Found out why Blizzard has such problems with servers

… or, it could be that their datacenter partner didn’t happen to have 500 extra 2GB dual Xeon blades sitting around, so they went with 500 of the P4 servers instead, since they were available.

Personally, I’m still amazed that they nearly doubled their overall capacity overnight right after release. Say what you will about the server’s reliability – the guy that wrote the server provisioning code gets a gold star :)

And having dealt with parts procurement for a data centre, this is in fact a very likely scenario. Scaling up large amounts of hardware often requires some deviation from specified hardware to meet deadlines.

ha ha, he can’t spell ‘Brian’.

Everyone should own a Koontz.

EDS outsources what they insource. :(
So does IBM who is going to support Matrix Online.

… or, it could be that their datacenter partner didn’t happen to have 500 extra 2GB dual Xeon blades sitting around, so they went with 500 of the P4 servers instead, since they were available.

Personally, I’m still amazed that they nearly doubled their overall capacity overnight right after release. Say what you will about the server’s reliability – the guy that wrote the server provisioning code gets a gold star :)[/quote]

The block of servers I’m on didn’t come up until 8-10 weeks after the game’s release. I’d hardly call that “overnight”. But I can sympathsize if they couldn’t get their hands on hardware… but they should not have kept limping along as long as they did. As soon as it became available they should have upgraded… not waiting until their servers declared total anarchy. I’ve been on these servers since they came out, and unless you’ve been on them like I have you probably can’t appreciate just how terrible they’ve been. Nor the fact we’ve been reporting the issues forever… on somewhat deaf ears.

Blizzard increased the number of servers by 50% about a week after the game launched, and has added servers twice since then, once when your servers went online, and just last week.