Oh some pretty serious datacenter debunking performed by noa.
noamineo wrote on Sep 29
th, 2020 at 7:57pm:
No personal experience, here, but I'm just going to lay a little logic and some maths on everyone.
First off:
*No, SSG is not logging every single trade in the game
*No, SSG is not logging every single time an otto's box is opened.
They just do not have the SPACE for that. Storage at the data center-level is very expensive, on the order of thousands of dollars per terabyte. I know what you're thinking "well, I can buy a 2tb hard drive on amazon for $45!" yes and we're all very proud of you. That's a consumer grade drive, datacenter-grade hard drives are a lot more expensive, AND they can't just buy any old drive and shove it all up in the system. Secondly, with Storage Area Networks(SANs) you only get a fraction of the raw capacity. This is to balance availability, speed, and redundancy, but basically if you have a drawer full of 6tb hard disks, your actual usable capacity is anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/4th of # of HDs x capacity of each HD.
There's no real difference between consumer grade and datacenter grade drives nowadays when it comes to capacity. The differences are the Interface ( SAS instead of SATA ) and the Drive Rotational Speed ( 15K instead of 7200rpm ). And you pay each RPM a huge premium as it means a lower seek time. ( parse : faster to write or read ). Just to clarify since Noa used the S acronym... a SAN is
not a NAS ( well it can be, but it usually is not, there's a dedicated server to which it's attached specially designed to have a huge throughput between the mass storage ( the SAN ) and the network. )
Now he barely mentionned that a given SAN capacity was not equal to the sum of the capacity of all it's disks. It's a tiny bit more complex than that and there's some fringe configurations where it's the case. ( when data preservation in case of failure is not important ) But most of the time SANs are not configured as JBODs ( Just a Bunch Of Disk ) but are in RAID. ( Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks )
The most used one are RAID 10 ( or RAID 0+1 ) and RAID 5. With RAID 10 you basically end up with half the capacity of the disks ( you make two identical piles of disks [ that's the 0 ( Stripping ) ] and you copy the data on each pile [ That's the 1 ( Mirroring ) ] and poor pereformances since the controller has to issue the commands twice. Obviously if a disk fail you still have the mirror so your data are safe.
Then there's RAID5, which reserves a part of the disk for something called Redundancy Code. This part of the disk allows the RAID controller to rebuild the lost data when a disk fails and usually takes up to 1/3rd of a disk... on each and every disk in the SAN. ( because we want to be able to recover in case of multiple disk failures )
AAH wrote on Sep 29
th, 2020 at 9:43pm:
The thing is I'd expect SSG to have a special game client that can simply attach to every active instance and monitor what the engine is doing
Personally I think that it's the same client... As can be seen in a client log that is not generated anymore :
The last played world is Ghallanda 23/12/2011 18:20:31
Highres Dat is up to date. 23/12/2011 18:20:33
...PatchComplete events finished 23/12/2011 18:20:33
15: "Ghallanda" @ 74.201.106.64:9004;74.201.106.64:9003 is UP and NOT FULL
queueNames: 4EEB3460-6B99-48E9-A335-712EFC218F9C;0BEBEF2C-5736-4E1A-B01C-ADF49576A98A
queueURLs: http://10.67.112.64:7082/LoginQueue;http://10.67.112.64:7081/LoginQueue
lastServed: 2490 nowServing: 2490 waitHint: 8,316
allowAdminRoles: Server,CustomerService,Observer,SeniorCustomerService,LeadCustomerService,Test
allowBillingRoles: TurbineEmployee,TurbineVIP,StormreachLimited,StormreachStandard,StormreachGuest,StormreachEUPre 23/12/2011 18:21:02
23/12/2011 18:21:02
gls url: https://gls-auth.ddo.com/GLS.AuthServer/Service.asmx 23/12/2011 18:21:02
23/12/2011 18:21:03
Username "Flavilandile" authenticated successfully 23/12/2011 18:21:03
23/12/2011 18:21:03
DDO Subscriptions: 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Game: ................ "DDO" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Description: ......... "Flavilandile" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Name: ................ "TOTO" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Status: .............. "Active" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
ProductTokens: ....... "eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_3,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_2,FULL,TREATED_AS_SUBSCRIBER,DDOPreview,StormreachGuest,F2PDDOUp,eStore_Feature_FavoredSoul,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_2,eStore_Feature_CharSlot,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_4,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_7,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_6,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_9,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_3,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_8,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_5,eStore_Feature_Artificer,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_2" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
CustomerServiceTokens: "" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
23/12/2011 18:21:03
Existing user object. 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Selected Subscription: 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Game: ................ "DDO" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Description: ......... "Flavilandile" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Name: ................ "TATA" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Status: .............. "Active" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
ProductTokens: ....... "eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_3,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_2,FULL,TREATED_AS_SUBSCRIBER,DDOPreview,StormreachGuest,F2PDDOUp,eStore_Feature_FavoredSoul,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_2,eStore_Feature_CharSlot,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_4,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_7,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_6,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_9,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SlotsUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_3,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_8,eStore_Feature_CharSlot_5,eStore_Feature_Artificer,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_1,eStore_Feature_AccountBank_SharedPlatUpgrade_2" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
CustomerServiceTokens: "" 23/12/2011 18:21:03
23/12/2011 18:21:03
Launcher.authenticator.Authenticated 23/12/2011 18:21:03
Transition to phase: WorldSelectControl 23/12/2011 18:21:04
23/12/2011 18:21:05
World status update initiated 23/12/2011 18:21:05
23/12/2011 18:21:05
Using the batched world status update & DatacenterServer.GetDatacenterStatus SOAP method 23/12/2011 18:21:05
23/12/2011 18:21:05
World status update complete 23/12/2011 18:21:05
Look at the nice lines : allowAdminRoles and AllowBillingRoles and then look at the ProductTokens one.
I haven't looked at the executables, but there's a fair level of chances that the client contains everything needed, and a special client is not needed.