UO Server/Shard Downtime FAQ

[Basara]

In UO, like every other software application, it's always a good idea to have a little downtime, as programs can start acting funny if left running too long.

So, the shards have daily maintenance times, and some of the other non-shard servers that perform services for the shards have weekly maintenance times.

Typically, these downtimes last 30 minutes (often shorter for the shards), but can be much longer, if there's an issue being addressed.

USUALLY, this goes off without a hitch - but on rare occasions (about maybe 1-3 times a year) something happens where a shard doesn't come back up, or other hardware issues interfere. When this happens, there will generally be an announcement on http://www.uoherald.com

At other times, there will be longer-than-normal downtimes for server publishes. These can be the major Publishes (numbered), or quick fixes for issues that come up (including exploits, etc.).

Such issues, if they come from a recent publish, can also result in an "unscheduled downtime" to do an emergency publish to correct the issue. These, too, will be announced - but often do not get announced in the web page until they are starting to occur (though messages are given in-game, that aren't always seen by the players).

Then, of course, there are system crashes, which are thankfully rare these days.

The Shard Servers back themselves up about every 45 minutes. They are timed to where they roughly coincide with the scheduled daily maintenance downtime for the shard, and the shard will stay up to the completion of the last backup started, before going down. Therefore, while the shard won't go down early, it may stay online a few minutes past its scheduled downtime, before it goes down.


There are 3 types of warning messages one can see before a shard downtime, in the game.

The first is the standard message that the shard will go down shortly, and that "You have approximately 2 minutes to find a safe location" to logout.

About 2 minutes after that, you will get the second message, that "the Server will be going down shortly". At that point, the backup is complete, and it's too late to get to a safe place (so you better hang around your machine to log back in as quickly as possible - especially if you have a pet out). There is a bug where a pet left out can wander off and be lost over a downtime, so you don't want to risk it - and you definitely don't want to have loaded pack animals out at the time.

The third type of message is rare, and comes about from Downtime that is out of the regular schedule. It is typically a message from a System Engineer or Developer that there will be an unscheduled downtime a certain time in the future, and this message will usually be repeated several times (With the time to the downtime being updated). When that time comes around, USUALLY, you will see the other two warning messages normally.

Scheduled Downtimes: When applicable, these times adjust for Daylight Saving Time.

Maintenance Schedule

Japanese Shards 8am JST:
Asuka
Hokuto
Izumo
Mizuho
Mugen
Sakura
Wakoku
Yamato

European Shards 5am GMT/UTC:
Drachenfels
Europa

Korean Shards 9am KST:
Arirang
Balhae

Taiwanese Shard 8am:
Formosa

Eastern USA Shards 5am EST/EDT
Atlantic
Catskills
Chesapeake
Great Lakes
Lake Superior
Legends
Siege Perilous

Western USA Shards 5am PST/PDT
Baja
Lake Austin
Napa Valley
Pacific
Sonoma
Origin

Australian Shard 5am AEST
Oceania

Veteran Rewards Database: Noon CST

Login Database/Server: Weekly, Tuesdays at 5am EST/EDT

 

[Basara]

copied over from Player's Corner

 

[IanJames]

Basara,

For clarification purposes. Siege Perilous goes down at 6AM, do the other east coast shards go down at the same time and if so, should the list say 6AM or 5AM. This posting has led to some confusion in the past with guild mates from other ends of the earth. . ;-)

 

[Shamus Turlough]

Stickying this!!!

Thanks

 

[Basara]

I'm just repeating the time for SP that EA itself says.

It could be that it is always last on the East coast down/up cycle, and as a result goes down about an hour after the others.

I know you can start watching the shards from a server site about the time they are supposed to go down, and typically they will drop one at a time, with the 3rd or 4th going down about the time that the first comes back up.

 

[Old Man of UO]

I believe these are the times that the save cycle starts for each set of servers, NOT when an individual server actual starts its daily save. If you look on the list at 5:00 AM you can see some of the east coast servers are gone and others still appear. LS doesn't save until 6:00 AM.

Also, these times are adjusted for Daylight Savings Time changes, but usually about a 5-7 days after the time change. It doesn't get switched automatically.