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Second Life grid flutters to flutter a while longer
Just lately, over the last month and a half or so, regular Second Life users will have spotted an increase in subsystem outages, including transaction failures, object and teleportation problems, and just general weirdness. Systems seem to be experiencing trouble that you could just about set a watch by. Linden Lab's Frank Ambrose explains that that is to be expected and there's some more to come as some of the oldest pieces of the Second Life infrastructure are ripped out for replacement or relocation from their original site at the San Francisco data-center.
Second Life search upgrades in late January
It's always enlightening to hear from Frank Ambrose at Linden Lab. His posts about Second Life architecture, when they appear, are generally packed with information about upcoming plans, pending architecture changes and more. Clear, to the point and generally very few signs of spin (although a bit of distressing a tendency to type 'LAG' in all-caps). Overall, it's what we like to see more of. In a similar vein, there's a notice from Liana Linden about some late-January upgrades to the Google appliances that handle much of Second Life's search infrastructure. There's a few additional benefits in the wings there, to be sure, and well laid-out.
Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon
Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it's been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we've got a lot of ground to cover.
Ambrose updates on Second Life grid initiatives
January/February always seems to be a rockier time for the Second Life grid. The grid tends to behave quite unreliably through this period, though there never seem to be metrics that suggest that it is being placed under unusual user-loads during the unreliable stretches. Nevertheless there's a lot going on under the hood as Frank Ambrose, Linden Lab's Senior vice-president of Global Technology reminds us. Ambrose outlined a number of Q1-deliverable initiatives for the Second Life grid and has provided a status report outlining where most of those are at, and noting a few additional, and unexpected difficulties.
January Second Life grid technology updates
Linden Lab's Frank Ambrose (AKA FJ Linden) has provided another progress report on ongoing reforms to Second Life's underlying technological infrastructure. Ambrose's updates are among the most informative that you'll find on Linden Lab's blog. You may recall that in early 2007, Linden Lab switched the asset storage system to Isilon Systems storage clusters (the same sorts of high-performance storage-clusters that are used by Sony, ABC, Turner, NASA and Facebook).
Frank Ambrose updates on Second Life stability
Linden Lab's Frank Ambrose (FJ Linden) has issued another update on ongoing efforts to improve on the issues that have been a thorn in the side of Second Life users for some time. Ambrose points to the last four weeks as "a good stretch of grid stability" and implying that the only serious problems were confined to an approximately three hour period during the middle of the month. This leaves us wondering whether he's talking about the same grid that we're familiar with, or if perhaps there's not some new definition of stability that we might have missed the press release for. The last four weeks has seen no less than 20 unplanned stability issues reported on the grid's status blog, and a number that went unreported there. That's not even counting the failed rollout of SLS1.25 simulator code, which caused additional difficulties -- or issues with ancillary services.
