Just lately, over the last month and a half or so, regular Second Life users will have spotted an increase in subsystem outages, including transaction failures, object and teleportation problems, and just general weirdness. Systems seem to be experiencing trouble that you could just about set a watch by.
Linden Lab's Frank Ambrose explains that that is to be expected and there's some more to come as some of the oldest pieces of the Second Life infrastructure are ripped out for replacement or relocation from their original site at the San Francisco data-center.
"We are proceeding very cautiously as we complete the data center work, and have well established testing policies that we are following," writes Ambrose, "However, as with all infrastructure migration projects, which impact complex legacy systems, there will be occasional issues."
"Some of these issues are anticipated, in which case we will actively inform [users] through grid status blog posts. In addition to these posts, I've asked Les Linden (Les Currier), who is the lead Program Manager for our Global Technology team, to begin posting regular updates to [users]. Look for Les to begin posting later this week."
Certainly, if the grid is to evolve (and maybe shed a bit of unnecessary lag), there's a lot of legacy systems to be done away with, many of which have just been too sensitive, critical and just plain persnickety to deal with to-date.
What we don't know, at this stage, is quite how long the work will continue. The best estimate available at the present time is "a few weeks."
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