Server(s) for Europe?

[+teknikfotograf]

I have spoken with a lot of fellow cachers in Europe and we all agree that it would be a great idea with more servers and preferably one or more for Europe since this sport is growing rapidly.

It does not seem as a good idea to only have servers in one location with the fire in mind.

We are paying money for this service and should get our moneys worth!

 

Best regards

Robert

Teknikfotograf

[+Tequila]

With the exception of one major outage in the 8 years I have been caching, the site has generallybeen available. From time to time it may be down for an hour or so but overall, it is pretty stable. Especially since the fire. I can never recall a time where I could not do any caching because the site was not available. I am sure others may have but I haven't.

 

Don't lose sight of the fact that this site is not "mission critical".

 

As for "our money's worth", I would like to see you point out a better value for your dollar.

[+the_bell_dingers]

I know this may be stupid, but can you tell me about "the Fire"?

[GOF and Bacall]

It was hot.

[GOF and Bacall]

OK, OK!

There was a fire in the building that houses the servers. Knocked out the site for quite some time.

[+Shilo]

And it was out for a better part of a US holiday weekend if I remember correctly.

 

And I agree with Tequila about the OP. Groundspeak would have to buy/rent another building, hire people to maintain it and buy all new servers etc, etc. I don't $30 a year per member would cover the added expenses.

[jholly]

Do you realize how many PQ's it would take to keep the servers in Europe synced? I don't think the PQ generators can handle the extra load.

[+Tequila]

It was hot.

 

I nominate this entry for the Bell Dingered of the Day award. It made my day.

[+Hynr]

Do you realize how many PQ's it would take to keep the servers in Europe synced? I don't think the PQ generators can handle the extra load.

In cyberspace, a server for Europe can sit physically right next to the one for the US and obtain its data in the same way that the current PQ generator gets the data. And all of that does not have to sit in Seattle at all.

Don't lose sight of the fact that this site is not "mission critical".

I would suggest the the Groundspeak employees who like getting their paychecks might disagree with you.

[jholly]

Do you realize how many PQ's it would take to keep the servers in Europe synced? I don't think the PQ generators can handle the extra load.

In cyberspace, a server for Europe can sit physically right next to the one for the US and obtain its data in the same way that the current PQ generator gets the data. And all of that does not have to sit in Seattle at all.

Don't lose sight of the fact that this site is not "mission critical".

I would suggest the the Groundspeak employees who like getting their paychecks might disagree with you.

 

It was sarcasm. Yes they could sit next to each other, but if the OP wanted redundancy then maybe a different city would be best.

 

Jim

[+NinjaCacher!]

In cyberspace, a server for Europe can sit physically right next to the one for the US and obtain its data in the same way that the current PQ generator gets the data.

But then, what's the advantage of that setup with the fire in mind?

 

And what's actually the difference to the current setup? I assume currently the servers serve America, Europe and other continents with equal priority, why would some server be dedicated to Europe? I do see the point of geographically separating the servers - faster network connection to local servers, higher reliability in case of failure of one location (cf the fire) because of data redundancy etc. (which is a good thing but as mentioned, usually expensive and technically complex for all the needed synchronization) - but wouldn't the whole point be lost if the dedicated server sits in the same location?

 

It was hot.

[+sTeamTraen]

Don't lose sight of the fact that this site is not "mission critical".

I would suggest the the Groundspeak employees who like getting their paychecks might disagree with you.

The site is, of course, "mission critical", in that it's the basis of Groundspeak's business. But unlike, say, Amazon, eBay, or Bing Travel, for Groundspeak 24/7 uptime, while desirable - and not far from being delivered, with a minute fraction of what those other services deploy - is not critical.

 

If I mention Bing Travel, it's because they were down for exactly as long as Geocaching.com when the fire knocked out the Fisher Plaza date centre. That's a Microsoft business which generates perhaps half a million dollars a day in revenue, almost all of which will have been lost for the period of the outage.

 

Returning to the OP, if the suggestion is to have the entire database replicated in realtime in the US and Europe: forget it. Only banks can afford the technology needed for that. It's not like an Amazon-type setup where you can be taking orders in multiple places at once; you need to have every single transaction replicated more or less instantly. That requires you to double your server capacity for the storage and then to increase it further to compensate for the replication overhead, just to get the same throughput as now. It would be better to use those extra servers in the same place to decrease overall loading.

 

In any case, network bandwidth is not the performance issue - server load is - so placing the servers closer to Europe wouldn't make much difference. (And you'd need a huge pipe just to handle the replication traffic...) As for dedicating "a" server to Europe, would that be a database server, a Web server, an image server, or something else? And, given the time difference, any dedicated-to-Europe servers would be idle at periods where US or Australian users might want more power.

Edited November 4, 2009 by sTeamTraen

[OpinioNate]

If your collocation hosting facility has once experienced fire, would you not feel more secure going forward? I don't mean to suggest that lightning never strikes twice, but I should think Fisher Plaza has more safeguards now than a similar facility which has never caught fire.

 

Anyway, the site has enough server capacity to support its traffic. It's better architecture that is needed, and we are workin' on it.

[GOF and Bacall]

How is that quest going Nate?

[Keystone]

How is that quest going Nate?

Nate now has four months of consecutive uptime, being flamed in the forums but never catching on fire.

 

You go, Nate.

[+Nils-Olov]

I agree to that the site isn't mission critical and I also agree that it would be a nice feature to have a second server at some other place then the current one. I think that because geocaching is growing it will eventually make it necessary to add capacity to the server. Then a server in some place that minimize the risk of 'single point of failure' would be great.

In my opinion I think the service I get is worth the money I pay and I can accept a short downtime now and then.

[GOF and Bacall]

How is that quest going Nate?

Nate now has four months of consecutive uptime, being flamed in the forums but never catching on fire.

 

You go, Nate.

 

Actually it was meant as an honest question. I know they have been working on the big project and was wondering how it was progressing. Forgive me if asking such a question is against the TOU or something.