Does ArenaNet has proper off-site backups of the game data?

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Last year a big fire destroyed the French OVHCloud data center. Data of some online games were permanently lost because there either were no backups or the backups were in the same data center that burned down. Incidents like this stress the importance of off-site backups. Is the data of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 safely backupped off-site?

 

Note: This is a generic question. ArenaNet never was in this data center but a disaster like a fire or a cybersecurity incident can happen to any data center.

 

 

Sources:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/fire-destroys-ovhclouds-sbg2-data-center-strasbourg/

https://dotesports.com/general/news/facepunch-confirms-total-loss-of-data-for-multiple-eu-rust-servers-following-ovh-data-center-fire

 

Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=game+servers+lost+data+center+fire

[Thaumanovic.9238]

This question was asked last year (by yourself, actually), and it seems that the consensus is that because GW2 is hosted on AWS, there is sufficient redundancy and that this shouldn't be a problem.

AWS are pretty good at what they do, arguably the best IMHO. I throw data at them all the time and I never worry about losing it. Still, I keep my own backups on my servers at home. I would presume that ANet do the same. They have far too much at stake to be able to afford not to.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Thaumanovic.9238
Spacing

[TheQuickFox.3826]

It would be nice if one of the admins could shed a light if  ArenaNet has these scenarios covered.

Edited May 4, 2022 by TheQuickFox.3826

[mercury ranique.2170]

11 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

It would be nice if one of the admins could shed a light on how ArenaNet has implemented it.

Actually, it would not be nice if they did.
I understand your concern, but back up plans are a part of security. It is also an healthy customer supplier relation to have the basic trust to know they have a proper backup method. Keep in mind that it is realistic to know that in case of a dissaster like a fire, it is likely that some player progression data would be lost and a roll back of the game has to be made. The fact that they can offer such a roll back and has done it in the past means they do have some backup method. For the rest it is a matter of trust.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

6 hours ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

Actually, it would not be nice if they did.
I understand your concern, but back up plans are a part of security. It is also an healthy customer supplier relation to have the basic trust to know they have a proper backup method. Keep in mind that it is realistic to know that in case of a dissaster like a fire, it is likely that some player progression data would be lost and a roll back of the game has to be made. The fact that they can offer such a roll back and has done it in the past means they do have some backup method. For the rest it is a matter of trust.

 

Hm, I understand. I was not clear in my post. I don't mean all tech details on how they implemented it, but I just like to know if everything is safe and that disasters like these are covered by their backup strategy.

[Dawdler.8521]

20 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

 

Hm, I understand. I was not clear in my post. I don't mean all tech details on how they implemented it, but I just like to know if everything is safe and that disasters like these are covered by their backup strategy.

Well what do you think? Of course the answer is yes. Now I'm not an expert so take nothing of this as absolute fact.

Rust had persistent servers if I recall with both world and player data on each. So if the server dies... they're kittened. Another server with other players might be fine.

GW2 has split accounts and world instances, ie the only critical is the global account servers. If the world instance servers die/freeze/etc you just loose a tiny bit of progress since the account servers updated last.

The system has proven rock solid over 10 years with near zero downtime unlike other MMOs that can demand a day of downtime to fix servers. We've had rollbacks before which revert several hours but its very rare.