Second Life Scouts UK Data Centers

The operators of the Second Life virtual world are scouting locations for data center space in the United Kingdom, according to Massively, which tracks the MMO gaming sector. Linden Labs is said to be shopping for high-density space to house an expansion of its infrastructure for Second Life, which currently houses most of its servers in a pair of data centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Massively notes that a geographic expansion of Second Life might bring both benefits and challenges, given the virtual world's architecture and historic scalability issues. "It would be the first outside of the USA, and provide significantly faster access for EU residents to assets and simulators (aka regions) that were hosted at the facility," the story notes. "By the same token, grid stability tends to be compromised when any pair of the Lab's data-centers are unable to communicate with each-other, and an additional facility would seem to double the potential risk of such troubles."