Realistic character settings, exquisite theme layout, immersive interactive experience, interactive multiple scenes...a series of settings that are highly consistent with virtual and reality and map each other, creating the infinite charm of the "Metaverse" game world. The Blockman Go platform developed by GVERSE is one of the UGC (user-generated content) platforms with considerable volume. Faced with GVERSE's massive data, trivial target objects, and large-volume database migration needs, the Amazon Cloud Technology team designed a migration plan with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora and other services as the core, and specially designed multiple sets of customized technical solutions to introduce Professional project management continued to follow up, allowing all data to be migrated within 7 hours.
Opportunity: Database migration needs with tight time and heavy tasks
As the development threshold decreases, sandbox games, with their incomparable interactivity, may become the key to the "Content Creation 3.0 Era". The Blockman Go platform developed by GVERSE allows players to develop multiple different types of games for other players to play. It also provides rich social interaction functions and is a UGC platform. But at the same time, this type of platform also has some unique problems.
Zheng Hengguo, technical partner and technical director of GVERSE, pointed out that compared with common online games, UGC platform games have the characteristics of covering a wide range of players, large amounts of data and being trivial, which poses a considerable test to the configuration of the server. GVERSE has had extensive contact with Amazon Cloud Technology before, using its dynamic CDN, network acceleration and big data services. In the process, Amazon Cloud Technology's extensive global multi-node layout and good stability left a deep impression on him. Therefore, we chose to continue to cooperate with Amazon Cloud Technology for this database migration.
Solution: Customized strategy to solve 1450 photos
Difficulties in migrating large, medium and small tables
Amazon DynamoDB migration, splitting table categories, and completing the migration within a few hours on the same day
Since Amazon DynamoDB has an automatic scaling function and can reliably scale to millions of concurrent user requests while ensuring consistent low latency of no more than 10 milliseconds, GVERSE mainly uses the Amazon DynamoDB + Amazon Lambda solution to complete the migration work.
Regarding the migration of Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Cloud Technology conducted in-depth research on the solution and found that GVERSE has a huge and numerous table data volume, involving a total of 1,450 tables of different sizes. This scale is quite rare in the entire world. Among them, the user table contains a full amount of user data, and the import and export time is estimated to be 7 hours. If the traditional "Double-Write" method is used, it may take up to several months. In addition, due to the UGC attribute of the customer's product, each opened mini-game will be stored in a separate table. There are more than 1,000 mini-games (created by game players) on the entire platform, but their activity levels vary, so the number of tables appears Numerous challenges for both large and small tables. What's even more troublesome is that in order to ensure user experience, GVERSE requires database migration to be completed within a few hours on the day of cutting, which makes the migration task even more arduous.
Faced with this challenge, Amazon Cloud Technology proposed a customized final migration solution after many discussions and project verifications: using the CDC solution (Change Data Capture, change data capture) to copy the largest table, and analyzing the remaining tables. Migration was performed in batches by category, with small tables first, and then the Amazon CLI command line was used to migrate Amazon DynamoDB S3 export and Amazon DynamoDB S3 Import in batches for tables of different categories. Finally, the "Mission Impossible" was completed on the day of cutting. (Mission impossible).
MySQL migration, fully managed services, saving customers time and effort
The MySQL database size of GVERSE is about 2T. Considering the convenience of management, Amazon Aurora was chosen as the host. The fully managed feature of Amazon Aurora can significantly save operation and maintenance costs. Its feature of automatically executing standardized database clustering and replication solves the biggest problems in database configuration and management.
Amazon S3 migration, online data transmission solution, solves the problem of fine files
The characteristics of the UGC game platform that "players write their own games and choose their own games to play" determines that there are a large number of games and discrete player behavior information on the platform, resulting in some data buckets storing a massive amount of small files below 40K. The previously used CRR (Cross- Region Replication (cross-region replication) method no longer has efficiency advantages. Amazon Cloud Technology chose to use the Amazon Data Transfer Hub (DTH) solution to migrate this part of the data. It has external features such as multiple data source support, serverless structure (no upfront costs, pay-as-you-go), intuitive and easy to use, etc., which makes it especially suitable for Transfer a large number of files of different types and sizes from multiple different IDCs or clouds to Amazon Cloud Technology native services. The activation of DTH allows for easy migration of more than 600 million fragmented files, and the construction period is shortened from 1 month under the CRR method to 3 days, perfectly matching customer needs.
Security product reinforcement to ensure customer confidence
In order to allow players to create and generate games in UGC without risk, after the migration was completed, Amazon Cloud Technology also deployed security products such as Amazon Guarduty RDS Protection, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Security Hub and Amazon WAF for GVERSE to ensure infrastructure protection. User data is safe. This move effectively eliminates potential risks and gives customers confidence that all businesses run on Amazon cloud technology.
Business results: Professional people do professional things,
Migration meets energy efficiency
Zheng Hengguo said that Blockman Go's data services were previously deployed on different platforms, and new game content, version testing and configuration management required the development of two systems for adaptation. After the game database is uniformly migrated to Amazon Cloud Technology, only one solution is needed. In addition, since data is no longer transmitted across platforms, data synchronization costs are significantly optimized while eliminating transmission risks. If the company uses traditional IDC services, the operation and maintenance team may require 5 to 10 people, but now only one person is needed. Zheng Hengguo pointed out that overall, after applying Amazon cloud technology services, work efficiency has increased by about 20 to 30%.
Zheng Hengguo also spoke highly of the professional capabilities and service spirit of the Amazon Cloud Technology team during the migration process. In view of the particularity of the project management process method, Amazon Cloud Technology launched a dedicated project team composed of customer teams and Amazon DynamoDB experts specifically for GVERSE to provide management assistance for the project to reduce implementation risks. For each exclusive customized processing solution, the Amazon Cloud Technology expert team will stay on site before implementation to conduct on-site testing and communication to ensure that customers accept the solution based on their understanding of the solution, know what it is and why it is, and ensure the safety of the solution. Deployed smoothly.
After the migration is completed, GVERSE can have highly flexible, long-term stable, safe and compliant service guarantees, which is especially critical for a company that targets overseas and players around the world. Zheng Hengguo mentioned that the online game scene may face peak scenarios, especially for GVERSE, whose business is distributed in many different countries and regions and requires a distributed architecture to handle business. The sudden increase in DAU will increase the processing complexity exponentially. Amazon cloud technology solutions relieve GVERSE from the constraints imposed by infrastructure, allowing it to focus on expanding overseas markets and better serving players. There is no need to worry about data security and stability, and it can focus on the process of corporate innovation.
Zheng Hengguo said: "Amazon Cloud Technology helps online game manufacturers solve problems in machine operation and maintenance, network optimization, and security compliance. Its good services eliminate the need for us to spend time and energy in areas that we are not good at, allowing online game manufacturers to focus more on their business." In terms of innovative work, I think Amazon Cloud Technology is a great company."
In the future, GVERSE hopes to continue to cooperate with Amazon Cloud Technology, learn in depth Amazon DynamoDB cost optimization methods, use ARM architecture to improve performance, etc., and jointly do more exploration on the road to reducing costs and increasing efficiency.