Linden Lab Aims to Fully Deploy Second Life to the AWS Cloud by "Hopefully Next Year" -- Though Third Party SL Viewers Pose Major Challenge

Linden Lab announced plans to fully deploy Second Life to the cloud last August, and now here's Linden's senior systems engineer Tara Hernandez giving more details of those plans. She gave the talk at Amazon's AWS re:invent 2017 conference, and so it's mostly about deploying Sansar in AWS -- which is somewhat ironic, because that's the same conference where AWS announced its own VR platform Sumerian, a Sansar competitor. Anyway, if you're a hardcore cloud geek you should watch the whole thing, but the meat on the SL cloud deploy happens around 32 minutes in:

We're still making a lot of money [from SL], we want to keep thing running as long as possible. So we are actually going to try and retrofit Second Life, a thirteen year old data center-designed product, into AWS. We're going to containerize it. We're going to have to figure out how to solve the fact that there's 8 different ways to access a single database. But we're already working on it... so hopefully next year, we'll be back to talk about how this migration went -- and we'll be running a 13 year old product on a brand new cloud.

One of the biggest challenges to doing that, she mentions, is dealing with third party Second Life viewers, which are much more used than the company's official software:

That's good and bad: It's great because we have an engaged user audience, and it's bad because nothing ever dies. So when we move this thing we have to make sure we don't break stuff. But I have a really smart team, and I think they're going to pull it off.

I'm not on her team, but if I was, I'd recommend just outright buying one of these big third party viewers, like Firestorm, and hiring its lead developers. (Who are currently working on the viewer for a pittance of donations from, frankly, its largely ungrateful userbase.)

Another interesting point from a bit earlier in the talk: Ms. Hernandez hints at using AWS to instance Second Life regions, so they're not always "on" -- which would be a good way of making region deployment cheaper for the company, and thus, opens up the potential of passing on region discounts to the users who pay for them:

"In Second Life [now], if nobody's in a scene, that scene's going right along eating co-lo rent... and all the other things we have to pay for. So downscaling in critical, but we have to be smart about how we do it, and frankly we're still working on that heuristic. Because maybe it's a super-popular region, and just because no one's in it now, 5 minutes later, statistically maybe they come back. I don't want to shut it down, because we want to maintain high speed. So, we'll figure this one out."

In other words, if Linden Lab deployed regions this way, region owners might pay Linden Lab based on how many users were on their land, and for how long, instead of the same giant monthly fee. Which would be one good way of staunching the bleeding off of SL regions happening every week.

Hat tip Linden Lab:

Check out @tequilarista’s talk at @AWSreInvent & learn how @SansarOfficial benefits from #AWS #reinvent #VR https://t.co/rN98gDh3DB

— Linden Lab (@LindenLab) November 28, 2017

Comments

[irihapeti]

not sure that buying a 3rd-party viewer in itself would add a lot. Its the nature of 3rd-party developers to be independent and do their own thing when possible. Some of the indie developers can for sure be hired full-time by LL but beyond that then nothing additive really in trying to buy a 3rd-party dev team as a whole

what is being signalled by LL I think (I guess) is that should 3rd party viewers become a problem for AWS then there is a question (dictated by security) of which 3rd-party viewers may be authorised to connect to SL on-going

a way around this could be that LL fund a foundation thru which indies could contribute and receive some payment for their contributions to an advanced alternative viewer programme, administered by the foundation

a programme targeted toward technologies not currently supported by LL. Linux for example both desktop and mobile. RLV extensions, etc, etc. With a Foundation-administered Windows/Mac extended desktop viewer on offer also. In addition to the LL-provided vanilla desktop viewer

i think at some future point (should Sansar be successful) a Foundation makes sense. A future home for the SL backend one day, should one day SL not make hard nose business sense any longer, at least for LL. A future that LL could continue to sponsor in some part

if LL started now with a viewer foundation then I think it would provide some long-term comfort to all the stakeholders

[Lusus]

If I have any concerns about SL being deployed to the cloud, they stem from the way many companies presently use it. For example, it is now common practise for users to never own software, but instead buy a license for anything from a month to a year. The software is then accessed from the cloud.

If LL were to adopt a similar business model it could potentially mean residents could only access what they pay for, which might be a lot more limiting. I have to add I haven't heard anything to suggest this is what LL have in mind, although it is the route so many businesses have already gone down, and it would be a way to encourage more users to become premium members.

[Estelle Pienaar]

I don't agree with the idea to have flexible cost by number of visitors. It is the most popular sims that bring new users and user motivate users to come back. Owners of popular regions might be motivated to restrict it to friends in order to save money. And then there would not rest a lot for the masses to do...!

[Amanda]

This will be a large change in the culture of SL. Region owners generally encourage visitors to their region. This change will be an incentive to restrict visitors. It's not necessarily bad but it is different and needs to be considered.

[Masami Kuramoto]

"we'll be running a 13 year old product on a brand new cloud"

Except that Amazon's AWS is not by any stretch a "brand new cloud", it has been around for 11 years, and Kitely's OpenSim grid with on-demand regions has been deployed in it at least since 2011:

"Kitely brings Facebook, instant regions to OpenSim"

[Call Me Crazy]

This is where the gates are going up to barrier point of entry. I expect new and improved 'fees and costs' to be associated with this move. Something tells me LL is bleeding money and they are positioning themselves to squeeze every last nickel they can out of the fools who still put their hard earned dollars into SL. I am not putting another cent . Not one red cent.

[LagOh]

@CAll Me Crazy

"You forgot to add "Get Off My Lawn"