[erlang-questions] RamSan and the EveOnline architecture

[Joel Reymont]

"EVE Online is the world's largest game universe with over 75,000  
dedicated subscribers who play this Massively Multiplayer Online Role- 
playing Game (MMORPG) in a single, connected environment."

"Players connect to the game servers via the Internet and interact in  
real time with other players worldwide. EVE Online is truly a massive  
multiplayer game, where all 75,000 plus subscribers inhabit the same  
game world, not split into smaller limited groups or "shards".

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=286

Among other interesting things:

"Our SQL problems were essentially exterminated recently when we got  
our RAMSAN-400"

The problem:

"The EVE Online application software was running fast and scaling well  
to accommodate tens of thousands of simultaneous users with its 150  
IBM servers. However, the system's storage was being overwhelmed with  
huge amounts of small data requests. Ideal RAID Storage performance is  
achieved when the requested data blocks are large; conversely, RAID  
Storage performance is greatly reduced when requested data blocks are  
small. Typical disk access times are 2-5 milliseconds and what was  
needed was a faster disk access time of 20-50 microseconds."

And the solution:

"The RamSan-400 delivers 400,000 I/Os per second, has 3,000 MB of  
internal bandwidth with latency of less than 15 microseconds. "We did  
consider upgrading to faster disks, but the specs for the RamSan were  
so insane that we had to look into it", said Jörundur Matthíasson,  
Database Manager for CCP Games."

"EVE Online's underlying storage bottleneck is a classic problem with  
Online Transaction Processing. 10,000+ users accessing account  
information, warping across the galaxy, buying goods from black-market  
free-lance smugglers and upgrading their mining frigates to assault  
cruisers all at the same time puts immense stress on disk-based  
storage. The game makes 60 million process calls per day with around  
1,250 transactions per second at peak hours. The RamSan-400, based on  
solid-state disk (SSD) technology, is ideal for applications that have  
massive amounts of transactions randomly distributed across the  
storage media. Where disks are limited by how fast a platter can spin,  
SSD uses memory chips to read and write data. Transactions run as fast  
as the server can issue, and are not bottlenecked by grinding disk  
heads."

And the RamSan article:

http://www.superssd.com/success/ccpgames.htm

Mnesia on a RamSan anyone?

	Thanks, Joel

--
http://wagerlabs.com