jeffreywebster.org

So, I'm sure people noticed that ZooLoo was down for about 24 hours.

Well, the good news is we're back online for existing users. ZooLoo underwent a major overhaul to its database system over the last 24 hours. Some other services are undergoing similar revamps. So, in the meantime existing users can ZooLoo away, but signup is closed for at least another 16 hours.

The improvements made will significantly reduce our future downtimes, and may even eliminate most of them (some are required).

For the more technical among you, read on.

Whenever you create a system that is supposed to store a lot of data for a lot of users that are going to be online at the same time you have to spread the load out. This is accomplished by having more than one database server running and load-balancing the queries among that pool of database servers. You have master servers, and slave servers. The master servers are where new data gets shoved in. While slaves are used for retrieving data and running reports.

Previously our system was prone to many moments of "eventually consistent." The goal is for data to be consistent as near to 100% of the time as is possible. We upgraded our database servers and tuned them based on what we've learned about usage.

Many things will operate more quickly. Some things still need work. But, I'm confident with the upcoming major overhauls we have planned for the near future.

Thanks for visiting!