[barmar]

adamw, on 2020-April-22, 15:00, said:

Thanks for the info!

It sounds as though BBO is running its own servers. If that's the case have you considered moving to a cloud computing model? It offers a number of advantages, especially with scaling, and relatively few drawbacks. But you would need software changes regardless, so I know it won't happen overnight.

We're quite aware of the technologies available, and we use a number of them: Heroku, Cloudflare, Amazon AWS and RDS.

But our main server is a 20-year-old, 32-bit C application that can't take advantage of cloud computing.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2020-April-23, 11:11, said:

But our main server is a 20-year-old, 32-bit C application that can't take advantage of cloud computing.

And it sounds like someone wanted to save 16 of those precious 32 bits to identify each user too

[barmar]

pescetom, on 2020-April-23, 14:51, said:

And it sounds like someone wanted to save 16 of those precious 32 bits to identify each user too

No, it's just the size of an array of pointers to the structure with information about each user. Before the crisis it was 30000, now it's 64500. Each user uses around 1800 bytes of memory, so it adds up. The server is currently using about 2.5GB of virtual memory -- it can't scale much higher without being converted to 64 bit mode.

Another limitation is that the original Windows downloads the list of all users online, and it has a 16-bit field for the player numbers, so it will crash if there are more than 65K users. We've been brainstorming solutions to this, but what we'd really like to do is get rid of those users, but it's still needed for Vugraph.

[Sir John D]

barmar, on 2020-April-22, 09:25, said:

Probably not until we split the service in two: one server for Main/Casual Bridge Club, another server for everything else. This is going to take some time. We already know how to run separate BBO services, but they don't have access to the BB$ accounts, which are needed to be able to rent robots. We need to solve this problem.

There's a hard limit on the total of users + robots + tables. And when a tourney starts, all the tables that are needed add to that total. We've been hitting that limit during prime time, preventing more users from logging in.

When I asked when BBO was going to lift the limit of free tournaments as it looked like capacity during the evening was similar to earlier in the day, I did not expect them to shift the time. The UK are just trying to adjust to the times you gave in the first place, which of course will shift the volume. When I ask for BBO Help, the reply is more to do with letting clubs that make money have priority even if they have only been established since March 2020. On here, the problem is traffic using the BBO Site.

There is a message in the News in the BBO Club and a link to a message dated 1st April asking those in the UK to play from 11pm at night until 9am the next day (ie the best time to play). When I first saw that, I thought it was an April Fool. Is it for real? Does anyone from the UK play during the night?

What is the actual problem? I am not a computer expert, but when I see the same capacity of Users online AND a vast number of free tournaments, then I do not understand why it cannot be done in the evening with the same capacity of Users.

Please can someone help me understand as I have to field the complaints I am getting from Users who want to play in their usual tournaments.

Plus, if you do respond, then I would be grateful if you could use thick crayon.

Keep safe

[0 carbon]

barmar, on 2020-April-23, 11:11, said:

We're quite aware of the technologies available, and we use a number of them: Heroku, Cloudflare, Amazon AWS and RDS.

But our main server is a 20-year-old, 32-bit C application that can't take advantage of cloud computing.

But there are servers these days available from AMD and Intel and SSDs which are 100-1,000x faster than when BBO started.
Can't you migrate to a server with max RAM, Optane SSD, and max cores?

[barmar]

0 carbon, on 2020-April-26, 01:30, said:

But there are servers these days available from AMD and Intel and SSDs which are 100-1,000x faster than when BBO started.
Can't you migrate to a server with max RAM, Optane SSD, and max cores?

I'm talking about 20-year-old software, not hardware.