Weekly Server Restart - Early Monday Afternoons

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Weekly Server Restart - Early Monday Afternoons

Postby oddministrator » 01 Dec 2015 16:40

At 2:00 PM CST every Monday the server will execute a simple restart. This typically results in about 1 minute of downtime.

Why restart the server?

Spigot, and Minecraft in general, doesn't do the best job at managing what it keeps loaded in memory. This often results in a gradual increase in the amount of memory being used, regardless of how many people are currently playing. This gradual increase can take weeks before it completely uses our available memory, but it isn't uncommon for more than 1Gb to be claimed after a week without a restart. Restarting the server gives Wafer a clean slate and helps ensure smooth performance.

Can't you do this when nobody is on?

We do! We have had a regularly scheduled task that performs a server restart in the wee hours of every morning since the server started. It only executes if nobody is logged in, however for the last month or so, we generally have people logged in all night, even if they are just AFK at a farm.

Why not do a hard restart in the early AM when the fewest people are logged in?

Because they're often AFK and sleeping. I want this weekly restart to impede your goals as little as possible. If we restart in the wee hours of the morning when people are AFK at their various farms, there will be several hours before they have a chance to log in again. Most of our player base is in the US and many of them have jobs or attend school during the day. A restart early in the afternoon gives them a chance to log back in when they get home without having missed a lot of game time. Additionally, there aren't typically very many people logged in during the early afternoon, so it shouldn't affect the active players. Even so, it only takes a minute or so for the server to restart, then they can log right back in and go back to mining and crafting.

Will I be caught off-guard?

You shouldn't be caught off-guard. Everyone reads these forums every day and remembers every detail of every post. Also, there will be a 5-minute and 1-minute in-game warning leading these restarts just in case that last statement isn't true. This should give you sufficient time to prepare.

I don't like this. You should change it!

Let's talk! This is all our vanilla Wafer, I'm just here to implement things. If you have any suggestions for improving how we do things, please start a discussion in the forums so everyone can participate.
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Re: Weekly Server Restart - Early Monday Afternoons

Postby RegularUsername » 03 Dec 2015 16:31

Thanks for the Update!
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