CLP Update

AA-Central Update
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So its been around 2 weeks now with no proper AA-Central launcher.

To briefly backtrack, the reason this server has been down (so we have been told) is because a modem (or technically a network switch) has failed to work causing the network issues and we are currently awaiting a replacement piece of hardware.

The Tech team for central is currently made up of Myself, Mastente, Tank, Topschrott.

Topschrott and I do a lot of backend work on the system and we are disappointed with the amount of time it is taking to resolve the issue.

Frankly, I am embarrassed that over the last two years we have seen significant downtime which ultimately is not down to us. The problems have always been down to relying on favours from people in regards to having servers or hosting available to host the launch system. If anything I know I have learnt that relying on somebody else (who isnt involved with the AA community or the games development) generally is not a stable solution for us.

To this extent Topschrott and I are in the process of purchasing our own server and paying for the server between us. Primarily we have our own ventures we want to focus on outside of AA which is what this server will enable us to do and we also both have a keen interest in AA's survivability, so this personal arrangement between us works. We will be donating space, unlimited bandwidth, support and access for AA-Central on the server until further notice.

The server is hosted in a datacentre which has a dedicated support team available, both myself and Top will have telephone access to these people which means we are completely in control of the server - not running through a middleman. We also expect any downtime we do have will be a number of hours at most and no more than 3 times in a year.

In terms of timescales to going back to running AA-Central properly thats down to a number of unknown variables. We are hoping to get a copy on our old server of the data on the server itself. We also will need time to re-implement some operating system work and reconfiguration of AA-Central onto a new server. Also it provides a good opportunity for us to do some architectural work on AA-central which will allow for overall better system administration this wont have any affect at all on how the system operates.

I am hoping to meet a deadline of being back up by this time next week. We cant be sure for definite.

Importantly the new server offers - quite clearly - stability and availability we have not been able to guarantee before. My experience in approving hosts to move to hasn't been great in the past and I apologize. Topschrott and I offer the server to the community as a permenent way of fixing the problems we have had in the past.

As I know more for definite I will update everyone.

Cheers.

(if anybody can translate this to german I would appreciate this)