NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

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IcEWoLF
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NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by IcEWoLF »

It appears NFo became very slow at updating servers when Valve releases updates...
They use to be one of the first servers to update, now, I feel it's becoming one of the last to update their servers.

There are other servers that have been updated and players playing, while our servers are empty and people can't join because NFo takes a while to update their servers...

This is not just main server, other NFo hosted servers are going through this process, hopefully this will be addressed and the system will be optimized for faster update response time.

An Hour and half and still counting....
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by kraze »

Our update system is actually one of the better systems out there at the moment. It will automatically start working on updates as soon as they are posted to Steam news. Unfortunately, Valve doesn't always do that and that is when the chaos comes...

While it may seem we are slow, we truly aren't. The perception that we are slow when it comes to updating comes from other providers who don't make a single connection to Steam and then internally roll it out to their clients.

Most if not just about all host allow their clients to have an update button to Steam which they spam when an update comes out until their server is updated. While that may be nice for that single server it doesn't work for us.

There are also a lot of other factors at play here such as update size. This specific CSGO update was 1.3GB which is fairly big for a game patch. Usually when updates are this big we also don't get optimal download speed.
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by Edge100x »

We're still as fast as ever. Valve just releases very large patches sometimes that take extra time to update. Our efficient centralized patching system ensures that all servers are updated at once, which means that all machines must receive the patch before it's applied.

Tonight's CS:GO update was 2 GB (1.3 compressed), so it was one of the larger ones. It's not clear why Valve touched so many large .vpk files with this update, instead of isolating the changes into a single extra patch file (as even very old games like Quake 3 did).

If you run a TF2 server, you might have noticed that the TF2 server update recently was applied quickly (most of the delay on that one was just waiting for Valve). It was a much smaller patch. We also have been rapidly and effectively handling the complicated SteamPipe conversions for customers that Valve has been releasing -- HL2:MP, then DoD:S, and CS:S all went smoothly here on our side, as we had prepared the scripts in advance (plugin authors were a bit slower on the uptake, unfortunately, and many did not have updates ready).

All that said, we're always working to make our systems even better, and I'll be exploring options to try to compensate for Valve's potentially huge patches in the future. With the SteamPipe system of .vpk files for all of their games, it will be easy for them to make this mistake again.
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by IcEWoLF »

Edge100x wrote:We're still as fast as ever. Valve just releases very large patches sometimes that take extra time to update. Our efficient centralized patching system ensures that all servers are updated at once, which means that all machines must receive the patch before it's applied.

Tonight's CS:GO update was 2 GB (1.3 compressed), so it was one of the larger ones. It's not clear why Valve touched so many large .vpk files with this update, instead of isolating the changes into a single extra patch file (as even very old games like Quake 3 did).

If you run a TF2 server, you might have noticed that the TF2 server update recently was applied quickly (most of the delay on that one was just waiting for Valve). It was a much smaller patch. We also have been rapidly and effectively handling the complicated SteamPipe conversions for customers that Valve has been releasing -- HL2:MP, then DoD:S, and CS:S all went smoothly here on our side, as we had prepared the scripts in advance (plugin authors were a bit slower on the uptake, unfortunately, and many did not have updates ready).

All that said, we're always working to make our systems even better, and I'll be exploring options to try to compensate for Valve's potentially huge patches in the future. With the SteamPipe system of .vpk files for all of their games, it will be easy for them to make this mistake again.
Thanks again!

I was just a bit frustrated mainly because I've seen so many other servers online but all the Managed NFo servers being un-joinable.
Keep up the great work NFo!
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by IcEWoLF »

Today was another example of another slow update...

John, hopefully this is going to be fixed soon, about 5 hours tonight since the release of the update and all NFo hosted servers (except unmanaged) are not able to accept players. I hope you can work a plan where users can simply update their individual servers via managed panel so we don't have to wait for you to roll the update.

This is something that is becoming repetitive on update days.

I hope you can understand my frustration.
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by Renegade »

I have to agree with IcEWoLF, it seems these updates are getting slower and slower, I personally would love a way to roll out the update on my end. I know you guys are doing the best you can, you prove it day in and day out, but there has to be a better solution to this.
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by Edge100x »

Please don't cherry pick when the updates are slow and believe it's a trend :). Other recent updates have been rolled out hyper-fast. For instance, the recent TF2 updates were all handled within minutes, as were the Garrysmod updates, and the NS2 update.

The system had a new bug in it tonight (brand new, due to a change made earlier in the day to improve it) that caused today's CS:GO update to be missed and required it to be manually triggered by staff. Today's update was also 3 GB, so it took extra time to roll out once it was triggered. So, the delay was partially due to our system (from a new bug that's now fixed), and partially due to Valve (their large change set caused it to take something like an extra hour).

Due to the high-performance design of our systems with a shared base folder that's synced to a master, it's not possible for customers to individually roll out updates on managed machines. That won't be changing in the foreseeable future. When our system works correctly (as it normally does), requiring manual updates by customers would result in slower and more work-intensive rollouts.

We're not sitting on our laurels and are continually upgrading and tweaking systems here to keep up with Valve's adjustments (their switch to SteamPipe and associated changes, their experimentation with different update frequencies and branches, etc.) and to handle updates more robustly.
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Re: NFo becoming slow on updating servers?

Post by IcEWoLF »

Edge100x wrote:Please don't cherry pick when the updates are slow and believe it's a trend :). Other recent updates have been rolled out hyper-fast. For instance, the recent TF2 updates were all handled within minutes, as were the Garrysmod updates, and the NS2 update.

The system had a new bug in it tonight (brand new, due to a change made earlier in the day to improve it) that caused today's CS:GO update to be missed and required it to be manually triggered by staff. Today's update was also 3 GB, so it took extra time to roll out once it was triggered. So, the delay was partially due to our system (from a new bug that's now fixed), and partially due to Valve (their large change set caused it to take something like an extra hour).

Due to the high-performance design of our systems with a shared base folder that's synced to a master, it's not possible for customers to individually roll out updates on managed machines. That won't be changing in the foreseeable future. When our system works correctly (as it normally does), requiring manual updates by customers would result in slower and more work-intensive rollouts.

We're not sitting on our laurels and are continually upgrading and tweaking systems here to keep up with Valve's adjustments (their switch to SteamPipe and associated changes, their experimentation with different update frequencies and branches, etc.) and to handle updates more robustly.
Looking forward to see improvements and hopefully larger updates will no longer cause issues.
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