So lately I have noticed a bunch of people asking why there are a lot of restarts on ECC, and I thought it would be only fair to give a little insight into some of the things we do, to help you guys understand a bit more of whats going on behind the scenes. Most of the server restarts are due to plugin updates, and almost all of them are planned. We very rarely crash because andrewkm and many other developers have worked very hard in maintaining our server stability. With that said, we believe here at ECC that it is important to stay on the cutting edge for plugins and to make sure that we have everything as up to date and as recent as possible, to provide you guys with the best experience we can. Therefor, if a plugin update requires a restart, we will usually do it. Though, we like to try to wait until more off-peak times to do this. Most plugins don't have updates all the time, but sense we run so many vital ones, it can appear to happen a lot. Its also important to keep in mind that minecraft is not a game that was designed to hold 200 players at a time, so it requires a lot of delicate work by both andrew and the developers to make sure everything is going as planned. The second reason for restarts is due to very large world edits. Believe it or not, large world edits can actually put a strain on any server, and can cause lag over time if many are done. This is why as a precaution, we like to do a restart after a very large world edit is done. (Again, we also prefer to wait until off-peak times to do these, and will usually restart for both this reason and the previous at the same time) The third reason, would be emergency down time. This is VERY rare. I believe in the last 2 months it has happened only a single time. Usually "emergency downtime" is our planned reaction to huge exploits (for instance, item duplication). Sense we are an economy server, if someone finds a way to effectively duplicate items, it has the potential to ruin an economy the community has worked so hard to maintain. That's why we believe it to be in our best interest to close the server while a fix is worked on. * * We are always in constant contact with many very experienced developers, so if this sort of thing happens, we are almost always able to report it right away, and a fix would happen almost immediately. Because chances are, if an Item duplication works on ECC, it works other places too. I hope this answers the questions regarding our restarts, downtime, and crashes, and if you have any other questions feel free to ask and I will answer it as best I can.
I think that it might be a good idea to set a specific time each day to do the updates / restarts. Or at least give a 15 min warning. these immediate restarts are not a good gaming experience. I have had a restart occur just after setting an auto wheat harvest and have then come back only to have all wheat and seeds gone. I know the restart did not cause them to disappear. If there was a certain time these restarts happened or if there was more warning, these situations could be avoided.
I agree, there are certain situations where it may be a better experience for the user if we had it more planned, but unfortunately there are many things that we can not plan for, like when certain plugins will be updated. Therefore, it is difficult to set a single time.
If you do it once daily at a specific time, then at most, any one plugin update would be delayed by 23 hours. Unless the plug in update is for a critical issue, then waiting 23 hours until the next scheduled update would provide a better player experience.
The issue is, most updates are critical. To be honest, a lot of the plugin updates are optimization oriented, and our goal is to try to make the server as fast and as lag free as possible for players. Also, It is really unreasonable to expect our updates to happen at the same time daily. Updates are not an automated process, and it is done manually and 100% by andrewkm, who contrary to popular belief is not a robot [citation needed]. In closing. We would love to make the process more automated and clean, but the way we are currently doing it is what works best for the players and the management. If a better option becomes available to us, we will pursue it.
