prometheus (Dallas Server) will move to the ColoCrossing datacenter in Los Angeles.
Phoenix (NYC Server) will move to the ColoCrossing datacenter in Buffalo, NY (This server may be moved to NYC at a later date due to its proximity to Chicago).

Big News Maybe?
With the new budget plan for 2013-2014, RKS is going to have a EU server up again. This is a temporary budget authorization so I don't know how long we will keep it up for. Although this server won't be up with the restructuring, we expect it to be online within 1 month after finishing the restructuring. No datacenter has been chosen yet and evaluations are currently taking place.

Timeline
10/14 - Server move begins
10/15 - All MSC servers shut down.
10/17 - FN is moved during the late AM hours.
10/17 - Afternoon/evening - All MSC servers restored.
10/17 - All server move completed

Unavoidable Downtime
As usual, the DNS for FN is going to take sometime to update. The TTL on fn.rkszone.net is set to 30 minutes so most servers should autoswitch to the new FN server within 30 minutes after the switch.
Unfortunately, the MSC servers will have to go down starting on tuesday and not coming back online until thursday. This is due to the fact that we use TCAdmin to manage all our game servers and its licensing does not allow us to simultaneously activate both the old and new servers simultaneously. We will have to uninstall TCAdmin from all of our servers, file for a IP address reset, wait until it is approved, and then reinstall all services.

Apology
This part should really be at the top in big letters, but i thought you guys needed to know what I am apologizing first, hence it's all the way at the bottom.
I apologize for the disruption. Please bear with us while we try to improve our service. We appreciate all the support everyone has given the past few years.
 

Tetsmega1

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Can we get an estimated time of servers being back up?
 
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PY004

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Sorry there were unexpected delays (hardware problems) with one of our core servers. Everything is back on track and all MSC servers should be restored tomorrow evening. As for the FN server, it has been moved to the new server and is now online.
 
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PY004

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Update:
Had a few issues which has now been fixed. Will have all MSC servers up and running by afternoon.
 

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Just a heads up, three servers that are up right now are not yet connected to FN as of 1:49PM PST
Just thought someone should let you know.
 

Tetsmega1

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Ok now the servers connect to FN and characters are loading, but nothing is being saved.
 
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PY004

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Try again? Most likely a problem with permissions. Tried to fix it.
 
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PY004

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All MSC servers are now online. I have no way to check if the characters are saving properly however so someone is goign to have to test them out.

Please report any problems.
 

Tetsmega1

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Characters aren't saving. Tested by gaining XP and then reconnecting using the retry command in console.
 

Tetsmega1

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Alright whatever you did it's working now :)

Edit:
Ok scrap that I think I'm just being too hopeful.
 

misutto

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Alright, thanks man!

EDIT: Disregard that, tetsmega is a doofus
 

PY004

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Is it working or not? In either case, I just tried setting it up again. Let me know how it is. thanks guys!
 

Tetsmega1

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Just now my XP and items have saved when using retry on console. Not sure if it was that one server or if all the servers are working now but everything seems be normal again.
 

misutto

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Tetsmega1 said:
Just now my XP and items have saved when using retry on console. Not sure if it was that one server or if all the servers are working now but everything seems be normal again.

qft, everything seems to be fine. Anything happens we post here again. Thanks for fixing it man!
 

PY004

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Anytime, keep me posted if any issues happen.
 

PY004

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Notice: EU Server is now in the works.

Germany
E3-1230v2

Probably going to be next week when it's online.
 

zeus9860

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All servers are down today, not sure if they all crashed or something but they just went poof.
 

Uberzolik

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zeus9860 said:
All servers are down today, not sure if they all crashed or something but they just went poof.

it seems rkszone.com itself is down, as none of the downloads on the main page work
strange...
 

Thothie

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EU France's mirror is still up:
http://titan.rkszone.net/msc/msc_full_i ... C2010a.exe
http://titan.rkszone.net/msc/msc_beta_p ... P2013a.exe
(Barring terrorist attack.)

The US servers, and all but one of the EU servers went down yesterday. Today, seems everything is down.

RKS.PY004 said:
Suffered a HDD failure on one of the main servers. Most of the server functions are offline until the HDD is replaced and all files recovered from the Backup server. Just submitted a ticket to have the HDD replaced.
...Probably related.

I suspect the admin controls are actually hosted on the US servers, and thus when the EU servers went down (from just the usual crashing or what not), they didn't get back up.

Luckily the forums are still up... So's FN, oddly enough. Just... No FN servers to play on, at the moment. :\

edit:
Well, there's Vecna's at: 174.62.187.34:27015

Also, beware, if you are trying to host an FN listenserver with Underpath, you'll have to move the BSP from "...\msc_downlods\maps" to "...\msc\maps" - apparently the guys at Valve decided to screw with things for no apparent reason, yet again, and thus any downloads from a server get put in their own little folder now - one outside of the normal mod's scope. The engine can check that to load it, apparently, but MSC's map authenticator cannot, and it'll boot you off FN as a result.

That's also gonna break a whole lotta other mods' functionality, as far as downloading materials from the server is concerned. :\
 

zeus9860

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And again, they seem to be all down.
 

Thothie

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If by "again" ya mean "still", yes.

Gotta wait for the HD order to go through, I guess. Just be glad the site and FN are still up.

Venca's doing the best he can for ya meantime.
 

zeus9860

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Well, awkward thing though, yesterday shortly after you posted here i remember seeing the servers up, so i thought it was all done already. Guess i was wrong, oh well, my bad!
 
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