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Enterprise Computing Community - ECC 2010

Teaching Middle and High School

Students about Enterprise Computing

Neal Tanner, Marist College

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How can we teach kids about enterprise computing?

Avoid traditional enterprise computing examples (i.e. financial examples)

Relate it to topics they are interested in

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What are kids interested in that uses enterprise computing?

Current generation is an online one

Everything they do is online, even research for school (Google, Wikipedia)

Even entertainment has an online component

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What sort of entertainment?

Social mediums (IM, Twitter, Facebook)

Music and video (iTunes)

Games (Nintendo DS, X-Box Live)

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Which should we focus on?

Games are the most prevalent option Many options available, for many different tastes More committed gamers will have played more

involved online fare (Call of Duty, World of Warcraft)

Casual gamers more likely to have played lighter online fare (Farmville, online card games)

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Which game do we focus on?

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) make the most use of enterprise computing

Popular MMOGs will be better documented and receive more attention

Older MMOGs will also be better documented World of Warcraft is the current 800-pound

gorilla, and is over 5 years old

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Why World of Warcraft?

It's immensely popular. 11.5 million subscribers worldwide

Available on Mac and PC Available in 8 languages Has received extensive coverage in numerous

media outlets. The CDC even used it for disease modeling

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What is World of Warcraft?

A Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) Played in real time online, with many other

players Players divided into two factions, to allow for

faction conflict Large game world, spanning four continents

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Game Summary

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Login Screen

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Realm Selection - US

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Realm Selection - EU

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Character Creation - Human

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Character Creation - Draenei

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Character Creation - Tauren

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Character Selection - Dwarf

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Character Selection - Orc

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Game Summary

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What is a realm?

A realm is World of Warcraft's answer to a game server.

Realms are actually a collection of multiple servers, called world servers

Each continent is its own world server If a world server crashes, the continent and

characters on it become inaccessible

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World Map

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Loading Screen – Boat or Zeppelin

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Loading Screen – Northrend

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Realms – continued

Some systems independent of world servers Each character has access to a personal bank and

a guild bank from every continent / world server Three independent player-driven auction houses

exist. Two are faction specific, one is neutral. This gives each character access to two separate

auction houses from multiple continents

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Realms – continued

Players can have 10 characters per realm, 50 characters per account

Realms are organized into battlegroups There are approximately 18 – 20 realms per

battlegroup In the US, there are 2 – 4 battlegroups per data

center, and 4 data centers Realms in the same battlegroup may participate

in battlegrounds and dungeons together

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What about the data centers?

10 data centers worldwide 4 in the US – Washington, California, Texas,

Massachusetts 3 in Europe – France, Germany, Sweden 3 in Asia – South Korea, China, Taiwan Uses 20,000 systems, and 1.3 petabytes of

storage 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, 112.5

terabytes of RAM

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What about other games?

Many games utilize the realm model, most with fewer features

Two other models exist– Instance-based– Node-based

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What is instance-based architecture?

Used primarily by Cryptic Studios for Champions Online and Star Trek Online

Each game region runs multiple copies of itself called instances

Champions Online has a maximum of 100 characters per instance

Star Trek Online has a maximum of 50 characters (ships) per instance

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What is node-based architecture?

Used primarily by Second Life and EVE Online Each game region is a distinct node Nodes in Second Life are called simulators Each simulator has a 40 character (avatar)

maximum Each node in EVE Online is a star system. Star systems have no maximum. Hundreds of

characters (ships) in one star system at a time is not unusual

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Do any of these games use mainframes?

No, almost all use server blades

Servers are typically together in a clustered arrangement

One game, a space-based game similar to EVE Online, called Taikodom, developed by Hoplin Infotainment uses a zSeries mainframe

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Final Thoughts

Online games are not the only example of enterprise computing

But they may be the most interesting to kids

Any questions?