Yes, Virginia, there is an Update | Veterancraft Dedicated Server | Forum

First the good news: We are ready to proceed with the 1.7.x update. Mudwog and I have been working feverously last month to complete the framework for our backend administration system, which is paramount to our operation

You may ask, “backend system, what’s that?” Over the last 2 ½ years we’ve learned many valuable lessons the hard way by putting stock into so-called management systems and plugins. It’s not to say that they aren’t great… when they work, but all too often they’ve caused a lot of wasted time, performance impacts, and frustrations for all. Although we’ve tried our best to shielded members from these issues, it has made for some crazy times back here in the “boiler room” as we hustle and bustle to maintain maximum service uptime. Frankly, we are tired of it. I, myself, would prefer to spend my time enhancing and adding new features to make Veterancraft more enjoyable and actually get some play time in.

Given that, we bit the bullet and forced ourselves to get our backend system CBES – CraftBukkit Enterprise System – production ready and out of the door. For you techies out there, CBES is a full-fledged Java Enterprise application having the same capabilities and flexibilities as any good corporate information system would have. Like I said, it is a framework, meaning that we can add new features quite easily, not unlike CraftBukkit plugin system, without having to worry about plugin compatibilities or waiting for developers to get around to fixing things.

Because CBES is on its own server, we can offload compute-intensive tasks (e.g. griefer/X-Ray detection, etc.) to it rather than wasting valuable CraftBukkit CPU cycles. Furthermore, administration of users, permissions, donor levels, and much more can be handled through intuitive user interfaces rather than often confusing and inconsistent plugin commands. CBES delivers a transaction-based system that allows us to roll back quickly should a configuration change not take; thereby, minimizing downtime and reducing the potential for disastrous errors.

For the most part, CBES is a collection of administration tools that will make our staff’s lives easier. But that is not to say that our members won’t benefit from it either. Over the next six months, we will be moving control for many of our internal plugins to CBES, such as access control, shops, banking, etc. This provides us with opportunities to have web-based member pages through which they can check their Shilling balances; review voting statistics; search shops; alternative authentication methods when Minecraft authentication is down; and, so on. These are just a few of the things that will be possible – the only limit is our imagination.

The functionality of the initial CBES release will be limited. At this time, it is capable of managing multiple servers (i.e. hardware platforms) and multiple CraftBukkit instances thereon. Once our initial upgrade is completed, we will begin focusing on other administrative services, which for the most part will be completely transparent to members and not affect gameplay, except for an occasional restart.

That all said; this is what is on the slate for the next couple of days. Some of you may consider this the Bad News. We need to upgrade our environments, operating systems, databases, other support systems, and install additional tools before we can upgrade CraftBukkit itself. During this time, the server may be down or restarted periodically. Unfortunately, because our time is limited, we do not have the patience to offer advanced notices of such events all the time nor the flexibility to perform these tasks when it is most convenient for members. Then again, give our absolutely minimal downtimes over our years of operation; this should not give anyone much distress. If it does, PM me and I’ll send you a virtual box of tissues to dry your tears.

How long will this take? It all depends on how smooth things go. Everything has been tested on our local test servers, but there is always that one or two “gotchas” that usually creep in no matter how well tests are planned. Then again, there is always the possibility that something working great in a test environment doesn’t do so well in a production system and will require further re-tooling.

Worst case scenario is that we will be completely upgraded before the start of next weekend. Best case scenario is that it could be as soon as tonight, but that is being extremely optimistic, especially given that it is SuperBowl Sunday. So anytime between now and Friday is a viable guess.

We will try to keep you informed via Twitter. If you don’t have a Twitter account or aren’t subscribed to Veterancraft, you can always see the latest tweets on the right side of our website’s home page. Mudwog and I will be going over our upgrade plans once more with a fine tooth comb before we start just to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Chances are that we will start working on the production system within the next 1-3 hours. Keep a watch on the tweets and we will try to provide as much advance notice as possible.