InWorldz is moving to new servers, hosted by RackSpace, and the grid expects to see a shutdown of about 24 hours as a result. The downtime will begin this Friday, November 16, at 3 a.m. InWorldz time,  the company announced last night.
“Te move itself will be completed Friday possibly into Saturday morning,” InWorldz CTO David Daeschler told Hypergrid Business. “There should be no more downtime after that.”
“In order to best serve our residents, we will be required to force a full shutdown of the grid to properly migrate our residents’ assets and inventory,” said Beth Reischl, one of InWorldz’s three founders, in the announcement.   She is also known as Elenia Llewellyn in-world.
“This will be a lengthy process and we do not anticipate being down for more than 24 hours,â€Â said Reischl. “However, we are going to be crediting every region owner’s account by 5 percent of the month’s tier costs to cover for that one day of downtime.â€
Migrating to RackSpace
RackSpace is a company that rents server space, and is one of the leading providers in the field. InWorldz will be using servers in its facility in Elk Grove Village in Illinois.
“We will have the capacity in the future to expand our servers into target markets such as London, Hong Kong, and a new data center opening in Australia,â€Â Reischl said.
Previously, InWorldz has been hosted with CariNet. In fact, the two companies announced a joint venture a year ago last summer which was promised to offer the grid “high performance and fast growth.”
According to Reischl, the new hosting will benefit the grid’s global customers and keep costs down. About one-third of the grid’s users are located outside the U.S., she said, and it can be difficult sometimes for customers to connect.
“While we have striven to help each one that has had issues, we also realized a need to be able to scale our services globally for our residents,†added Reischl. “Scaling services globally is important, but so too, is our bottom-line costs, and keeping those in line with what we expect our residents to pay for.â€
PhysX and its progress
Daeschler — also known as Tranquility Dexler  in-world – has been working on the release candidate for the new physics engine, called PhysX. Daeschler is also one of the three founders of InWorldz.
“We’d like to get the migration completed before we announce that and start promoting it,” Daeschler told Hypergrid Business.
According to Reischl, PhysX will be deployed in stages. Water regions such as oceans and straights will be the first to get it, which will allow users to try it out in a more controlled area without affecting main regions. This will give the grid the opportunity to find and fix any remaining bugs before a full-scale grid roll-out of the new technology.
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