I just listened to Major Nelson's Podcast #199 in which he interviews E from the support team and decided to sum it up. E oversaw the the maintenance project last week and his interview with the Major sheds some light on several questions many people have.
During the course of the interview, E mentioned that they knew the maintenance would take close to the full 24 hour scheduled window, but they had a few hiccups at the end that caused the extended delay. More on that later.
First, I'll cover the information about the Maintenance project itself. According to E, it was scheduled maintenance that they knew would take down the systems for close to a full 24 hours. In a nutshell, they rolled in a lot of new servers, for better performance as well as proactively getting ahead for influx of new users. They also went back to all the older equipment and upgraded either the hardware or software. This includes every single server and device that touches Xbox Live and Xbox.com. in case anyone cared, E said that they use Dell servers and Cisco networking.
the maintenance was designed to provide backend and user interface updates for the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox.com webpage features. The biggest changes users will see is the Website account management, which now offers Parental Controls, ability to add points to your account and redeem pre-paid cards, all through Xbox.com. It was stressed by both E and Major that the maintenance was NOT the Fall Update, which is currently scheduled within the next couple of months. It did however, bring us into the sixth incarnation of Xbox Live.
As for the delay, it was caused by a lack of verification that all user stats were loaded, including Gamerscore. they had the choice of release it to world without all the info, or wait until all stats were loaded and verified. the negative impact for just allowing everyone in without all the stats is that any updates by the user (i.e. playing Geometry Wars and scoring 250,000 points) would override any previous stats that hadn't been loaded yet. Gamerscore and game rank would be impacted. So it appears that it was a no brainer to wait a little longer than mess with what some people have dedicated every waking hour to accomplish.
Overall, the overage was a little more than two hours until everything was back up. There were some additional intermittent issues experienced after it was released and usage picked up, but no one particular reason. Some of the most annoying involved the Marketplace (timeouts with content lists being displayed), but it was corrected by code optimization. E mentioned that they hoped they learned from the issues causing the delay and will plan accordingly to prevent from happening in the future.
Finally, a little nugget on why Ultimate Mortal Kombat III appeared out of nowhere on XBLA on Saturday. E basically said it was a a screw-up, as they loaded it into the system for release on next Wednesday(10/25), but it went live immediately when loaded. They pulled it after a bit, but the Microsoft Braintrust decided to put it back up as many people already had downloaded. No word on whether we will still get a new XBLA title this Wednesday or not.
During the course of the interview, E mentioned that they knew the maintenance would take close to the full 24 hour scheduled window, but they had a few hiccups at the end that caused the extended delay. More on that later.
First, I'll cover the information about the Maintenance project itself. According to E, it was scheduled maintenance that they knew would take down the systems for close to a full 24 hours. In a nutshell, they rolled in a lot of new servers, for better performance as well as proactively getting ahead for influx of new users. They also went back to all the older equipment and upgraded either the hardware or software. This includes every single server and device that touches Xbox Live and Xbox.com. in case anyone cared, E said that they use Dell servers and Cisco networking.
the maintenance was designed to provide backend and user interface updates for the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox.com webpage features. The biggest changes users will see is the Website account management, which now offers Parental Controls, ability to add points to your account and redeem pre-paid cards, all through Xbox.com. It was stressed by both E and Major that the maintenance was NOT the Fall Update, which is currently scheduled within the next couple of months. It did however, bring us into the sixth incarnation of Xbox Live.
As for the delay, it was caused by a lack of verification that all user stats were loaded, including Gamerscore. they had the choice of release it to world without all the info, or wait until all stats were loaded and verified. the negative impact for just allowing everyone in without all the stats is that any updates by the user (i.e. playing Geometry Wars and scoring 250,000 points) would override any previous stats that hadn't been loaded yet. Gamerscore and game rank would be impacted. So it appears that it was a no brainer to wait a little longer than mess with what some people have dedicated every waking hour to accomplish.
Overall, the overage was a little more than two hours until everything was back up. There were some additional intermittent issues experienced after it was released and usage picked up, but no one particular reason. Some of the most annoying involved the Marketplace (timeouts with content lists being displayed), but it was corrected by code optimization. E mentioned that they hoped they learned from the issues causing the delay and will plan accordingly to prevent from happening in the future.
Finally, a little nugget on why Ultimate Mortal Kombat III appeared out of nowhere on XBLA on Saturday. E basically said it was a a screw-up, as they loaded it into the system for release on next Wednesday(10/25), but it went live immediately when loaded. They pulled it after a bit, but the Microsoft Braintrust decided to put it back up as many people already had downloaded. No word on whether we will still get a new XBLA title this Wednesday or not.
