World of Warships Goes Multicluster

World of Warships is constantly changing, but not all changes are public-facing. We’re revealing something that’s way “under the hood” – World of Warships is transitioning to multicluster technology.

What Is It?
A multicluster is a distribution of a computing system consisting of a large number of servers, each separately processing various game elements (battles, players’ actions in the Port, payment systems). All of this is processed separately and does not compete for computing power, which in turn increases reliability and stability of the cluster.

How It Used to Work
Gaming services and processes were joined in one common cluster. Between them, all cluster power was distributed evenly — one system for all player processes.

Even distribution has its benefits, but struggles with reliability and load resistance. Different processes may compete for the resources of the individual server from the cluster. If there’s too heavy a load or a hardware failure, the server may crash, or bring down an entire cluster in some cases.

How It Will Work
After switching to multicluster technology, the architecture of the WoWS servers will consist of three levels:

ᆞCentral cluster: Ties together all the lower-level processes and synchronizes them with the payment system, player accounts, etc.
ᆞSecond level clusters: All the player’s actions in the Port (incl. team selection and Division creation) are processed
ᆞThird level battle clusters: These carry the battle, then pass the results onto the second level for processing
All three parts work independently; they do not compete for system power or interfere with one another, and that reduces the server load. But for players, the existence of separate clusters will be completely unnoticeable — players in the same battle or even in the same division could well be on the different clusters.

How You Will Benefit from It

The advantages of multicluster tech are flexibility and reliability. We can avoid a full reset of gaming clusters when carrying out maintenance work or dealing with equipment failures — the battle clusters could be gradually disabled after simply waiting for the completion of all ongoing battles, and players will automatically go to battles on the other clusters, not even noticing the transition.

Soon, you’ll be able to see all of these advantages with the release of Update 0.5.10!