We’ve Moved — Big Backend Upgrade for the Games Database!

[faeran]

Hey everyone!

We just wrapped up a major migration of the LaunchBox Games Database to a brand new server, and it wasn't just a lift and shift. We moved from a Windows based system to a modern Linux environment, which meant reworking some big foundational pieces behind the scenes.

This included:

• Migrating and restructuring our databases
• Replacing and reconfiguring web services
• Upgrading to the latest version of .NET
• And a bunch of boring backend plumbing

 

Why does this matter?
We are now in a much better place for long term stability, performance, and scalability. This new setup is leaner, faster, and way more futureproof, which means we can continue building great stuff on top of it without worrying about technical debt from 2015 breathing down our necks.

That said, any time you do a migration like this, there is always a chance something slips through the cracks. So if you notice anything odd, broken pages, weird behavior, let us know right here in this thread. We will be keeping an eye out and jumping on anything that needs cleanup.

Thanks for bearing with us through the transition! This is a big step forward for the future of the GamesDB and LaunchBox as a whole.

[MrDeKat]

A couple of problems I have detected:

• Approved entries with more than 3 validations are blocked as "Pending".

 

• "Type" and "ESRB" appear blank when you edited a game, even though they contain information.

[dragon57]

For whatever reason, I'm not seeing any performance improvement when searching on the DB. If anything, my average response time is worse. I probably search at least 100 times per day, and search times have been worse since the announcement.

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, dragon57 said:

For whatever reason, I'm not seeing any performance improvement when searching on the DB. If anything, my average response time is worse. I probably search at least 100 times per day, and search times have been worse since the announcement.

@MysterNybble can correct me if I'm wrong, but in the migration we moved changed what database system we're using and so there's still work to be done to see under load to see where new indexes have to be created so the newer DBMS works as well as it possibly can. You should see speeds improve over time as pinch points are identified and addressed.

[faeran]

2 hours ago, MrDeKat said:

A couple of problems I have detected:

• Approved entries with more than 3 validations are blocked as "Pending".

 

• "Type" and "ESRB" appear blank when you edited a game, even though they contain information.

Thanks. I've noted this down and should be fixed when we do our next pass.

[MysterNybble]

7 hours ago, MrDeKat said:

A couple of problems I have detected:

• Approved entries with more than 3 validations are blocked as "Pending".

 

• "Type" and "ESRB" appear blank when you edited a game, even though they contain information.

Thanks for these reports :). These issues should be fixed. The approval queue was backlogged due to an error which has been fixed. It is catching up, and should be done in the next 10-15 minutes. The edit page should also populate those fields correctly as well.

6 hours ago, dragon57 said:

For whatever reason, I'm not seeing any performance improvement when searching on the DB. If anything, my average response time is worse. I probably search at least 100 times per day, and search times have been worse since the announcement.

@C-Beats is correct that we are on a brand new/different DBMS, which means we have to redo a number of the performance tweaks we made over the years on the old system. Stay tuned - should be pushing out more of these fixes in the next few days :).

[MysterNybble]

On 7/23/2025 at 10:15 AM, faeran said:

Hey everyone!

We just wrapped up a major migration of the LaunchBox Games Database to a brand new server, and it wasn't just a lift and shift. We moved from a Windows based system to a modern Linux environment, which meant reworking some big foundational pieces behind the scenes.

This included:

• Migrating and restructuring our databases
• Replacing and reconfiguring web services
• Upgrading to the latest version of .NET
• And a bunch of boring backend plumbing

 

Why does this matter?
We are now in a much better place for long term stability, performance, and scalability. This new setup is leaner, faster, and way more futureproof, which means we can continue building great stuff on top of it without worrying about technical debt from 2015 breathing down our necks.

That said, any time you do a migration like this, there is always a chance something slips through the cracks. So if you notice anything odd, broken pages, weird behavior, let us know right here in this thread. We will be keeping an eye out and jumping on anything that needs cleanup.

Thanks for bearing with us through the transition! This is a big step forward for the future of the GamesDB and LaunchBox as a whole.

For those that care this migration was indeed quite a bit:

• .net 6 -> .net 9
• mssql -> PostgreSQL
• windows/iis -> linux/docker/traefik
• manual deployments -> automatic deployments/migrations
• insanity -> sanity

I go sleep now 😛

[MysterNybble]

On 7/24/2025 at 12:32 PM, dragon57 said:

For whatever reason, I'm not seeing any performance improvement when searching on the DB. If anything, my average response time is worse. I probably search at least 100 times per day, and search times have been worse since the announcement.

I put a pretty noticeable speed improvement in place for the search feature - how does it feel for you now?

[dragon57]

6 minutes ago, MysterNybble said:

I put a pretty noticeable speed improvement in place for the search feature - how does it feel for you now?

Wowzers! Much better, well done.