Hello Awakening,

I wanted to give you a quick update on some recent work I’ve been completing behind the scenes.

First, our web server has been upgraded to a newer OS. This resolves some issues that had started appearing on the older system. It will improve system security, and should improve overall stability too. I’ve also refined the Live server’s database backup and remote archive scripts. These are now more resource-friendly, putting less strain on the server's resources, including disk and network I/O. This should help reduce the occasional lockups we’ve seen recently, which are likely due to our databases steadily growing larger due to the 10+ years of data within them, which has resulted in increasing server load when the backups are created and archives dispatched.

The bigger change is new automation that I’ll be trialling with next week’s scheduled restarts. All going to plan, the Test Server will now automatically refresh with the latest Live Server database archive every Monday at 2 AM US Eastern Time.

Here’s how it works:

• At 2 AM on Monday, the latest archive will download (rate-limited for stability). During my testing this usually took about an hour or slightly more.
• Once the download completes, the Awakening Core3 Test Server will go offline for ~20-30 minutes while the archive is extracted and the databases are updated.
  • The extended downtime is due to host machine limitations: its storage is only provisioned to hold one full database and one compressed archive at a time.

What this means for you:

• You’ll always have an up-to-date Test Server environment for experimenting before making changes or commiting to using a rare item/resource on the Live Server.
• Event Coordinators can design and plan events using current data without waiting on manual updates.
• Support staff can more easily reproduce and resolve technical issues related to community support tickets.
• Developers gain a reliable space to test changes with data that closely matches Live.

Overall, this should make both player experience and staff workflows smoother. Thanks for bearing with the short Test Server downtime while the process runs. This change should pay off in better reliability and more opportunities for everyone. If you've read this far, thanks for your time. I'll be moving onto getting a WIP launcher update finished next which should resolve some issues which players have reported. After that, hopefully I'll have time to continue getting a couple more WIP bosses finished so you all have some new foes to hunt for and loot to collect.