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"Scheduled Maintenance" again? **%??aarrgghh,,,,,,
“Site Maintenance”.
What does it mean? Two words, but they cover a multitude of sins!
It’s true, there have been lot of them recently, too many some might say. Players don’t like them, of course they don’t, but neither does the Site – a closed site is not earning any money!
So it’s lose-lose really. Or is it?
Firstly, there have been two major Maintenance windows this week already – Monday & Wednesday, & in fact these are just part of some major work which is being done to enhance the Platform, & they lead up to a third one next Monday, I think, which will be 2am until 10am.
Hopefully, that’ll be the last of these “big” ones, & they will be far less frequent in future.
More......
Comments
Platform?
Sky Poker is part of a family of sites – Vegas, Bingo, Bet, & Poker, with Odds-Checker too, though that is slightly different.
All our sites are “ours”, we are not part of any network, so it’s all built & maintained in-house.
There are pros & cons to this.
Without the other “arms”, I doubt Sky Poker would exist as we know it - & vice-versa. It is fundamentally a family of sites, & is primarily successful simply because of that. They need us, we need them.
All of them share a common Accounts function, or “back-office”.
Bet & Vegas are huge sites, & enhancements are coming thick & fast, as the Online Gaming Revolution gathers pace.
The whole Platform is growing at an enormous rate, new games, bells, & whistles are being added every week.
But Poker & Bingo are growing very fast, too, so they need attention, growing the capacity, fine-tuning stuff so that it can cope with the additional capacity, & gradually, week after week, adding new functionality. And making it more reliable, more stable. (There, volley that one in!).
Each of the “arms” have lists of stuff they need to add, or amend, or improve, so each arm tries to gather all the jobs together & do them on a common & scheduled outage.
More.....
The time is inconvenient?
You bet it is. Or not, as the case may be.
A convenient time for, say, Poker, might be 8am – 11am, but that clashes with the other arms, who are busy at different times to poker.
So it’s a case of trying to find the best time to suit all.
NO time suits all, of course.
Can Poker be done separately to the other Sites? Sometimes, yes, it could, & in future, when possible, I believe Adam – who holds responsibility for “Product” – intends to have standalone Scheduled Maintenance. Not always possible, though.
Accounts-based enhancements are always going to be “all Sites” downtime, though. The Accounts function is common to all sites, as we have something called a “common wallet”. This is a fundamental positive to the business, & while it’s a pain in some ways, it’s also a huge positive, too.
I recall on many sites, when I wanted to move from Poker to, say, Bet, I had to make TWO money transfers to be able to do it, it was a nightmare. One of the major networks still operates that way, too. So, a curates egg, really.
More.....
“sort it out, Sky” is the common call, but it’s incredibly complex.
Last night’s Scheduled Maintenance involved 37 staff!
It dealt with, I believe, SEVEN separate & independent enhancements.
The stuff they do makes my eyes bleed when I read it, stuff like “more ESX servers”, “launch of new Game”, “addition of DB column to the DG table jgRaceEvIc” (the what?), “Unformox Implementation”, & other stuff equally obscure to us as poker players.
All necessary though, if the site is to keep improving & expanding, & being more reliable, & stable.
Finally, you don’t always see the benefit of these enhancements immediately, as they go through “stages” of testing, validating, certificating. Every change requires validation by the Regulators, for example. This can take an age, & is beyond SB&G’s control.
The Download Client, for example, was “ready to go” months before it was launched, it was there, but “hidden”.
There is stuff on the Poker Client now which you want, but won’t see for months, as it has to go through it’s various staging criteria first, or maybe the Business just thinks it’s not ready to announce & implement yet – but it’s there, waiting for the green light to be given when all the boxes have been ticked.
More.....
In short, yes, they are a pain, & the Business knows this.
It’s all necessary, though, to build better & bigger site. And we all want that. We're getting there, too. Rome took a while to build.....
I hope that fills in some of the gaps as to how it is done, when, & why.
Any questions, fire away. I won’t be able to answer them all, but Adam has encouraged me to Post this Thread, & he’ll reply directly, or via myself, to any stuff that’s above my head. Which is most of it.
Thanks for your understanding & patience.
Believe in better
Question 1....
Is it possible to give more than 7/8 hours notice in future as to when the site will be down?
48 hours would be perfect, but at least 24 surely?
Regards
John
Fair point.
However, these dates can & do move, due to a whole plethora of reasons. In fact, part of the idea behind this thread was to get feedback like that.
So, I have already mentioned another Scheduled Outage next Monday - 4 days hence, which is what you would prefer, I think.
The problem with that is that quite often, the date moves, or something else, a bigger priority, crops up, meaning the time & date has to move. Personally, I think it's even money that next Monday's Scheduled work will move - if so, I'll get shot down pretty good, methinks. Being "open" has it's penalties.
The more notice they give, the more likely the date might move, & so it makes the Site look silly if they keep announcing date changes, & of course, the serial knockers love all that.
I would think that the next 5 or 6 Scheduled Outages are already "in the queue", but the dates do & will move around, hence the short notice given on the Community. There will be less, & shorter duration, though (Monday excepted, that's a whopper), for sure.
As an aside, did you notice any particular problems last weekend? (Rhetorical). Because, no, you did not. Thereby hangs quite a story.
SB&H is housed in a brand new Office in Leeds, pretty cool place, with hundreds of staff from all arms of the platform. Some of them, particularly Bet, have a lot of 24/7 functions, with weekends especially staff intensive. Bet is a big player these days, & you can imagine how many traders work there, & by the nature of the business, on busy weekends, the office is chock-a-block full of staff.
Last weekend, Yorkshire Electricity had their own scheduled maintenance, & the office was without mains power all weekend. You could not begin to imagine the potential headaches that caused. They coped though, & nobody even noticed.
Sometimes I'm quite embarrassed at the mess ups we do. But I'm also pretty proud of much of it.
Perfect it's not, not yet by any means - but perfect is the goal.
Cya @ Luton, can't wait!
Alan,
The internet arrived towards the middle/end of my business career, & I grew to be incredibly intolerant/frustrated with IT peeps, who never seemed to hit their dates. But at the time, I just never understood the complexity of it all. Now I'm (a very small) part of an internet based-company, & I'm just staggered by how complicated it all is, it's really quite something.
Here's a few of the SB&G IT geeks......
Guess which one Adam is?
Hi tikay, thank you for taking the time to provide a full explanation much appreciated. I work for a large company and we too have regular updates to our systems that may affect our customers so i totally understand where you are coming from.
I have no questions thank you. Im just waiting for the dym tables close after 3 have cashed update:) But im patient innit.
Out of interest, are their any plans to change the infrastructure to reduce/eliminate maintenance downtime? Most sites handle this by having a live/production and development version of their platforms, changes roll out to the dev platform, get tested, then made live in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Any particular reason Sky Bet haven't gone down this route? /geekery
I'm not asking from the customer's POV so much as Sky's really...downtime is serious money in gaming, after all. Anyway, just wondering if you can lassoo one of the tech guys for an answer.
I think it would be really helpful when visible changes are made to the site a change log is published. This would help the players spot anything untoward happening in the affected area and also up awareness of the changes.
e.g. the recent max buy in change on the 5p/10p tables, as far as I'm aware, wasn't announced until someone asked about it.
Morning Chaps & Chapesses.
DannyMcs question? Well that is highly technical stuff.
When we drill down into the core supressor memory soft drive fluctuant, there will always be residual giga-memory jobbie-jobs.
Or, in plain English, I have no idea - but if time perrmits, Adam will reply later today.
Do you know if there are plans to stop the dym's once 3 winning players have cashed?
Thanks
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Why does my dog chase cars? Even if he caught one he hasn't passed his test!
It was announced in February that this WILL happen. I'm pretty sure it will be implemented during this month.
Bit of a hot potato, that one, as nobody seems to be "neutral" on it - they are either 100% in favour, or 100% against, & many of them seem to get very snarley-warley angry-wangry about it.
Me? I'm sitting on the fence.
Hi tikay
Is there anything in the pipeline when on mini view we will be able to chat?
It will be handy when multi tabling so the 'finished' games then don't need attention when you are trying to play the other ones
(ps..I have decided to add my own signature on the forum...add's a little class don't you think!? haha)
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Why does my dog chase cars? Even if he caught one he hasn't passed his test!
"I don't know" is the honest answer, & "it's highly unlikely" is my personal view.
By definition, people only use mini-view when multi-Tabling, & in such cases, it's not easy to chat, I'd have thought.
Also, the Chat-Box would have to be, relative to the MV Table, very large to be workable, & that in itself would defeat the purpose, as most folks only use MV when 4 Tabling or more.
Adam might be able to reply better, & certainly he would know the real answer, but I'm pretty certain it will be "no".
At least 1 of your MTT suggestions has been developed and signed off, it is awaiting the next scheduled poker release (next Weds/Thurs tentatively). It was due to go live a few weeks ago, but the essential maintenance work which has been taking place every week (sometimes twice a week) for the last month or so has taken priority.
The fix is:
Adding Buy-in and tournament ID to the Top bar, to aid multitabling (especially DYM of various buy-ins) and to help you contact C/Care with any tournament problems in real-time.
We will also include this:
Auto-settlement of DYM's and Satellite MTT's when all players remaining have an equal prize.
Allowing multiple lobby pop-ups is something i'm keen to do, it's a simple change but dependent on analysis following another project (ETA 2-3 weeks)
For cash players, we've resolved the issue with players being kicked off the tables when going for a loo break.
There's also a huge change to how the lobby works, which will ensure that all info is updated in next to real time, so if you see a seat available then you know it's free....
The rest of your suggestions will all be resolved in one big project which we are still in the process of speccing out.
Kind Regards
Adam
I Love Adam
"....Auto-settlement of DYM's and Satellite MTT's when all players remaining have an equal prize......."
Or, in case anyone needs that translating, DYM's will "stop" when down to 3 players, & Satellites will cease as soon as the "seat bubble" has burst.