minorsyntax
Data Center Manager

Patch notes

Every update to Data Center Manager, newest first.

v0.30.4 Latest

Power for a hall of miners

Bigger grid feeds and generators, up to 3 MW: enough for a hall full of miners.

New

  • Feeds up to 3 MW. DCIM › Power adds a 500 kW service at Regional, 1 MW at National, and at Trusted a 3 MW medium-voltage service. At that size the utility delivers medium voltage to a substation of your own, as it does for real data centers.
  • Generators to match. 500 kW, 1 MW and 3 MW standby generators, the biggest a pair of 1.5 MW sets run in parallel. A generator has to carry the hall’s whole draw, cooling included.
  • For scale: a rack of eight Quarry Q140s draws about 25 kW, plus about 8 kW for its cooling. The 250 kW feed ran out at around seven of them; 1 MW runs about thirty.

Changed

  • Power past a megawatt reads in MW in DCIM, in notices and on the office’s status screens.
  • Swapping down to a smaller generator now shows what the trade-in pays you back.
  • The Handbook’s power articles cover the bigger services, and why mining farms often run without backup power.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.30.3

Two ports on every line

Every internet line’s hand-off now has two ports, so one line can feed a pair of routers, and the line stays up if either router fails.

New

  • A dual hand-off on every line. The hand-off box each line adds to the ISP’s panel now has two ports, side by side, as carriers provide for redundancy. Cable each to a router of a pair: they share the line’s bandwidth, and if one fails, the other carries it all. Lines you already have get the second port too.
  • The line is still one line. For a hall that rides out a carrier’s outage as well, give each router a line of its own from another carrier.

Changed

  • The ISP panel’s card and NetOps show both ports: which are cabled, and to what.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.30.2

Hot swaps that stay hot

A server with RAID now keeps running when a drive fails and you swap it, every time, not only the first.

Fixed

  • Servers halted after a drive swap. Once a server’s array had rebuilt a drive, the game went on thinking that drive was still rebuilding. The next drive to fail then looked like a second one out, so the array counted as lost and the server halted, and swapping the drive didn’t start it again. Now a finished rebuild is done with, and RAID 1, 5 and 10 keep their server running through one failure after another, as long as each is replaced and rebuilt before the next.
  • A server already halted this way starts again by itself within a game minute of loading your save.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.30.1

Cooler rows, sturdier parts

In-row coolers now pull the heat out of the racks beside them, so two either side of a hot rack both pull their weight. Parts break far less often. Cooling units and UPS cabinets can go back to your inventory, and be renamed.

Changed

  • In-row coolers pull the heat out of the racks beside them. As well as cooling the air those racks breathe, each one now draws air through them, as real close-coupled coolers do. That carries out the heat left inside them, as fan trays do, shared between the racks it reaches. A full rack of nine Q140s runs at 58 °C with one in-row cooler beside it, and at 32 °C, flat out, with one on each side.
  • A CRAC still cools the air the racks breathe, but nothing gets colder than its 18 °C supply air. Once one CRAC covers a rack, a second only adds spare capacity. For heat trapped inside a rack, add fan trays or in-row coolers.
  • Parts break far less often. Drives, fans, power supplies and the rest last about four times longer, and wear out half as fast as they age. A hall of three dozen small servers loses a part every three or four days rather than one a day. ASIC miners’ hashboards are unchanged.

New

  • To inventory, for cooling units and UPS cabinets. Their card can put them back in your inventory, to place again later. A UPS put away takes its batteries’ charge with it, and only a new one arrives charged.
  • Rename cooling units and UPS cabinets on their card, as you can racks and rack equipment.

Fixed

  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.30.0

Power and air for the big racks

Mining racks now cool the way real ones do: CRACs and fan trays both matter. A new high-density PDU powers a rack full of big miners or GPU servers. GigBid leaves the choice of servers to you and picks a VLAN that works for them, and the game shows when it’s checking for an update.

New

  • High-density PDU. From Regional: three-phase power, twelve C19 outlets good for 36 kW, with a load display. One runs a rack full of Quarry Q140s; two run a rack full of GPU servers, a power supply on each. It has no C13 outlets, so a switch or fan tray in the same rack needs a C13 PDU beside it.
  • Checking for updates. As the game starts, the title screen shows that it’s checking for an update until it knows. If there is one, it downloads with its progress showing, as before. You can still play without waiting.

Changed

  • Mining racks need a CRAC and fan trays. A miner’s own fans now blow most of its heat out of the back of the rack, as real ASICs do. The tenth that stays in a closed rack is for the rack’s fan trays to move. A cooling unit cools the air the miners breathe. A rack of nine Q140s runs flat out with a CRAC in front and two fan trays, slows down with only the CRAC, and with nothing cooling it shuts down.
  • GigBid: you pick the servers. A request’s server list starts with nothing ticked. Tick the ones you want, or click With a spare or Fewest servers to tick a suggestion.
  • GigBid picks the VLAN for you. As you pick servers, the VLAN follows them onto one that works. Their switch ports have to carry it, it needs a way to the internet and addresses free for them, and a client that wants a VLAN of its own gets one no other client uses. Choose a VLAN yourself and it stays as you set it.

Fixed

  • Plug in power put each cord on the PDU with the least load, so a small PDU beside a big one got the big loads and tripped. It now picks the PDU with the most room left.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.29.2

Room to grow

A big hall no longer freezes. In a hall full of running servers the game used to stop for seconds at a time, every few game minutes and every time you did something. Now it keeps moving, and runs several times faster.

Fixed

  • No more long freezes in a big hall. With a full hall running (1,400 servers, 3,000 cables, nearly 500 clients), the game stopped for 11 seconds every five game minutes, and for 8 to 9 seconds at the top of each hour and after anything you did, from cabling a port to changing the speed. Those pauses are now a fraction of a second at most.
  • Smoother frames. The same hall ran at 12 frames a second even paused, and hardly moved when running. It now runs at 45 to 54 frames a second paused and over 30 at any speed. Smaller halls are smoother too.
  • Working out where every client’s traffic goes, which happens all the time, took far longer the bigger the hall. It now grows only in step with the hall, and isn’t worked out again until something on the network changes.
  • Servers’ status lights cost far less to show, so a hall full of them no longer slows every frame. They look and blink as before.
  • Your sysadmin no longer checks the whole network every few minutes when there’s nothing for them to do.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.29.1

One server at a time

Patching every server at once from Server Consoles no longer reboots them all together. It rolls through them one at a time, as real halls patch, so a client spread over several servers stays up through it.

Changed

  • A rolling patch from Server Consoles. The button at the top that patches every server used to reboot them all at once, taking down any client spread over several. Now it patches them one at a time, the furthest behind first, and each is back up before the next goes down. It waits while another server is patching, by hand or by night.
  • While a rolling patch runs, the top of Server Consoles shows which server is updating and how many are waiting, and those waiting are marked queued in the list. Stop leaves the rest as they are; the one updating finishes.
  • A server that’s off or hung when its turn comes is left out, and you’re told. When the last one is back up, a notice lists every server it updated.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.29.0

A network like the real thing

Build your network the way real data centers do. Traffic now shares every parallel path, so pairs of routers, firewalls and spines all carry their share. A 100G firewall guards a big hall’s edge, servers get 100G cards, clients’ servers talk to each other across your switches, and a management network brings any server’s console, and its power switch, to your desk.

New

  • Firewall 100G. From National: two pairs of 100G QSFP28 ports for the edge of a big hall, outside to your core routers and inside to your spines. Two side by side share the load and cover for each other.
  • Dual 100 Gb card. From Regional: two QSFP28 ports for a GPU or HPC server, cabled to a 100G switch. With both cabled, it gets 200 Gb.
  • The management network. Every server’s MGMT port is a real port now. Cable it to a switch that leads to a router (or into the router), and the server shows in Server Consoles at the desk as one on a KVM does: its screen, updates, hang alerts and watchdog. You can switch it on and off from there too.
  • Traffic between a client’s servers. Clients on several servers send traffic between them as well: storage replicating, databases, HPC nodes swapping results (mining clients don’t). It crosses the switches between them, never your lines. GigBid shows how much each offer sends, a client’s card checks it, and NetOps shows it server by server. If the links between their switches are full, or the servers can’t reach each other, the client misses its promise, so keep its servers together or join their switches with fast links.
  • Building a fabric. A new Handbook article on laying out a big hall’s network: two routers, a firewall pair, spines, leaves, servers on two switches, and a management network.

Changed

  • Traffic shares every parallel path. Where there’s more than one equally short way out, traffic splits over them by link speed, as in a real fabric. Two routers each carry their share over their own lines, firewall pairs and spines share the load, and a server cabled to two switches uses both links. When one fails, the others carry everything.
  • Clients you’d already signed aren’t held to the traffic between their servers until they renew.
  • Server Consoles (the KVM Console, before) opens once you have a KVM switch or a cabled MGMT port, and lists servers on the management network apart from those on KVM switches.
  • In a slid-out server, the 100 Gb card and dual-rotor fans have models of their own.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.
v0.28.1

Fans that pull their weight

GPU servers no longer cook their racks. Every server’s own fans now carry its heat out, as real ones do, and a new dual-rotor fan gives a GPU server the airflow it needs. Plus a fix for network ports that showed on GPU cards.

New

  • Dual-rotor fans. RackMart has an 80 mm dual-rotor fan: two rotors in one deep frame, moving more than twice the air of a high-speed fan, at 60 W each. It’s the GPU server’s standard fan now, and six of them carry the heat of eight Vertex 80s.

Changed

  • Server fans carry their own heat. A rack used to move heat only through its own airflow and fan trays, so one busy GPU server could overheat a rack even with a fan tray and a CRAC beside it. Now each running server’s fans carry its heat out of the back of the rack, as in a real hall. The rack’s airflow and fan trays take whatever a server’s fans can’t, and the heat of gear without fans of its own, so mining racks run as before. A rack’s card lists its fan trays and its server fans separately.
  • GPU servers you already have keep the high-speed fans they came with, which can’t keep up with a server full of Vertex 80s. Swap in dual-rotor fans: they’re hot-swap, so the server can stay on.
  • A whole rack of GPU servers gives off nearly 50 kW. Their fans get it out of the rack, but the room has to take it from there: put cooling units with the capacity beside it, or spread the servers across racks.

Fixed

  • GPU cards in a server’s back showed two network ports each that didn’t work (“That port is gone”). GPUs have no network ports, and now none show.
v0.28.0

Built to order, down to the last plug

Servers are now built to order: pick every part, the operating system and the RAID level, and save your builds to order again. And the hall looks like the real thing. The racks, the gear in them, the plugs on every cable, the coolers, the lights and the fire safety kit are all modelled after real hardware, and a full hall runs several times faster than before.

New

  • Servers built to order. Every server and storage chassis in RackMart has Build and Empty chassis. Build opens a builder at its standard spec: the chassis from above with every slot and the parts that fit it, the operating system it ships with (Linux, Windows Server or none) and its RAID level, with its specs, power draw and price alongside. You can order a build once it would pass its power-on checks, and the server arrives as built: its parts fitted, its operating system installed and patched, its drives set up. It costs its parts plus 20% for building and testing it, so the standard spec costs what it always did.
  • Save your builds. Name a build to keep it, up to 24 a game, and order it again from Your builds in RackMart, where you can also edit, rename or delete it. In a shared game, everyone has the same builds.
  • Racks are real cabinets. The 12U, 24U and 42U racks stand on levelling feet and casters, with 19-inch rails and their square holes, side panels with a handle and lock, door hinges, and a roof with brush strips for the cables to rise through. Your rack paint colours them.
  • Equipment in depth. Servers have rack ears with their screws, pull handles and quick-release latches. Hot-swap drive carriers stand proud in their bays (2.5-inch SSDs with a blue lever, 3.5-inch hard drives in grey), with blanks in the empty bays. Power supplies have their handles and release tabs, switches and PDUs their ears, and lights, buttons and fans their bezels and guards. A server you carry has its real body too, lid, vents and all.
  • Fans with real rotors. The fans in fan trays, miners, switches and power supplies have seven-bladed rotors that turn at the fan’s speed. A fast fan blurs, with its hub still solid in the middle, as a real one does, and a stopped fan stands still.
  • Blanking plates. Empty units have tool-less snap-in blanking plates on the front, their latches clipped into the rails.
  • See what you’re placing. Placing a rack, a cooler or a UPS shows the real thing, faded: blue where it can go, red where it can’t.
  • Real plugs and ports. Network ports, optic cages, power inlets and a PDU’s outlets are modelled, and every cable ends in its real plug: an RJ45 under a snagless boot in the cable’s colour, an LC fibre connector (aqua for OM3, blue for OS2), a DAC’s metal plug with its pull tab, an MPO on a trunk, and C13 and C19 power plugs. Optics stand in their cages with the cable plugged into them. A KVM adapter sits in a server’s console port with its USB lead. A patch panel shows each keystone (Cat6, Cat6A or LC) and an open hole where none is fitted.
  • A server’s insides, in 3D. Slide a server out and lift its lid to see heatsinks on the CPUs (taller, with heat pipes, in 2U and 4U), memory in its slots, a wall of hot-swap fans turning while it runs, the power supplies, network cards and GPUs on their risers, and the drive cage.
  • Coolers and UPSes look the part. The in-row cooler has its column of fans and chilled-water pipes up to the ceiling. The room coolers have louvred doors and their blowers under a grille in the roof. The UPSes run from a compact tower to a modular frame of power and battery modules. Their screens, lights and fans work as before.
  • What hangs overhead. LED light fittings hang on wires over the aisles. Every section you lease gets a red sprinkler main with branch lines and pendant heads, an orange smoke-detection pipe over the rows, dome cameras at its corners, CO2 extinguishers and their signs on the walls, and an emergency power-off by the office door. They grow with the hall.
  • The carriers’ entrance wall. The ISP’s panel is a fire-rated plywood wall now. Each carrier’s conduit comes down from the ceiling to a slack loop of fibre and its labelled termination box, with yellow jumpers across to a demarc box beside the hand-off boxes. The boxes and their ports work as before.
  • A real rolling ladder. The ladder you climb with X is a yellow steel safety ladder, with handrails, grip treads and locking casters.

Changed

  • A full hall runs several times faster. Racks, their faceplates, fans and cabinets are drawn together rather than one by one, so a hall full of racks takes about a sixth of the work it did, even with all the new models in it. The finest detail is drawn on the racks near you, on the side you’re facing.
  • Cable reels are full size and held by their flanges, and teammates now carry a reel of the cable they’re running instead of a blue ring.
  • Cables leave their ports further out, as their plugs are now their real length. A cable in an optic or a KVM adapter starts at its end. Aim straight at such a port and you’ll find the cable; aim a little to the side for the port.
  • In the server and rack views, network ports are drawn latch up, a patch panel’s front shows the backs of its keystones, a 4U GPU server’s power supplies stack one above the other clear of its cards, and a row of fans too wide for its chassis now fits.
  • RackMart now says empty chassis where it said barebones.
  • Saves from earlier versions load, with no saved builds yet. In a shared game, everyone needs this version.

Fixed

  • The game kept hold of a little memory each time it redrew the hall, such as when you leased more floor.
v0.27.1

Straight to work

A fix for your crew hanging about by the door.

Fixed

  • Your crew could stand by the office door for up to a couple of hours after coming in for the day shift, or after you hired them. They now head off somewhere as soon as they arrive.
v0.27.0

Saddles overhead, and a calmer crew

The overhead runway is rebuilt the way real halls hang it: a frame of white bars over every row, with orange saddles to lay your cables through. Cables lie neatly in it, and you pick the saddles they run through. Your crew also walk about at an everyday pace and stay put longer between jobs.

New

  • A new overhead runway. Over each row hangs a frame of white bars: one just behind the racks and one over their fronts, tied together by cross bars and hung from the ceiling on rods. Bars cross the hall wherever your cables do. Orange saddles straddle the bars every 14 cm for the cables to run through.
  • Route cables through the saddles. With a cable in hand, the saddle you look at lights up. Press E to run the cable through it. You can skip as many as you like: the cable runs on through every saddle between, and round any corner on the way.
  • Updates you can see coming. From the next update on, a new version takes over the title screen while it downloads, showing how far along it is, then asks you to restart to finish. You can still play while it downloads, or restart later from the menus.

Changed

  • Cables lie right in the runway. Each keeps to its own place in the saddles, side by side with the others, round every corner and dogleg. Cables coming up off a rack lay in one after another without crossing, and bend gently over the bar rather than kinking. A cable taken down to a low clip and back up loops out behind the rack instead of into it.
  • Your crew take it easier. Between jobs they walk at an everyday pace, however fast the clock is running, and stay a good while wherever they are rather than getting up every few minutes. They still hurry to a job.

Fixed

  • Pressing E on a saddle a cable already ran through took it back out of the runway, leaving it hanging loose. Now only Q (or a right-click) steps back, and only a port ends a run.
  • Long cables could look angular where they bent.
v0.26.0

A crew that gets about, and cable by the metre

Your staff now come in, keep busy and walk to their jobs, and you can see your own hands at work. Copper and fiber come on reels, cut to length as you run them. And mining pays its way all game long.

New

  • Your crew come to work. Technicians and sysadmins walk in through the office’s exit door at the start of their shift and leave at the end. In between they keep busy. Technicians walk the hall looking racks over, or crouch to check the bottom units. Sysadmins type at the spare desks, whose screens come on. Both take breaks at the coffee and the water cooler, read the whiteboard and the status screen, and sit at the meeting table or in the lounge. Two at the coffee chat face to face.
  • Jobs start with a walk. A technician walks out to the rack and starts work on arrival: kneeling to a server low in the rack, reaching into one higher up, carrying a whole server in both hands to swap it, or cleaning with a can of compressed air. A sysadmin walks to a free desk and works at its console. They find their way round desks, chairs and racks, and the sliding doors open for them.
  • Your own arms in first person, in the clothes you chose. You carry a server low in both hands, hold a cable reel or coil in front of you, and reach out to whatever you press E on. In a shared game your arm also waves and points.
  • Cable on reels. Cat6, Cat6A, OM3 and OS2 come on 100 m reels, and RackMart shows what’s left in metres. Take the reel, plug in the first end, and the metres left show over the reel as you walk the cable out. The far port tells you how long the run will be before you plug it in. Each run is cut to its length along its route, with a metre spare, and the reel stays in your hands for the next one. Unplug a cable and its metres go back on the reel.

Changed

  • Cleaning is safer. Technicians take a server down for a clean only when every client on it has another server to carry its work. Downtime your crew cause for a clean or a patch never counts against you.
  • Jobs take about as long as before, but the walk is now part of them: a part swap is the walk plus 25 minutes at the rack. A sysadmin takes a few minutes to get to a console.
  • Sysadmins dress for the office, and everyone on the crew wears a staff pass. No more hard hats.
  • Cable prices. A 100 m reel costs $100 for Cat6, $200 for Cat6A, $250 for OM3 and $350 for OS2. Each link costs a little less than a patch cable did. Copper and fiber runs between racks no longer have a charge per tile, since a longer run simply uses more cable. Trunks still do. DAC cables, trunks and power cords are still sold one at a time. RackMart buys back whole reels.
  • Mining pays its way all game long. What a miner earns no longer fades away. A Quarry Q45 pays for itself in about a month whenever you buy it, and still nets over $100 a day a year in. A halving cuts what miners earn for a couple of weeks, until weaker miners switch off. Games in progress get the raise too.
  • Saves from earlier versions load. Patch cables in stock become 3 m each on a reel of the same cable, and cables already plugged in stay as they are.

Fixed

  • The Handbook said a trunk is cheaper than separate cables for more than a few links. It isn’t, once you count the panels, keystones and a patch at each end, but it is tidier, and the Handbook now says so.
v0.25.0

Learning the ropes, and new badges

Mining and the other recent additions are now explained where you need them: in the Handbook, in tips when something first happens, and in side objectives. Plus twelve new achievements to earn, and two new looks.

New

  • Twelve new achievements, with a new Mining group: Pay dirt, Right on cue, Diamond hands, Cashing in, Halving day and Mining farm. Also In it for the long haul, Growing together and Repeat business for long-term clients, Hyperscale for a 100G line, and Note to self for the whiteboard.
  • Two new looks to earn: the Gold rush wallpaper (Diamond hands) and Copper rack paint (Mining farm).
  • New Handbook articles: Your office covers your desk, the whiteboard, the desk radio and how the office grows. Playing together covers hosting and joining a shared game.
  • Mining terms in the Handbook’s glossary: hashrate, mining pool, difficulty, halving, hashprice, ASIC miner, cost basis, take-profit and stop-loss. Hover them wherever they’re underlined.
  • New tips, the first time each happens: your first ASIC miner, your first pool payout, a miner slowed by heat, mining that costs more than it earns, and your first long-term client.
  • Two new side objectives: Get paid by a mining pool, and Leave an order to sell at Quayside.

Changed

  • The Handbook is up to date on what mining clients pay, mining with your own idle GPUs, coin sales as income, the office upgrading with each reputation tier, starting with two rows, and GigBid’s Needs your answer.
v0.24.0

Mine your own coins

Put ASIC miners, idle GPUs and spare cores to work mining four coins of your own. Then hold them or sell them on a market that never sits still.

New

  • Mining: four coins to mine. ASIC miners mine Lodestone, GPUs mine Garnet and the wild Wobble, and any server’s spare cores mine Cobble.
  • RackMart › Miners sells the Quarry Q45 from Local and the Quarry Q140 Pro from Regional. They need power, a network cable to a switch with a way out, and plenty of cooling. A hot miner slows itself down.
  • Deepvein, the mining pool app: point each miner at a pool and see what it nets a day after its power and cooling. It warns you when heat holds miners back, or when a coin costs more to mine than it earns. Put a miner to sleep until it pays again. Pools pay at midnight, less a 2% fee.
  • Servers mine with whatever their clients aren’t using, and back off before the clients would notice.
  • Quayside, the exchange: live prices for every coin, charts from three days to six months, and your wallet. Sales go at the market price, less the spread and a small fee.
  • Hold or sell: for each coin, choose whether to hold what the pools pay or have Quayside sell it as it comes in. Quayside shows what holding has gained or lost since your coins were paid in.
  • Orders: a take-profit sells when the price rises to your level, and a stop-loss when it falls to it. Quayside checks them every hour, even while you’re out in the hall.
  • Prices move every hour, with calm spells, wild spells, crashes and pumps. More miners join when mining pays well, so each one earns less. Lodestone’s reward halves every 60 days.
  • Coin sales show in the bank and in the end-of-day report as income of their own.
  • Each coin has its own logo.

Changed

  • GigBid’s new mining clients pay less than before. They pay you less than they’d earn mining on your GPUs themselves, and far less than AI and HPC clients pay for the same GPUs. Contracts you’ve already signed keep their pay.
  • GigBid marks mining clients with Lodestone’s logo.
v0.23.0

Moving up in the world

Your office grows with your reputation, from a start-up’s back room to an enterprise operations center, and everything in it is now properly modelled. New games start with two rows of racks, and night patching no longer takes clients down.

New

  • The office grows with your reputation, five stages from Start-up to Enterprise. Each tier you reach upgrades it for free, and it gets bigger each time.
  • Start-up: worn carpet tiles, folding tables, plastic chairs, boxes from RackMart, a wilted plant, and a light that flickers.
  • Small business: wide doors to the hall that slide open as you come up to them and shut behind you, as real data hall doors do. Real desks and office chairs, new carpet, every light working, and a coffee machine.
  • Growing company: a status screen for the hall, a wall clock, a water cooler and a meeting table.
  • Corporate: a floor-to-ceiling glass front onto the hall, a wood floor, quilted leather executive chairs, a long meeting table, a lounge, a bookshelf and your uptime awards.
  • Enterprise: a wall of status screens, a stone floor, a badge reader by the doors, and glass doors outside.
  • Everything in the office is a proper model now: desks, chairs, monitors, keyboards, mugs, lights, the whiteboard, the clock, the screens, the doors and more.
  • The whiteboard starts with an onboarding note, and reminds you that you can write on it.

Changed

  • New games start with two rows: the section south of the first is yours from the start.
  • The ISP’s panel is now at the end of the second row, leaving the wall by the office for its doors and window. Saved games get the second section free, and the panel moves there with its cables. A DAC cable to the panel that no longer reaches becomes fiber, with its optics fitted free, so your lines stay up.
  • Patch at night now runs a maintenance window from 3 to 6 am, one server at a time, as real halls run rolling updates. The server furthest behind goes first, and each one is back up before the next goes down, so a client spread over two servers never loses both at once. Any the window can’t fit wait for the next night.
  • The Networks and security chapter now runs the way a network is built: the edge router, the firewall, a second VLAN and its subnet, a client moved onto it, and only then opening just what that client needs. Each step says what the piece is for.
  • NetOps’ VLAN cards list what each client needs, and warn when a rule opened for one client lets traffic in to another.

Fixed

  • GigBid’s suggested spare could promise a client would survive losing a server when it wouldn’t: a client spread over the lost server and one other puts its whole load on the one left. Each loss is now checked properly, and GigBid says when there’s no room for a spare.
v0.22.0

Clients for the long haul

GigBid now brings long-term clients you can build your hall around, and the site is easier to use: lists that open in place, columns you can sort by, and a clear picture of what a contract will take of your servers before you sign.

New

  • Long-term clients: once your reputation reaches Local, some requests are long term, from two months to a year. From National, the biggest clients sign for up to two years. They pay 25% below the going rate, for steady work.
  • A bad day costs a long-term client a service credit of 10 to 50% of that day’s pay, by how far uptime fell short, instead of a penalty. They only leave after 7 bad days in a row.
  • Long-term clients may ask to grow by a quarter to a half. Agree within two days, and the extra work starts two days later. Give their servers the room by then.
  • A week before a long term ends, a client with no recent bad days offers to renew, at 5% more.
  • Breaking a long-term contract early costs a quarter of what’s left of it.
  • Needs your answer, above your contracts, gathers clients that are down and long-term clients asking to grow or renew. Answer them right there. The DeskOS start menu counts them too.

Changed

  • GigBid’s open requests and your contracts are lists now. Short term and Long term sit side by side, and you can filter by kind of work.
  • Click a column name to sort by it; click again to sort the other way. An icon on each row says whether your hall can host a request, or whether a client is up. Hover over it to see why not.
  • A row opens in place, beneath itself, with the details and the server allocation.
  • Signing suggests servers with a spare: losing any one of them won’t take the client down. Pick Fewest servers instead, or tick and untick servers yourself.
  • Beside the servers, Resource allocation charts each resource: what other clients take, what this contract would take, and what’s left available. Below it, each server’s share against what it has free, in amber where a server falls short.
  • A signed contract opens the same way, with its servers and their state. Change servers shows the new pick in the chart before you save it.
v0.21.0

A start menu that tells you things

The DeskOS start menu shows how each app is doing at a glance, and marks the ones that need you. The first update to arrive through the game itself.

Changed

  • Each app in the DeskOS start menu says how it’s doing: what’s in your cart, clients down and open requests, who’s on shift, today’s takings, your lines and any outage, incidents and power, servers frozen or waiting for an OS, and achievements earned.
  • A red or amber dot marks an app that needs you.
  • At the bottom: who’s at the desk, with the Handbook and Settings.
  • The old row of buttons is gone: the game saves itself, and theme, tips and sound are in Settings. Take the desk tour is there now too, while you’re at the desk.
v0.20.0

Updates come to you

The game now keeps itself up to date: install this version once, and future patches download in the background. Racks also run cooler when they have airflow to spare.

New

  • The game checks for updates when it starts and every few hours, and downloads a new version in the background. When it’s ready, Restart to Update shows on the title screen and in the game menu. It saves your game first, installs, and opens the new version. Or just quit, and it installs on the way out.
  • Your saves are untouched by updates. This version is the last one you need to install by hand.

Fixed

  • More fan trays keep a rack cooler even once they can move all its heat. Before, extra airflow did nothing past that point, so a GPU rack with cold air at its front and fan trays to spare still read warm, and its servers ran hot.
v0.19.0

A sweep for bugs

The whole game was played through end to end looking for bugs. This release fixes what turned up, makes billing fairer, and makes heat hit GPUs too.

Changed

  • A client you cancel pays for the day so far, by the same rule as at midnight. The cancellation fee comes on top.
  • Support plans are billed for the time they cover. A new plan’s first night costs part of a day, and switching one off, or selling the device, bills today’s hours there and then.
  • GPUs slow down when they run hot, as CPUs do, so a hot GPU rack falls short on TFLOPS.
  • A throttling server stays hot until you cool it, instead of cooling off and overheating again every hour, which took its client up and down.
  • Cancelling your last internet line hands back any leased address blocks with it. The cancel button warns you first.
  • RackMart checkout is all or nothing: if anything in the cart isn’t for sale, nothing is bought.
  • Rename an ISP hand-off box from its card to label the circuit. The name stays when you change the line’s speed.
  • The Bank’s “Repairs and cleaning” line is now “Repairs and one-off fees”, as it takes in recruiting fees too.

Fixed

  • A client cut off by an outage on its network’s line is told about the outage, not told to cable its servers, even while another network’s line works.
  • During an outage, a spare line that isn’t cabled is no longer taken for your way out.
  • A carrier outage no longer has routers asking you to cable their WAN ports.
  • A line cabled to gear that’s off or has failed says what’s wrong at the other end, not that it isn’t cabled.
  • Behind a router, the cable on its WAN side limits traffic and shows its load.
  • A client short because its servers throttle from heat is told so, not that they’re overworked.
  • The restart after a power cut counts as servers restarting in the day’s downtime, not as the grid outage.
  • Changing a line’s speed or cancelling it bills the day at the right price.
  • Cancelling a line gives back the optic in its hand-off, and optics taken out go back to stock by their condition.
  • A network card can’t come out while optics or cables, a DAC included, are in its ports.
  • Cables let go of clips on racks that have been stored or sold.
  • A keystone mismatch across a trunk is listed once.
  • GigBid counts only the lines carrying traffic when it checks what your lines can take.
  • Getting lines from two carriers needs them on a router to count, and so does the Plan B achievement.
  • Achievements earned at midnight, like Payday, show in that day’s report.
  • Fan trays with no power no longer count toward a rack’s airflow.
  • The outage pill names every carrier that’s down, and an empty QSFP28 cage reads “Empty cage” in NetOps.
v0.18.0

Carriers and 100G

Internet from three carriers, up to 100G a line, with the hardware to carry it. Cables now go only where you route them.

New

  • Internet lines come from three carriers: Fernway (local fiber: the cheapest, with the most outages), Northline (a national carrier) and Meridian (a global backbone: the lowest latency and fewest outages, at a premium).
  • Every carrier sells every speed, up to the new Dedicated 100G, from the start. Order as many lines as the ISP panel takes (eight), from one carrier or several, and change a line’s speed whenever you like.
  • 100G hardware: QSFP28 ports, a 100G LR4 optic, yellow OS2 single-mode fiber, a 100G DAC cable, a leaf switch, a spine switch and a core router that routes 400 Gb.
  • Patch notes, right here in the menus.

Changed

  • An outage takes down all of one carrier’s lines at once. Lines from a second carrier keep clients online through a router.
  • Each line serves the network cabled to it. To share several lines across one network, a router with a WAN port on each spreads traffic over them by their speed.
  • Routers, switches, optics and cables for 10G and 100G are on sale from the start. Firewalls still go on sale with reputation.
  • Cables run only where you route them, through the clips and trays you pick. Left unrouted, a cable hangs loose or lies on the floor; to run one overhead, take it through the trays from the step ladder (X).
  • A power cord reaches a PDU in the rack right next door, as well as in its own.
  • Your lines from before carry on as Northline lines, at the same prices.

Fixed

  • A switch on its own internet line passes the internet on to everything cabled to it, not only the first line’s switch.
  • The trunk cable’s details no longer say “undefined Gb”.
v0.17.0

A new RackMart, and selling back

Sell what you aren’t using, priced by its condition, and find anything at RackMart with its new layout and search.

New

  • Sell back at RackMart buys the parts, servers, racks and floor units you aren’t using, priced by their condition and time in service. Failed parts sell as scrap.
  • A part taken out of a server that’s been in service goes back to stock used, and keeps its age wherever it goes next.
  • RackMart is laid out like an online shop: departments down the side, a search across everything (press /), sorting by price or name, and a filter for what’s on sale.

Changed

  • The bank balance is gone from RackMart’s header; the cart still shows it.

Fixed

  • The camera no longer snaps round when a card hands the mouse back, mostly while fitting server parts.
v0.16.0

The ISP panel, trunk cables and the whiteboard

The internet comes in at one wall panel, as in a real building, and trunks are cables you plug in.

New

  • The internet comes in at one place: the ISP panel on the hall’s west wall, by the office door, with a hand-off box for each line.
  • Trunk cables plug into a patch panel’s Trunk port at each end, like any cable.
  • Patch panels can be cross-connected, joining one panel’s trunk to another’s.
  • The office whiteboard takes typed notes, shared in co-op and saved with the game.

Changed

  • Rows have more room to walk round each end.
  • The office bookshelf is now an outside door that leaves the game.
  • Cleaning dust out of a server is free, and needs the server off.

Fixed

  • Spare desks’ lock screens keep the game’s clock.
  • Racks and devices can be renamed.
  • Taking a device out closes its card, so the mouse looks around again.
v0.15.0

Desk radio

Internet radio on every desk in the office.

New

  • A radio on your desk plays internet radio: TruckSim FM, TruckersFM, Simulator Radio, UpBeat Radio and 181.FM’s ’90s Country, or any station you add by its stream link.
  • E on the radio turns it on and off and F changes station; M and N do the same from anywhere. Play anywhere, in Settings, hears it all over the hall.

Fixed

  • Server fronts draw properly in the installed game again.
  • The installed game plays the radio’s stations.
v0.14.0

Co-op

Run one data center together, up to four players.

New

  • Host a game from the title screen, and friends join with its code from wherever they are.
  • Each player has their own desk in the office, and teammates show up as people, dressed the way they chose in Your Character.
  • See and hear what teammates do by hand: what they carry, the servers they slide out, the cables they run.
  • Wave (V) and point (T).

Changed

  • When the host leaves, guests go back to the title screen, which says why.
  • The menus show the game’s version: everyone in a game needs the same one.
v0.13.0

The first beta tester release

Data Center Manager, on foot.

New

  • Run your data center from the sysadmin office beside the hall: build racks, servers and the network by hand, and run the business from the office computer.
  • The title screen, five save slots, and the game menu with the Handbook and settings.
  • The Windows desktop app, with its installer.