Dear SmartBots users,
Thank you for keeping your bots with SmartBots. We launched SmartBots 15 years ago – we know Second Life inside out, and we work every day to make the service better for you.
Recently, we (and you) experienced some unexpected outages. We underestimated the risk to part of our infrastructure, assuming that backups and a replacement hardware would be enough. Unfortunately, this time they weren’t.
We want to explain what happened, what we’ve done about it and what we are doing next to improve SmartBots for you.
What happened
(Feel free to skip this section if you’re not into the technical details).
Second Life login servers limit multiple logins from the same IP address, using protection systems like Cloudflare to prevent overload. To handle this, we use an outgoing traffic balancer connected to multiple networks (IP addresses), allowing more than 7,000 customer bots we care for to log in without interfering with each other.
We’ve been running this balancer for years without issues – it’s simple and reliable. However, it began to reboot unexpectedly due to a processor overheating issue. Surprisingly, the only replacement hardware we could get was located in another data center, and that setup could handle far fewer connections.
It took days to arrange the new data center setup and even few more to configure a backup balancer with a different ISP to ensure this can’t happen again. During this time, some of your bots had trouble staying online. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience this caused.
What’s next at SmartBots
1. First of all, the issue resolved, safeguards in place. The bottleneck eliminated and we’ve implemented redundancy to avoid similar problems in the future.
2. We are working on updated Bot Store. We have dozens of add-ons and scripts available there, able to perform almost any task for you. The new Store will make it much easier to find the app you need!
3. More for developers! We are extending possibilities for script developers (see today’s Playground update, with even more features on the way).
4. We value many of you stay with SmartBots for 10+ years! We are preparing a rewards program for long-time customers with bonuses and discounts grow the longer you stay with SmartBots, making bots, add-ons, and scripts more affordable over time.
5. For some of you, bots are more than just “bots”. You trust us to keep your babies and pets online, and we want you to feel even closer to them by allowing to change menus to to address them more tenderly instead of just calling them “bot”.
6. Last (but not least), RLV just got a huge update and supports more devices. RLV updates are already ready, a blog post comes soon!
Always here for you
We know seeing your bot offline – even briefly – is frustrating.
We assure you that your bots, babies and pets are in safe hands! ❤️
Sincerely yours,
Glaznah Gassner and SmartBots Team
Keeping your bots online since 2010