"Server temperature is too high%, our servers can't take it anymore!" an employee shouted. This was normal; their calculations were correct. 2 million people was indeed the limit for the entire server cluster, and this limit was fast approaching, yet the number of concurrent users continued to climb.
"Boss, the server room temperature has already reached 32 degrees Celsius, far exceeding the requirements! Our servers can't handle such temperatures, and their efficiency is starting to decline!"
"What? Ten air conditioners and one central air conditioner can't even control the server room temperature!!" Huang He was shocked. However, he didn't consider that so many servers were crammed into one room, all operating at full power. It was akin to the entire room catching fire, so it was quite normal for the air conditioners to be unable to cope.
"Cooling team, go in and cool the machines with ice towels!!" Leng Zhimeng was apparently prepared. With a command, seven or eight bare-chested men, carrying buckets filled with ice water mixtures and towels, rushed into the server room. They then continuously wiped the surface of the server cases with these towels, using this somewhat foolish method to help cool the servers.
However, it had to be admitted that the method was quite effective. The server efficiency was maintained, and there was no protective reduction in performance. It was just very physically demanding. In less than twenty minutes, these seven or eight muscular men were exhausted or suffered heatstroke due to the high temperature and had to withdraw from the server room.
But a second batch of bare-chested strong men charged in.
This second batch wasn't prepared by Leng Zhimeng. She hadn't expected these strong men to suffer heatstroke; she had only prepared one batch. The second batch was directly dispatched by Huang He from the leather factory workshop. They immediately took off their shirts and went in to cool the machines.
All they had to do was wipe the surface of the machines, a task with no difficulty, learnable at a glance.
Although this kind of plot would likely be criticized as nonsensical and foolish by many, it was indeed effective, as the server temperatures were kept within a tolerable range.
However, while the server temperature could be managed this way, the server's computational limit could not be increased. As the number of users on Liao oo Voice continued to grow, the servers finally reached 100% operational efficiency. Although they could still run overloaded for a while, every second and minute in an overloaded state was a gamble with the servers' lifespan.
Moreover, even if overloaded, they still couldn't handle more traffic.
As a result, users who were chatting began to experience interruptions. Conversations would suddenly end, and users would have to try initiating voice calls again.
Initially, users were quite satisfied with oo Voice. Although the conversations clearly had some delay and the audio quality was noticeably poor, and at least 30% of users found they had no microphone or speakers, or neither, and just foolishly clicked to open the voice function.
But this was undoubtedly a historic breakthrough for online social experience, and everyone was very satisfied. After all, compared to talking on the phone, using online chat was incredibly cheap.
So, when the chat began to fluctuate, users became very displeased.
"What lousy network!" Initially, users thought it was their own network's problem. However, when they found that opening other network applications caused no lag, they understood that oo was the culprit.
Instantly, these users began to curse oo wildly, but oo continued to act erratically. Many people were caught in a loop of disconnecting, reconnecting, and then disconnecting again.
This was the dire consequence of server failure. Once it blew, all previous services would go down with it. Of course, the servers hadn't completely blown up yet; they were still hovering on the verge of collapse, awaiting the day they would completely fail and restart.
However, users were unaware of how precarious the situation was in the oo Voice server room. They only noticed that their voice experience was becoming increasingly laggy. This continued for about ten minutes. Just as many were preparing to give up in frustration, all oo Voice calls were abruptly interrupted, and they could no longer connect no matter how hard they tried.
Fortunately, the system simultaneously pushed a message, informing users that their servers were unable to handle the massive influx of users and required a restart for repair, with a waiting time of five minutes.
"Alright, five minutes..." Users who were engrossed in their conversations naturally didn't mind waiting another five minutes. After all, opening any game could easily consume fifty minutes, let alone five.
Of course, most users spent five minutes browsing web pages, and then tried using oo Voice again. This time, they found it had indeed become much smoother, basically returning to the state before the lag. Everyone promptly forgot their previous unpleasant experiences and continued to chat happily online.
"Brother-in-law, how is it? We were really fast, weren't we!" Leng Zhimeng smiled, seeing the servers stabilized at around 60% heavy load.
"Zhimeng, you're much better than I imagined!" Huang He exclaimed from the other side. If Leng Zhimeng hadn't led her team to complete the debugging of four servers in just three hours, and then temporarily interrupted for five minutes to reintegrate these four servers into the larger server network, increasing the computational capacity of the entire server cluster, the entire network service would likely have crashed completely by now.
Just as he was thinking about crashing, he heard a bang, and the entire server room instantly lost power, plunging it into darkness.
"What happened?" Huang He rushed out to ask, but he quickly realized there was no need to ask. A thick plume of black smoke was drifting from the electrical room. The electrician, Old Liu, had already rushed over with a pale face.
Clearly, the power cabinet in Jiangnan had exploded.
"What's the situation?" Huang He rushed over and asked loudly.
"Chairman, the situation is rather bad. We've burned out a set of equipment!" Electrician Old Liu emerged, looking helpless.
"Didn't I tell you to integrate the new and old power cabinets? I told you long ago that the old power cabinet couldn't handle our peak power demand!" Leng Zhimeng said loudly. Old Liu had no retort, clearly having slacked off again while Leng Zhimeng was busy with the servers and hadn't completed Leng Zhimeng's request.
In fact, Old Liu's technical skills were still decent, and he was quite confident that this set of power cabinets could withstand the extreme demands of the servers.
Indeed, without the later addition of the four new servers, such confidence would have been perfectly fine. Unfortunately, with the addition of the four server clusters, the power cabinet had no choice but to explode.
"Let's not talk about that for now. Old Liu, how long will it take to fix everything?" Huang He asked.
"This old power cabinet needs someone to come and get parts. It'll take until tomorrow at the earliest... However, our new power cabinet is almost ready. Another half hour will be enough. The new power cabinet's maximum load capacity is double that of the old one, so it can handle it!" Old Liu quickly replied.
"Hurry up!" Huang He shouted. Old Liu scrambled away to organize the power cabinet.
Fortunately, Old Liu didn't take thirty minutes; it took only about 15 minutes for full power to be restored. oo came back online 20 minutes after its complete meltdown.
Although the day was filled with anxiety and constant unexpected events, they managed to hold on.
Well, at least it was much better than when they were queuing to go online initially.
"Zhimeng, you did an excellent job this time!" Huang He said with emotion. Leng Zhimeng's work had been a lifesaver. If Leng Zhimeng hadn't spent all the money on servers, oo's servers would truly have exploded.
Without Leng Zhimeng's advance preparations, this incident would not have been a 20-minute network outage, but at least a 2-hour outage, along with traffic restrictions or even temporary suspension of voice services, as the hardware simply couldn't cope with such a massive change.
"Brother-in-law, I just hope no other changes occur!" Leng Zhimeng sighed.
"There shouldn't be... We've upgraded both our servers and power cabinets!" Huang He muttered, "Unless Wenzhou Telecom explodes."