Server Migration (Update 2/26)

As you guys may or may not have realized, I am one of the guys who is in charge of keeping Zelda Universe up and running. And from Jason's post, you may or may not know that we've made this move due to some financial issues with the other host.

I'll describe a little exactly what we've done. I'll try to put it in layman's terms.

1. All Zelda sites used to be on a dedicated server. That means, it was on a single, fat server. This also means that there was no room to grow. So we changed the infrastrucutre from a single server to the multi-server. From this, there's a lot of things that have changed due to nature of the design.
2. What do multi-servers introduce? Well, lets just say you get slash-dotted or a new Zelda game comes out. You'll get a ton more users wanting to view and discuss about the new Zelda game. By nature of these sites, they'll probably hit these sites first. Previously, because you weren't allowed to grow, your site would just become a lot slower. In our new design, we're able to shove in more servers to help out the other servers, keeping the sites nice and fast for everoyne.
3. Previously, if the old server died, it would die completely. The site would be gone and it would take a while for it to recover. Here, if one server dies, there still exists other servers, so there is no single point of failure. If you want the big term, this means Zelda sites now have high-availability.
4. We introduced a Cache. You guys get about 250-350 requests per second at any given time. Did you know about 80% of those requests don't even have an account with any of the sites? Most of your traffic comes from people searching Google about a character or some information on Zelda. That way instead of us processing everyone, we can process just what is needed and serve data that has already been processed. If you guys haven't already seen, you should see the sites load much faster than normal. If you really want to see it, delete all your cookies and browse the site. It's really snappy.

I hope this explains what we've done and I'm deeply sorry for many of the issues that we've caused the past couple of days. It's a little hard for us to test all the functions of a site we don't entirely understand. We would also like to thank you guys for your feedback as it helped us figure out what needed fixing.

You should be able to login now, this was because of an IP namespace issue, which was causing that "you cannot login anymore" issue. If you still have a problem with it, clear your cache and cookies and try again.

If there are any other issues, please let us know through this thread.

---------- Post added at 06:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:30 PM ----------

Also, we're experiencing a high load on our database servers. We're trying to resolve this issue as it is causing a lot of the dynamic parts of the website to load terribly slow. We'll let you guys know when we have this resolved.

-- UPDATE --

We're working speeding up the forums, give us some time.

2/29 - We've found some underlying issues with performance. Hopefully today, all the sites should be fast and speedy. We're still working on the issues that were presented before.

2/29 - We've accidentally used one of vBulletin's optimization tools which completely killed the MySQL server. We had to go down for 2 hours to restore functionality. We are especially sorry for this.

2/29 - We've fixed avatar uploads, these have been tested and confirmed working.

Thank you for the update!
I couldn't log in for the past 2 days, but its fine for me now.

OHMYGOD♥♥♥♥YESICANLOGINAGAIN!

Slutzorz, we want you as Webmaster.

We should give him a special server banner.

Hooray. Logging in again.

I understand everything is a mess with this move, but thanks for the update. =)

I'm seeing question marks everywhere where images are suppose to be.

We're working speeding up the forums, give us some time.

For the problem that "no server is available," is that the same issue, then?

Other than my frequent encounter with that message, right now I'm just seeing the "invalid file" message when I try to change my avatar; but that's something that was mentioned by other members in another thread.

Good luck with the fixes, guys.

(^_^)

holy ♥♥♥♥
look at me i'm on zu

lol

Yeah,

Hopefully things are responding a bit better.

We'll take a look at the file issues.

Good job, mate. Hopefully this hard work will pay off.

I can log in again!

My issue:

Can't send VMs properly. When I hit the Send button, it gives me a "The following errors occurred with your submission" post, but there's no explanation and then VM is not sent. (Checked the person's wall and it wasn't there.)

IN THE END, I could send the VM after multiple attempts, but it was pretty annoying. What's this.

Thanks in advance and good job, guys, we appreciate the effort and the information and all. :>>

What is a VM? Not entirely sure on it.

We're working on getting those avatar uploads working again, give us a moment.

VM is a visitor message. It displays them on a member's profile.

So many threads for the same thing makes it hard to figure out where to post what...

It seems that the "Remember me" checkbox isn't working for me any more; I have had to log in manually several times now. Once for each time I've started up Firefox, to make it clear.

Originally Posted by Sabbo

So many threads for the same thing makes it hard to figure out where to post what...

It seems that the "Remember me" checkbox isn't working for me any more; I have had to log in manually several times now. Once for each time I've started up Firefox, to make it clear.

Try clicking a thread on the index before signing in. Usually that's all I need to do for it to go "oh ♥♥♥♥, I actually do remember you, you're my cousin's nephew, the one that made the cake explode at aunty Sandie's birthday."

Honestly, I would've thought it would realize that sooner, considering how the first page I go on on ZU is always my User CP. I'll try what you suggest though; maybe something weird I don't know is going on.

Please tell me ZU is not on Windows Server...lol
Load times are still really slow (especially the SS board)
and I did see that 'wrong password locked out, unable to login' the other day.

Here's hoping for a smooth migration.

Originally Posted by Simpol

Please tell me ZU is not on Windows Server...lol
Load times are still really slow (especially the SS board)
and I did see that 'wrong password locked out, unable to login' the other day.

Here's hoping for a smooth migration.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA.

Windows and server in the same sentence. lol

PS. Jason and his friend posted a pretty detailed explanation of the setup. Jason even linked to a blogpost in one of these threads that goes into an even deeper technical side. It's a pretty solid plan that should work for the long term.

Originally Posted by Alyss

1981. Why do you ask?