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Full image update

Documentation for Full image update
Read time 2 minutesLast updated a day ago
A full image update (also known as a rolled-up image) is an update that has all the files that are necessary to run your game server, and not just the differences between the earlier version and the new version, which is what happens with differential updates. When you push out a full image version, Clanforge consolidates all the differential updates into the primary image, and updates the primary image version to the next version. By combining the update archives through a full image update, you reduce the total disk space that your game image consumes and, consequently, the amount of time it takes for your fleet to scale into the cloud. For guidance on the frequency of full image updates, refer to Game image roll-up frequency.
A diagram showing a game going from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.4. From 1.0.1 to 1.0.3, the game receives differential image updates, increasing its total disk space from 6 gigabytes to 8 gigabytes. From 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, the game receives a full image update, reducing its disk space back to 6 gigabytes.
Pushing a full image update When you push out another full image version later, Clanforge consolidates all the differential updates into the primary image and then updates the primary image version to the next version. In the following diagram, image version 1.0.4 is a full image version. When Clanforge pushes out version 1.0.4 to the fleet machines in this example, it consolidates all the differential updates into one primary version. As a result, the total disk space that version 1.0.4 consumes (6 GB) is less than the total disk space that the earlier version 1.0.3 consumed (9 GB).
A diagram showing an example where a game with three differential updates is rolled up into one full image version, which is then distributed to fleet machines.
Distributing a rolled-up update to fleet machines In addition to your game image consuming less space on your machines, there are other benefits to using a full image update. Your fleet likely consists of a baseline set of bare metal machines and any number of as-needed ephemeral cloud instances. Clanforge creates cloud instances in response to player demands. When Clanforge spins up one of these instances, it sends the entire image archive to the instance before it’s ready to accept players. For example, if the last several updates you released were differential updates, Clanforge would need to send the primary image plus the number of differential images you created since the last full image update, which over time, can add up to a large image size. When your cloud instances have to download such a large archive, it can result in an unnecessarily large amount of buffered capacity to compensate.