Engineering EverQuest: online gaming demands heavyweight data centers

This paper describes how engineers keep a half million people from all over the world playing EverQuest, a best-selling computer game played over the Internet. Developed by Sony Online Entertainment, EverQuest has not only become a dominant force in the entertainment business but has also become a social phenomenon. It takes 13 data centers and more than 1500 servers located around the world to run EverQuest. As the game´s audience expands and evolves, so does the architecture behind the scenes. To cope with these expansions, Sony has begun using blade servers and adopted just-in-time computing system. A Network Operations Center was also established to serve as Sony´s 24-hour technical support. Sony has also begun efforts to adopt Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies into their future online and portable gaming offerings.