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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsEVE Online’s 2010 “new server cluster” was a 12-cabinet installation in CCP Games’ existing London data center, built to run Tranquility, the main game universe for players outside China. Data Center Knowledge reported that it used IBM blade servers with 280 cores, more than 4.8 TB of local storage, and required 79 kW of power. Those figures describe the 2010 installation—not Tranquility’s current hardware or capacity.
What was the new EVE Online server cluster?
It was a replacement and expansion of the hardware serving Tranquility, EVE Online’s primary shared universe outside China. The installation occupied 12 cabinets at CCP’s London data center. At the time, Chinese players used Serenity, a separate cluster; the 2010 report described Tranquility as serving a universe of more than 330,000 players.
The cabinet count is not a server count. The available 2010 figures identify the installation’s footprint and total compute cores, but do not state how many individual blade servers or other nodes it contained. Nor should the reported player count be read as a simultaneous-concurrency figure.
What hardware and infrastructure did it use?
Data Center Knowledge’s 2010 account described IBM blade servers, 280 total cores and more than 4.8 TB of local storage. The site also reported a 79 kW power requirement. These are contemporaneous specifications for that cluster; they do not establish the specifications of later Tranquility systems.
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- Compute: IBM blade servers with 280 cores in total.
- Storage: More than 4.8 TB of local storage.
- Power: A reported requirement of 79 kW for the installation.
- Footprint: 12 cabinets in the London data center.
Those details describe a data-center deployment rather than a single server. Cabinets, blades, cores, storage and power are different measures: the report’s 12 cabinets do not mean 12 servers, and 280 cores do not reveal the number of physical machines or how workloads were divided among them.
Why did CCP replace the previous setup?
CCP said the earlier cabinets could no longer handle demand. Technical Director Derek Wise explained, “It’s gotten to the point were a couple of cabinets simply don’t handle it anymore.” The stated aims were better network connectivity, fewer intermediary devices and greater capacity.
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Reducing intermediary devices and improving connectivity point to network-path changes as well as additional computing resources. The published account does not quantify the expected improvement in latency, throughput or player capacity, so those aims should be understood as CCP’s rationale, not as independently measured results.
How was the cluster cooled?
The installation used cold-aisle containment. Cold air was directed into the fronts of the cabinets, where the equipment drew it through the hardware, rather than allowing as much chilled air to disperse into the room. Wise described the approach as force-feeding cold air into the cabinets to reduce wasted cooling air and focus it where it was needed.
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This was part of the physical infrastructure required for a 79 kW installation: the compute equipment needed power, and the data-center design needed to deliver cooling air to the equipment. The 2010 account does not give a cooling-efficiency figure or a measured reduction in energy use, so no percentage saving can be inferred.
How did the 2010 cluster fit into Tranquility’s upgrade history?
The 2010 system was one stage in a longer sequence of infrastructure changes. Earlier and later announcements show how CCP’s focus moved among 64-bit compute, capacity, network connectivity, storage and reliability. The reported specifications are not directly comparable in every category, but the milestones can be set alongside one another:
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| Generation | Reported configuration or change | What CCP said it was addressing |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 refresh | CCP announced replacement of old Tranquility hardware with 70 IBM 64-bit AMD dual-processor blade servers. A January test report said a dual-processing 64-bit machine performed at a level equivalent to three existing 32-bit dual-processing machines. | CCP projected that proxy and application-layer performance could double or triple. That was a stated expectation, not a published independent benchmark of the completed replacement. |
| 2010 cluster | 12 cabinets in London; IBM blades, 280 total cores, more than 4.8 TB of local storage, and a reported 79 kW power requirement. | Replace cabinets that CCP said no longer handled demand, improve connectivity, reduce intermediary devices and increase capacity. |
| Tranquility Tech III, 2015–2016 | Physical move to a new London hosting facility with new network, storage and server hardware. The design included mirrored SAN storage, six IBM FLEX chassis, 10 Gbit links and cross-connected SAN switches. CCP later reported a 2.5 TB Tranquility database. | CCP identified reliability and stability, cluster-wide performance, network connectivity and a simpler footprint as goals. The move went live on February 29, 2016. |
The 2006 performance comparison came from CCP’s testing of one dual-processing 64-bit machine against three existing dual-processing 32-bit machines; it was not a claim that every workload would improve by the same amount. CCP also said it was still testing Stackless Python, its own code and physics-engine behavior on 64-bit servers. In February 2006, its service announcement characterized a doubling or tripling of proxy and application-layer performance as a projection.
For Tech III, CCP’s 2015 announcement described the planned facility and hardware design, while the March 2016 postmortem covered the completed migration. CCP said the project involved a year of planning, data transfer, database upgrades, repeated starts and troubleshooting before the February 29 go-live. Mirrored storage and cross-connected SAN switches were design measures aimed at redundancy; they should not be confused with a claim that outages or migration risk were eliminated.
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What the public figures do—and do not—tell you
The 2010 report provides a useful snapshot of the cluster’s scale and physical design, but it does not document every technical detail. It does not give a node-by-node layout, exact count of blades, server model numbers, CPU clock speeds, network bandwidth, or a measured before-and-after performance result. The stated benefits describe CCP’s goals rather than quantified outcomes.
Likewise, the 2015–2016 Tech III details describe a later generation, not a continuation of the 2010 configuration with unchanged hardware. The figures establish that CCP subsequently changed facilities and introduced different storage, chassis and network arrangements; they do not establish Tranquility’s present-day equipment or capacity.
Quick Recap
Sources and dates
- Data Center Knowledge, 2010: the London cluster’s footprint, hardware, power, cooling and contemporaneous player-count context.
- CCP, January and February 2006: 64-bit testing and the announced blade-server replacement.
- CCP, October 2015: the Tranquility Tech III facility and hardware plan.
- CCP, March 2016: the Tech III migration postmortem and February 29 go-live date.
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