Moving away from server Class

News

For almost as long as we have been selling Land to residents we have used the idea of 'Class' to differentiate between different models of Server. We began with class 1s and 2s which gave way to class 3 machines and so on. This soon became a part of the common language for landowners; when you buy an Island from us right now for example, you buy a 'class 5 island'.

At any one time we have usually had at least 2 different classes of Server running on the Grid and this can cause problems for us in managing the hardware and problems for residents who become locked into the server class they purchased, often for a long time.

We would like to move away from using Class as part of our Land products.

Why is this a good thing?

At present, residents are locked to the class of Server they originally purchased and although we sometimes allow upgrades for a fee, generally a region is stuck on that Class indefinitely.

As we perform rolling restarts for new server releases or have unplanned outages, we continually manage the hardware to keep an Island on the same Class even when there is better hardware available for it to use. If a lower Class region is struggling for performance due to an event, even when there is newer hardware available we keep it on the existing Class. So the Land product you buy effectively ages over time and from our perspective this makes managing the Grid more difficult and doesn't give Landowners the best experience.

What would we do instead?

We intend to move to a simple standard specification that would become our baseline for all regions. Everyone owning or buying Land could be sure of being on at least that specification of Server, but no longer pinned to it. If higher specification hardware is available, we could use that to improve your user experience but no-one would ever be on less than the standard level.

Why do this now?

Now is the perfect time to make this change because soon the entire Grid will be on at least class 5 hardware. The grid is currently made up of Class 5 regions with a small number of class 4s (2000 regions). As part of moving away from Classes of hardware, over the next few months we would move those class 4 regions to class 5 hardware. Class 5 would therefore become our standard baseline.

As we introduce new and better performing hardware, we can manage the Grid to provide the best hardware where it's most needed. As Landowners your Island will no longer age and end up on older hardware indefinitely - and over time we will move the standard hardware level up for everyone. We will soon be deploying a new specification of server more widely on the Grid, and rather than limiting that hardware to new Islands only, we would prefer to have the freedom to allow existing Landowners to benefit too.

To be clear, after we do this no-one currently owning Land would ever be on lower specification hardware than they are now. But they could find themselves on higher specification hardware. This change has no impact on pricing; grandfathered regions will remain grandfathered.

So, a complicated issue perhaps but we would love to hear your feedback. Hopefully the above makes sense; we think this is a Win Win for both Residents and Linden Lab.

As usual, shortly after this post goes out we will add a link to a Discussion where you can let us know what you think. In addition my inworld office hour this Thursday will move to 3pm PST and be specifically to discuss this blog post. It will be held at the four corner meeting area on Linden Estate Services (not in the usual Lobby area).