Besides gremlins and touching yourself, what causes servers to crash?

[Pelican]

What is it that causes game servers to crash?

I assume these are tens of thousands of dollars each machine units housed in temperature controlled rooms and structures that are attended to by a team of professional server admins who all have mohawks and ride skateboards around half-pipes in the office while shooting each other with nerf guns.

[ranger2410]

What is it that causes game servers to crash?

I assume these are tens of thousands of dollars each machine units housed in temperature controlled rooms and structures that are attended to by a team of professional server admins who all have mohawks and ride skateboards around half-pipes in the office while shooting each other with nerf guns.

Cockroaches. No lie, i tried to play my gamecube the other day, it's been in storage. And it turns on and everything, but won't run. Turns out cockroaches had been using it as a nesting box. pretty gross. Cockroach **** over everything on the inside when I took it apart, and cockroach corpses and busted egg pods.

[Pelican]

Cockroaches. No lie, i tried to play my gamecube the other day, it's been in storage. And it turns on and everything, but won't run. Turns out cockroaches had been using it as a nesting box. pretty gross. Cockroach **** over everything on the inside when I took it apart, and cockroach corpses and busted egg pods.

Like Hellbugs.

[mrgrimezHD]

Many things can be factored into why servers crash, Developers can rent out huge sections known as 'Server Farms' and still encounter errors which can well and truely bite the bullet and as the phrase goes.. ''**** up''.

Server Load - It can be one of the main reasons why Servers crash out, hence why Betas are released pre launch in order to 'Stress Test' the servers allowing people to join in mass quantities. The servers are monitored during this time and analyzed to gain information for future tweaks / updates.

Networking - The infrastructure of a game is a complex wall of code, in which it talks to servers and gives out hundreds of thousands of command lines in order for a game to run smoothly online, every time you connect to a server, lobby or even log online the servers have to handle all this information in a split second, which can sometimes bog down and become static, thus rendering it to a 'crashed' state.

Configuration Errors - As mentioned above, everything you see visually is basically an image map or modelling, but beneath all of that is complex code which is used for everything to run smoothly. However if a single piece of code gets mis typed whether it be an individual letter or symbol then it can be catastrophic.

Server Hardware Issues - Servers are massive machines, which in order to handle thousands of packets (information to me and you) it needs to be pretty beefy, especially when Online Gaming is concerned. What some people don't understand is the Servers are doing all of the work behind the scenes and if Hardware Failure happens then it can have a domino effect if that particular server is linked to another.

Back up Systems - Think of these like the 'Restore Point' for windows, only these are designed to replace EVERYTHING which was stored on a server in the first place, everything down to for example Program scripts / C++ Coding files / .SYS files and everything else which makes a game run, it can take MASSIVE amounts of CPU resources and if these Back Up Systems kick in and a problem occurs, then it can take a while to sort the problem out.

Basically it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

There's many more reasons why a Server can be fine one minute and be rendered useless the next, all that I know is to keep a 'farm' of these servers alive can be very expensive, let alone having a dedicated team to correct the problems if they arise.

[Dist0rt3d Hum0r]

Many things can be factored into why servers crash, Developers can rent out huge sections known as 'Server Farms' and still encounter errors which can well and truely bite the bullet and as the phrase goes.. ''**** up''.

Server Load - It can be one of the main reasons why Servers crash out, hence why Betas are released pre launch in order to 'Stress Test' the servers allowing people to join in mass quantities. The servers are monitored during this time and analyzed to gain information for future tweaks / updates.

Networking - The infrastructure of a game is a complex wall of code, in which it talks to servers and gives out hundreds of thousands of command lines in order for a game to run smoothly online, every time you connect to a server, lobby or even log online the servers have to handle all this information in a split second, which can sometimes bog down and become static, thus rendering it to a 'crashed' state.

Configuration Errors - As mentioned above, everything you see visually is basically an image map or modelling, but beneath all of that is complex code which is used for everything to run smoothly. However if a single piece of code gets mis typed whether it be an individual letter or symbol then it can be catastrophic.

Server Hardware Issues - Servers are massive machines, which in order to handle thousands of packets (information to me and you) it needs to be pretty beefy, especially when Online Gaming is concerned. What some people don't understand is the Servers are doing all of the work behind the scenes and if Hardware Failure happens then it can have a domino effect if that particular server is linked to another.

Back up Systems - Think of these like the 'Restore Point' for windows, only these are designed to replace EVERYTHING which was stored on a server in the first place, everything down to for example Program scripts / C++ Coding files / .SYS files and everything else which makes a game run, it can take MASSIVE amounts of CPU resources and if these Back Up Systems kick in and a problem occurs, then it can take a while to sort the problem out.

Basically it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

There's many more reasons why a Server can be fine one minute and be rendered useless the next, all that I know is to keep a 'farm' of these servers alive can be very expensive, let alone having a dedicated team to correct the problems if they arise.

Basically what I was going to say, only much much more detailed.

[mrgrimezHD]

Basically what I was going to say, only much much more detailed.

Well I guess I saved you some time then haha

[Dist0rt3d Hum0r]

Well I guess I saved you some time then haha

Yes, yes you did, and are obviously more knowledgeable on the subject than I.

How dare you bring logic and knowledge to this forum! Out! Out I say!