Migrating an MMO Back-end Infrastructure to the Cloud: a Perspective

Abstract

Many application providers are currently moving their backend infrastructure to centralized data centers instead of hosting their own servers. Typically, the IaaS cloud model is most suitable for this type of application, as it provides customers with virtualized hardware that can be utilized as desired, not hindered by platform restrictions or platform-specific programming languages. A similar construct is not yet very prevalent in the MMO community, although some solutions are slowly appearing in the market. In this short description to go along with a poster presentation, some findings of ongoing research projects on these topics are highlighted, including a discussion of metrics that are relevant for successful MMO deployment and a preview of benchmark results obtained on a commercially available IaaS cloud infrastructure. Some of the most important pitfalls associated with the cloud revolution are also identi ed and discussed. More detailed information and benchmarks are made freely available on the project website mentioned at the end of this paper.