Battery backed cache, and in most cases better cross-platform driver compatibility because companies like Areca have product lines that aren't as wide spread as a systems integrator.

we can talk all day about how we are going to donate yadda yadda. with all this talk of donations and the absurdity of having a server with no access and the only access it has is a man who has pretty much dissappeared. This is sounding alot like a scam now. A day maybe 2 back online yeah.. 3 days going into four ok.. it seems a bit excessive especially when money is being asked for.

Thats not to say that I wouldnt donate but with all this talk about server costs yadda yadda.. hell with 1 grand you could buy a decent server pc with enough power to run its not like we see 500+ people a night anyway.. max we get these days is about 250 if that

Why in the world would that be needed for a EQ server? Those two raid cards take the price from relatively easy to do, to crazy expensive. $2400 vs $4000.

I can't even imagine a situation where you would need such a thing as opposed to a plain old UPS at 1/10th the cost. That's something a giant corporation like VISA would buy for redundancy in credit card transactions. I would imagine most etailers, unless you're the size of newegg, don't even have one. This is madness.

I've set Gaeorn up with a server on our farm. Hes working on setting it up but I think cavedude has the only backup of the database, so we still have to wait until Tuesday.

http://www.ihasaflavor.com/lolcats/this-is-sparta.jpg

http://xspblog.com/wp-content/upload...s-sparta-7.jpg

I can telly you that you would be wrong there. I recommend similar equipment to every single client when purchasing servers for their small and medium businesses. Giant megacorp has 2 or three sets of redundant servers. SMB has a single server with hot swap components and 4 hour service contracts with their vendors. A SMB can't afford multiples (well say they can't), but they hurt far worse than megacorp when their system goes down.

Yea but....this is an EQ server. Two redundant boxes plus two $800 raid cards is just a lot of money. Could get this done so much easier without the expensive raid cards.

If you don't know the difference between an Areca raid card with cache and an Intel ICH8R, then there is no point in me educating you. And besides, by the time you get large enough enterprise class SSDs to do what we need, you have exceeded the cost of the raid cards. If you go buy the cheapy consumer SSDs, you won't get the performance needed, and we'll be risking data loss at any time due to their notorious unreliability, particularly when doing lots of small writes (like the emu server does).

A battery backup for the raid card is so you can use the cache memory for write caching. Sure, you could theoretically rely upon a UPS, but even they sometimes loose power. Redundancy in the UPS reduces the chance of that, but all it takes is a moment without power to loose that write cache and you've corrupted your entire data set. So most raid card manufacturers won't allow you to do write caching unless they at least provide the option to add a battery to the card itself.

As to the cost, it is because we aren't buying the lower end of the list. We could save some of the cost by buying cards that do not have expandable cache memory. But then we don't have room for growth in the future. If we go that route and we need more cache memory in the future, we throw those cards away and buy new ones. Is it just me, or would that bother anyone else?

Ok, so we can set up a cheaper system. I think that has been covered repeatedly in this and other threads. But even then, it's only one system. The existing PEQ server, which lags horribly sometimes, cost about $1,200 (if my information is correct). So in theory, we could buy two like that for $2,400 and then have spent $2,400 on something that still lags horribly sometimes.

Or we can buy something better and eliminate the lag problem while we are at it. And if we are going to buy something better, why not get something that is expandable so we won't have to throw those systems away in a year when we exceed the capabilities of those systems to handle the load PEQ puts on them?

As to why we need to buy two, I already explained that in this thread. I feel no need to repeat that here.

You think this sounds like a scam now. I really don't know what to say to this. I guess don't donate if that is the way you feel. The service will still be free to all of you.

As to the time it has been down, what is a more reasonable response time for free hosting? The co-lo facility is providing their service for free because FNW used to work for them so they are doing it as a favor for an ex-employee. But given the service is being given away for free, the fact that they do anything at all to help when we have problems is nice of them.

FNW travels for his new job. Last I heard, he was out of town. Although he put in a reboot request, if the server did not come up properly after the reboot, he will have to deal with it in person when he is back in town. Should we expect him to fly back home sooner to deal with this in a more timely manner? Or should we expect that the hosting company is going to diagnose problems with the system and fix it for us (since clearly they aren't giving us enough for free already)?

Yes, the situation sucks. But we are getting what we are paying for. If you don't like the way it is right now, do something to change the situation. That's what we are trying to do.

And again, someone stating what it would cost to build a server that will run PEQ. This time its $1,000. Interesting that the old server, that cost $1,200, sometimes can barely keep up with the demands on it. But somehow, a $1,000 server will handle it all just fine. Course, then you'll have to find hosting for it since my offer to host requires dual servers for redundancy. But that should be easy to find. Everyone wants to spend money on hosting a free service, don't they?

Yes, I'm getting sarcastic due to my irritation with the constant battle over this. We are doing the best we feel that we can. CD and I spend six months discussing this back and forth before we settled on this. Do you think we didn't consider the alternatives? I can't even tell you how many different configurations we went through before we settled on this one.

We aren't asking for all of the money right now. In fact, we aren't asking for money at all. Were just stating where donated money will go and the reasons why someone might want to donate. If we got no donations at all, we would continue things as they are, doing the best we can.

If you feel you can suggest something better, spec out two identical systems (or a single system and let us know who will pay for the hosting) and explain how they cover the disk IO latency issue and have good expandability so we don't have to throw away hardware in the future. We'd be happy to look at such a setup. But please stop throwing out dollar amounts without a system spec behind it. We need hard info if we are to look at alternatives.

This is assuming CD comes up with a way to set this up where he is comfortable with it. We can't expect him to maintain something that is awkward or difficult for him in some way. However, I fully expect this could be used until we get the new servers set up. But ultimately it is up to CD and his discretion. I am making sure this system is ready for him when he gets back on Tuesday in the event he wishes to make use of it.

Even when CD is back on Tuesday, remember that his backups may not be right up to the time that PEQ went down. So it may be a choice of rolling back to an earlier backup or waiting until the current PEQ server is available to him again. I only say this so people understand why there may be further delays before PEQ is available for play again. It all depends on what CD has and how quickly it could be put into use.

/cheer Gaeorn :)


Sad the server is still down but I call PEQ home and thoroughly appreciate what everyone does to provide EQ for free and also what they are doing to try and get it back up and running. I made a donation after the last downtime a few weeks ago and that was the first downtime I had experienced since I started playing in February. As previously posted by CD when PEQ crashed last time the server had been up for over 400 days straight which is a huge effort for being free.

Yes we have a reset for a few minutes each night which is required tho annoying to us Oceanic players......:) but you could probably guarantee that those short downtimes don't equal the downtimes that you pay a monthly fee for on Live when they do their upgrades and coding changes etc. Oddly noone seems to complain about paying for that downtime .......

Come back PEQ we miss you /hug

I don't see the server lagging myself, I see the server bandwith not being high enough to have more than 250-300ish online without getting dropped while zoning.

It will all be well again in due time, if anything gives people a chance to to check out other servers and how things are over there. I personally have tried a few of the other ones 1999 and EZ for example but can only play them for so long before I lose interest. And eventually things will be back up and running because this is the server that tests the database allot of others are using. I know if I had the money to cut them a 4k check I would but for now it just going to be $25 or so at the end of month when the bills are paid and I can spare the money. If a few more did like wise we would be in great shape in no time. Just me ranting, see you all soon when the server comes back.

Never seen that happen until a few days ago....which follows with getting "world server disconnected" or something like that message. All that is new stuff to me. Have never seen "world server disconnected" message when sending tells in 2 years of play up until very recent.

Me and my hubby started back to EQ just this last month after MANY years of being being gone and recently even made it to LV 20 woo hoo :). After trying a few different servers we felt we found a home on PEQ. Everyone has been so friendly, especially with my sometimes NOOB questions and helpful like giving me buffs so I could get my levels back before my hubby got home and found out how dumb I really was when I fell though the tree in BB and lost 3 levels just doing a corpse run b/c I was lost LOL.

I know my hubby already told me he will be giving a donation this month...not sure if it will be $25 or $100 (we have 2 little kids 4yrs and 9months) it will depend on bills this month I am guessing. Hopefully no matter what it is it will be helpful.

Thank you guys for your hard work, and while we are sad PEQ is down we anxiously wait for it to come back up. Doesn't matter if it's one day or four days will we will be back when you are :)

Babes

I think some of these peeps should take a chill pill and be patient for several reasons.

1- Its free so as much as you wanna get ticked cause you cant play always remember...it's free.

2 - Dont bitch about what setup they wanna use....it's their servers when they get the money it will all be all right again..until then qwitchabitchin.


3 - refer to 1 and 2 and if you still cant seem to get it, grab a roll of duct tape and super glue and glue the tape to your lips.

as for donations, yes I havent made one yet im still catching up my bills but I will make one of many. as for the rest quit bitchin about the donations for somthing that is free for you to play.

If you dont trust them enough to help out and make our server run with perfection then maybe you shouldnt be taking advantage of the free part and then put your 2 cents in like as if you been paying monthly for 3 years