For 8 years I worked for one of the largest airlines on the planet as a Regional LAN admin. Once we were copying data from our backup tapes to a different medium and it was a massive problem and even with our full breadth of engineering staff and HP themselves sending in techs it was still a nightmare.
The idea that they could just âcopy overâ an âenvironmentâ is just laughably simplistic.
Cloning seems like an obvious and easy solution, but:
In general your solutions sounds great, but if youâre think about it, it sadly gets more and more difficult.
Your right, the IT systems of an airline clearly match that of amazon, or for that matter, any software house worth their money. Obviously, an airline put a lot of resources into their IT⌠i mean just take a look at their websites⌠its really marvellous stuff.
Iâm done with this conversation, i dont care for your opinion on the matter, your experience clearly shows your know what you are talking about. Amazon have handled this poorly, especially in the aftermath. I dont know what else there is to discuss.
Agree, but I mean, its already terrible, its only going to get worse.
True, but at least people have the option and dont lose anything. The first week might take a little time for people to settle. After that it should iron itself out.
Yes, but i doubt it would re-redeem from steam, it should already be available in inventories. If it does, that would be strange but a valid concern. Should be possible to iron out from AGS though.
Trading of items on the region not used. EUW person trades EUC person, and then they do visa versa on the other region. Also potential for AH problems with people selling cheap. However, these can also be worked out and resolved.
Iâm not saying it free from problems but the alternative is everyone loses everything, including what they paid for.
Do you really look at an airlines website and take this as an example how the whole IT must be structured.
Oh well, thatâs really very simplistic (and I donât believe you really look at it this way).
I give you a very simple example:
Well yes this is a really over simplified example. But now scale that up byâŚletâs say a million (which might come close to an MMO serverfarm) and you are getting close to the problems AWS might face when just simply âcloning the whole EU regionâ, or also taking the example of Thenatural, cloning the backend infrastructure of an airline.
In the end it is just a matter of time.
Just because it is so complicated, letâs assume Amazon says: âwe found a solution, but itâll take two monthâ, or just for arguments sake, we assume they are really, really quick and get it done in one month (which I think impossible, but weâre just fantasizing, right?)
How do you think the reaction will be?
They already announced, that they are working on the best possible quick(!) solution and even after 48h people are rioting, because they are not quicker.
Already they have no ETA for setting up a whole new region. Do you think they could give us an ETA of cloning and syncing everything quicker?
You would actually be surprised. Itâs one of the most demanding jobs around and talented engineers do really well for themselves.
Cloning servers happens on millions of servers across the internet every single day. I literally have one being cloned right now so I can test something against it. Yes cloning isnt a 100% clone, certain things change, but its a known way of working. If amazon cant do this then im shocked, its technology thats been around for several years.
As for time, presuming amazon actually hired talented people, It shouldnât take that long for collective minds to work out solutions to the problems. Actual maintenance times would only be due to the size of the data⌠problem wise, they should have plans in place before they start. Going in blind would obviously be very bad. Planning it probably takes more time that executing it, except maybe because of the data size.
I mean your suggesting amazon dont have the ability to clone a server, something thats been available for several years. So I can only assume, in my sample size of 1 (you), that airlines dont really have their stuff in order.
âjust clone the serverâ
oof
We are not talking about 1 server here 
I can also clone my own servers in no time hehe.
But just as an example, you might want to read this article:
Or just look at some of the diagrams showing the architecture. This is not Lost Ark, but youâll get an idea of the scale of it. And this is without Steam involved.
If it was very simple, you need:
An as before: now scale this up several times to get on a scale of cloning a whole region.
Iâm not saying it is impossible, quite the opposite. But it takes a whole lot of time and testing. Because you need to clone everything, get it up and running, without anyone being able to connect of course. Take necessary steps for the re-configuration for the new region, test, test, test and then youâll have it read.
I think Thenatural could make a far better assumption of the time necessary to do all this, but Iâd say just out of my head, that even 2 month would be a very close window to do all that.
We also have enough money and people to solve world hunger issues, but somehow there are still hungry people on this planet.
You still need the competent people to do it, even if you have unlimited money 
Also, having proper launch with 20 people is different from servers getting hit by millions KEKW
well firstly, this is specific to a region. we already know that. And yes there will be multiple servers and services. Which is no different from bring up the new region, it will be lots of servers and services (presuming this isnât cloud based, and i seem to remember they said it wasnt). Its the data layer for a single region, so really it isnât that farfetched to be able to clone. Just google around:
AWS clone server/database/ec2
azure clone server/database/vm
ovh clone server/database/vm
They can all do it. I picked 2 cloud providers and one dedi provider. They all offer cloning. yet amazon are unable? come on.
Presuming it is not âcloud basedâ?
What do you think is the main field of Amazon? Cloud based infrastructure services.
Of course LA is running on the AWS machines.
I also can simply clone one of my AWS machines with some simple clicks. But Iâm not running an MMO
I canât find the post, but one of the CMâs confirmed that the game isnât setup for AWS, so doesnât use it. If it was using AWS this cloning wouldnât even be a discussion tbh. Itâs to do with the games architecture, which is fair enough
Edit: It could be using azure, but iâd be surprised if amazon were paying a competitor for something this size⌠maybe they are.
In the end, it doesnât really matter if AWs or not (I can only think of the point, that the CM meant, LA is not using the normal AWS stuff that you and I know):
As pointed out before, your approach is a good idea and might even be possible, but it is highly complicated and would take more time than they have.
Or otherwise donât you think the experts wouldnât have thought about this solution already and instead of creating a bigger and bigger shitstorm every day, they wouldnât just have announced it?
I can just repeat this in every thread Iâm involved in these discussions:
No, I think the experts in the field are being told by managers what to do. Because the only thing that matters is the bottom line. A fresh new server for people to spend money on is far more profitable, than satisfying your existing customers who have already paid money and arenât getting refunds.
Fair point. While the numbers arenât the highest in the world, when you tack them onto 1.5 million founders sold, plus whatever it made after launch. Its not like they are broke. They should be offering refunds at the very least but, i dont think thats ever coming .
Of course this is a point.
But Iâd argue, that the majority of players is still just using F2P and thus canât be considered âexisting customersâ. Iâd call them âpotential future customersâ and they are currently not goin to buy anything.
And because of the negative publicity, the game will attract less and less possible new customers.
And in regards to the refunds, assuming you are talking mainly about the founders package:
My standpoint is, that you are not eligible for a refund. Simply because you got 3 days headstart and the servers were up, you could play. You got some digital items that you could use and the only thing that couldnât be used to the full extent, is the aura.
Of course if you had a bug and couldnât use you crystals in the shop, thatâs something different. But the founders packs were intended for people, who wanted to play before the F2P start. And it could be used (which I and my GF did for example, without any problems), so why refund (assuming there was no forced bug preventing you from playing/using the digital goods at all)?
But this is all a different topic discussed in several other threads already
As a conclusion, I think we will not reach a common ground. Because you are arguing based on the assumption that cloning as:
Where I say:
WAT? FORUM DISAGREE WIT U!!!
According to the forum professional IT experts itâs as simple as taking a picture with your phone â you âsnapshotâ the database and copy it over to the new server. Takes a few seconds, right? I mean literally, copy and paste, right?
AMIRITE?!?!?!?
/s
Hehe yeah right.
This is basically (okay a bit exaggerated by you) what Piercy and I discussed
And I tend to disagree with the forum and the rage hereâŚshame on me for that.