– How are servers maintained/repaired? When a server gets taken down for maintenance, what happens exactly?
In: Technology
For the most part, it’s updates. Like when your own laptop nags you for a reboot. Some updates to the OS can’t be made while it’s running, so get scheduled to be done over a restart. While this isn’t usually a massive problem on your laptop, a server obviously can’t “serve” while it’s restarting. In a well-designed system, multiple servers would share the load of serving, so that any single one of them could be taken down for a reboot without taking the whole system down. However, there are circumstances in which you’d still need to take down all the servers – for example if you needed to update or fix the mechanisms that run the servers, or if the update you need to apply has to be on all servers at the same time because it changes the way they talk or fulfill their function as servers.
It obviously depends on what the server is actually used for. Some common things are:
– Replacing hardware that show signs of aging (e.g. modern harddisks have built-in diagnostics that can tell you when the number of read-errors is over a certain threshold, indicating that reading may soon fail completely)
– Updating software and configuration, not only the main software, e.g. the game server, but also the operating system and tools. (While most of it _can_ be updated while in use, it is often a better idea to update it on one machine, try whether it works as intended, and then let users back onto it)
– Running various security scans that take up a lot of CPU (ever noticed how a virus scan causes your load to spike? Not necessarily something you want on a busy server)
It depends on the situation.
Update maintenance – the basic services are updating, like web server, some security updates etc.
Content update – the administrator is uploading new content / function (new files), that need to be tested or configured.
Troubleshoot – something wrong happened and the server or service needs to be restarted.
In all cases is better, when the access is disabled to avoid errors.
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