Oskar Linden talks about the recent hardware failure at Linden Lab

A few days ago Oskar Linden replied to second life down again? unscheduled maintenance? thread on the SL Forums. Oskar talks about the recovery process of the recent hardware failure at one of the data centers Linden Lab operates.  Thanks to Oskar Linden for letting the SL community know about this failure. Check out the message below…

These issues were the result of a hardware failure in one of our datacenters. The issue was noticed immediately and acted upon within minutes. A key first step is intentionally disabling logins and billing. The second step is recovering the hardware or working around it. The third step is bringing services back online slowly to make sure all is well. This entire process took 30 minutes. Say what you will, but that is a very impressive response time. After core functionality was returned we focused on regions that had been affected and worked to get them stable again. 

I know it is frustrating when events like this happen, and we understand the difficulties it is from your perspective. We react as quick as possible to stabilize the grid once events like this arise. 

__Oskar

Linden Lab has announced scheduled maintenance for today (9th May) and tomorrow on 10th May starting from 6pm SLT. The SL maintenance is set to last around 8 hours. Expect crashes and delays for some time during the downtime hours. It would be nice to know what is being fixed/changed during these scheduled maintenance periods.

[Posted 9:45am PDT, 8 May 2012] We will be performing scheduled maintenance today, Wednesday and Thursday of this week (May 8, May 9, May 10), beginning at 6:00pm PDT each day. Each maintenance is scheduled to last around 8 hours. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects, as some regions may be taken offline and remain offline for extended periods of time. Please follow this blog for any updated information.

Keep checking…http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ for the latest grid updates.

Core network maintenance update

Yesterday Linden Lab performed maintenance on the core network for Second Life from 6am SLT for a few hours. The maintenance was finally completed after 9am SLT. As expected there was another SL downtime during this period and I believe many decided to log into OpenSim grids like last Thursday.

[Completed 9:05am PDT, 30 April 2012] The maintenance on our core network has been completed. We are actively working on bringing the final remaining offline regions back online.

[Updated 6:00am PDT, 30 April 2012] We will be beginning our core network maintenance shortly. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects or making inworld L$ transactions. Some residents may experience delays logging inworld.

Check out this SL concurrency graph during the past 24 hours.

Check out this SL concurrency graph during the past week showing the two SL downtimes.

SL grid instability saw two huge peaks during the past week way above normal levels.

 

Hopefully things will get back to normal in the week ahead and not like 3-4 years ago with downtime Wednesdays etc .

 

Unscheduled maintenance update

Yesterday Linden Lab published an update on the Second Life Grid Status Reports page relating to the long downtime of the grid on Thursday 26th April 2012. This may or not happen again next Monday due to scheduled maintenance to correct the bug that caused the downtime a few days ago.

We will have to see what happens…

[UPDATED 2:30pm PDT, 27 April 2012] On April 26, 2012, the Second Life engineering team was performing an upgrade to the core network. The upgrade triggered a bug that led to downtime and instability throughout the day. The maintenance described in this post is scheduled for Monday, April 30 at 6am PT in order to correct the bug and may result in additional service interruption. We apologize for the service disruption and appreciate everyone’s patience.

SL concurrency levels went down to 10, 885 during the SL unscheduled maintenance on Thursday 26th April 2012 according to the SL Grid Survey which is a surprising low figure. However saying that it’s been much lower in previous years like in 2007 during downtime Wednesdays where the grid was down for many hours. In 2012 there’s around 30, 000 to 65, 000 logged into Second Life at any given point in time.

I would of thought all 10, 885 avatars will be logged off during the SL outrage so perhaps they were AFK, ghosts or something else. A few years ago on 2010-04-29 it went down to 6, 390 then on 2010-04-30 down to 4, 384 which caused a lot of service interruption. Check out the Historical Daily Concurrency graph showing the low peaks since 5th December 2009.

Else where it seemed like the SL community on Thursday were trying to log into opensim grids during the unscheduled maintenance time-frame.

• InWorldz grid saw a rise of 352 (normal 200 – 250)
• OSGrid saw a rise to 196 (normal 140)

Login failed due to undergoing unscheduled maintenance

It seems like Second Life is offline due to undergoing unscheduled maintenance right now. Latest updates check http://status.secondlifegrid.net/. I have not seen this Login Failed message for a while. On going discussions from the SL community about this can found on Plurk, Twitter, SLUniverse and the SL Forums. Hopefully logins will resume soon!

Login failed

Due to system problems. logins to Second Life have been disabled until further notice. Please monitor the Grid Status page 

for updates.  

Problems effecting logins, marketplace orders and SLwebsite services etc.

 

Logging into Virtual Worlds Grid

I signed up for Virtual Worlds Grid today which is an OpenSim based grid running Second Life using OpenSim 0.7.3.1 Release. I downloaded and installed the Imprudence 1.3.2 viewer to log into the Virtual Worlds Grid. You can also use Pheonix, Hippo, Windows, Mac or Linux clients to use the Virtual Worlds Grid too.

Virtual Worlds Grid was founded in April 2007 and it’s been growing steadily every year since then. Here are the current grid statistics as of 6:20am SLT (11th April 2012) for the Virtual Worlds Grid. 

Users in World: 2      Regions: 928      Total Users: 672      Active Users (Last 30 Days): 46

It’s a rather tiny OpenSim grid with more regions then users which is very interesting and it’s tiny compared with other well-known OpenSim grids. Only 46 users have logged in during the past 30 days and when I was logged in there was only one other user logged in. The sign-up process is very straightforward to create your avatar account and log into the grid from the left hand side of the page.

Fill out your First Name, Last Name, Email, Password and type of avatar. 

Once completed and press the create button it will redirect you to this page saying Your account has been created.

Check out this helpful tutorial page to get started > Instructions for entering Virtual Worlds Grid. 

Snapshot showing logging into the Virtual Worlds Grid using viewer 1 based Imprudence viewer.

Snapshot showing me logged in at the Virtual Worlds College location. It’s worth walking around Virtual Worlds College and nearby regions if you are new to the grid.

Snapshot showing the World Map at zoom out.

I recommend teleporting to different regions across the map to explore them if you are new to the grid.

Let me know what you think of the grid ?

Linden Helper and Greeter Regions turned off

According to New SL Sims in the past week it seems Linden Lab have turned off two Linden Helper Islands and two Greeter Islands which is a real shame because the beta program could of been a big success in Second Life. I first noticed Linden Helper and Greeter regions back in early November 2011 where many new residents were directly teleported to after signing up. There were Lindens helping answering questions from new residents but then in January 2012 everything went quiet with the regions being inaccessible to anyone. I guess the beta program failed in some way or another!

It could of worked out if both Lindens and volunteer groups came together to help new residents but that didn’t happen sadly. Linden Lab have turned off the following regions…

• Linden Lab HQ 5
• Linden Lab Meeting 1
• Linden Lab Meeting 2
• Linden Lab Meeting 3
• Linden Lab Meeting 4
• SL Work Hub 1
• SL Work Hub 2
• SL Work Hub 3
• SL Work Hub 4
• Welcome Island 27
• Welcome Island Clone2 

I guess things didn’t work out in the end.

 

 

Expect Last Names update shortly by Rodvik Linden

Official update on SL Forums today

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Your-Avatar/Update-Last-Names-Roundtable/td-p/1409403

__________________________________
About 18 hours ago or so Rodvik Linden responded to his Quick update post on Last Names saying that he will respond to the issue sometime today more in-depth which is a step forward again I think. Most likely the details will be published on the SL official blog or Rodvik’s SL web online profile page. Stay tuned!

Spaceport Alpha, Spaceport Bravo & NASA CoLab sims closed down

UPDATE

According to Katherine W Prawl there is good news about the ISM project in Second Life. Because of a recent accepted donation, the ISM team should be able to bring back the sims online when payment issues are resolved. ”ISM is coming back (as soon as we get the account straightened out)”. This is really good news and I’ll look forward to visiting ISM when it returns. YAY!

————————————————–

It seems like Spaceport Alpha, Spaceport Bravo and NASA CoLab sims have already closed down this year. I was planning to visit the space sims again in Second Life this week but I found that the main ones I wanted to visit are no longer on the grid which is really sad news. I searched for the regions on the weekly New SL Sims in past week thread on the SLUniverse Forums and all three were listed there.

• Spaceport Alpha – been offline since mid January 2012
• Spaceport Bravo – been offline since mid Janaury 2012
• NASA CoLab – been offline since early February 2012

Today when I looked at the map it shows the remaining active space regions without the three Second Life space sims listed above. The teleports and SLurls failed straight away which is a real shame to be honest. To see these historical Second Life space locations disappear from Second Life completely is heart breaking.

• http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport Alpha/47/82/23
• http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/42/75/27
• http://slurl.com/secondlife/NASA%20CoLab/244/110/23

The snapshot belows shows a map of the space regions back in July 2011.

Check out my blog post called Space exploration places in Second Life 2011.

The snapshot belows shows a map of the space regions back in July 2010. Since then various regions have been disappearing and it’s very alarming to see it so empty in the (above map).

There has been no explanation as to why these space SL sims have suddenly gone from the grid. If anyone knows why? Please feel free to comment. Thanks!

InWorldz reaches 50, 000 registered users milestone

InWorldz has now reached a big milestone hitting the 50, 000 total registered users mark. Congratulations to InWorldz and this is now another giant leap for InWorldz. This is really exciting and I believe there will be a 50k party to celebrate this amazing milestone.

50, 000 total users

1000 total users

InWorldz users milestones so far

• “The first 1, 000 took almost a year.. the second 1, 000 just a bit over a month..”
• 1, 000 members – 16th February 2010
• 2, 000 members – 14th May 2010 (growth chat)
• 5, 000 members - 20th June 2010
• 6, 000 members – 29th June 2010
• 7, 000 members - 4th July 2010
• 10, 000 members – 12th August 2010
• 20, 000 members – 21st October 2010
• 25, 000 members – 12th December 2010
• 30, 000 members – 1st February 2011
• 40, 000 members – 15th July 2011
• 50, 000 members – 15th January 2012
• 100, 000 members – Early 2014

Continue to watch the growth via the InWorldz Login website.

SL Predictions 2011 Check List

Here are my predictions I made last year for 2011. Time to see if any came true or not..

• A new Linden Lab CEO – Success - Rod Humble started in mid January 2011 as the new Linden Lab CEO.
• Mesh will be officially launched - Success - Mesh was still being developed during the first half of 2011 until 23rd August when Mesh went live across the grid. Mesh is now in many well known viewers!
• Groups will be raised from 25 to 40 - Success- Linden Lab enabled 42 for the groups limits in early 2011.
• Teens introduced to the Main Grid -Success- Linden Lab merged the grids together on 21st January 2011. 
• Major TPVs will switch over to using Viewer 2 based code - Success -
• Educational organizations leave SL cause of land increased prices - Success - There were alot of Educational organizations that left Second Life due to funding/land prices etc during 2011. 
• More residents moving to OpenSim grids etc - Success – In 2011 there have been more regions created than there was last year and I believe there has been more interest about OpenSim grids this year. OSGrid reached the 10, 000 regions milestone this month which is incredible. 
• More press news and projects from Linden Lab -- Success – There have been various press updates this year through the inworld LL press group. Linden Lab launched Linden Realms, Viewer 3, Mesh, 42 groups, Greeter project, new web SL online profiles, new search and more this year. 
• SL concurrency to reach 100, 000 users online - Fail -SL concurrency numbers failed to reach 88, 000 or more this year.
• LL ends Viewer 1.23 support  - Fail – Still no confirmation about this year about Viewer 1.23 support ending. It’s no longer under development (2009) but it’s still available to download via the SL wiki. 
• The SL Economy will hopefully grow stronger  - Fail - Remained steady and flat in 2011 but not much growth as many expected it would be.

Second Life predictions for 2012

• Early SL Predictions for 2012 - Me
• 7 Important Second Life Predictions For 2012 - Eddi Haskell
• My Predictions for 2012 - Second Thoughts
• 11 Predictions for 2012 for MMOs, Virtual Worlds, Social Media - Second Tense
• More will be added soon here!

Linden Lab upgrading simulator system software this week

Starting today at 5am SLT PDT Linden Lab will be upgrading the simulator system softwareon Agni in Second Life. This will cause a number of region restarts across the grid while the “Critical OS Software Upgrade” is taking place.

[Posted 7:00AM PDT, 30 Sept 2011] Starting Monday October 3rd at 5:00AM PDT, we will be upgrading our simulator system software on the Agni main grid, which will require an extended period of region restarts. We expect this maintenance to last at least a week. We will update this blog when work begins, as well as throughout the process.

Linden Lab expects the maintenance to last at least a week. Keep checking the Second Life Grid Status Reports blog for the latest news.

Second Life user concurrency 2011 so far

So far in 2011 the Second Life user concurrency has been trending downwards and dropping mostly during the year so far. There has no major high peaks during 2011 which has been disappointing. Many would say it’s been declining/flat this year and to be fair it has been. Don’t forget to visit my SL Metrics page for more interesting statistics.

The Second Life daily median concurrency started well at the start of 2011 at around 56, 000 and now it appears to be hovering above 50, 000. The daily user concurrency average for August 2011 seems to be around 31, 000 to 65, 000 at peak. I wonder if things will pick up during the rest of 2011 or continue to decline further?.

User hours is another interesting area to focus on and again it shows a large drop in user hours in Second Life between Q1 2010 and Q2 2011. Check out this graph to see the user hours (millions).

• Q1 2010 – 116
• Q2 2010 – 109
• Q3 2010 – 105
• Q4 2010 – 105
• Q1 2011 – 104
• Q2 2011 – 103

Check out these updated graphs from the Grid Survey showing high, balanced and slipping stats.

• Maximum Daily Concurrency - Graph shows the max concurrency between the 5th December 2009 to 21st August 2011
• Median Daily Concurrency - Graph shows the median concurrency between the 5th December 2009 to 21st August 2011
• Mean Daily Concurrency - Graph shows the mean concurrency between the 5th December 2009 to 21st August 2011
• Minimum Daily Concurrency - Graph shows the min concurrency between the 5th December 2009 to 21st August 2011

In January 2009 there was a huge peak in Second Life user concurrency that reached the 80k milestone and then almost reached the 90k milestone in late March 2009. The 100k milestone I think won’t happen for a long time yet however that would be nice to see it reach that figure in the next few years.

• 88, 220 – 29th March 2009 at 1:28pm SLT
• 86, 584 – 15th March 2009 at 3:57pm SLT
• 81, 913 – 28th February 2009 at 2:50pm SLT
• 80,000 – 12th January 2009
• 80, 528 – 11th January 2009 at 2:46pm SLT
• 80, 195 – 11th January 2009

August 2011

• New Signups: 16, 000 (average per day)
• Stats released from SLCC 2011

April 2011

• Second Life user-concurrency falls to lowest levels in two years
• SL Population Crash Continues
• New Signups: Around 10, 000 – 11, 000