New server cluster
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We're happy to announce that we've just migrated our production server cluster to the new location. This is so exciting for our team, and here's why.
First, the new server cluster is based on brand new Intel Core i9-9900K processors which gives a performance boost to both userland and engine code. Our tests have shown a 15-30% increase in user CPU depending on the load profile. And the tick rate on all shards is now 20% faster—down to 2.2s/tick on shard3!
Second, we've switched our architecture to a containerized pool of applications orchestrated in a Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes is well known for having a pretty steep learning curve, and this was a serious challenge, but we've managed to find the right guy who joined our team and used his expertise to set up everything properly. Now, this makes our development and deployment process much easier allowing us to test and deploy new features more rapidly. With just one click we can clone the entire production cluster to a temporary instance in private cloud, test everything we need to test, and remove it with one click again afterward to avoid high expenses. This is a thriving technology and we're looking forward to new developments with Screeps World and Screeps Arena that it allows! We already used this platform to carefully test Nodejs 10 and the new game content on the real production world data. Nodejs 10 is shipped now on all game server nodes, and we're pretty confident that we can roll out all new game features (NPC Strongholds, Factories, new resources, Store and Market changes) in the first half of October. Stay tuned!
