[-LG-HeadwoundMcGee]

Hello all.

I'm looking into our options for replacing/moving/adding clan servers. I want to be able to run B3 (Big Brother Bot) on all servers, preferably locally, but I could also set it up to run remotely if I have good FTP access. Also, I am capable of installing everything on Linux, and have done it before, so I've been looking into dedicated server offerings.

Basically, I'm just trying to get the best bang for my buck. So if I went dedicated, I'm wondering how many servers I could have running on that one box to make it cost effective. I don't have a good idea of what sort of server specs would work, or how much bandwidth we'd use. I'd be hoping to get it worked out to where it was basically costing about $20 per 20-slot server, but I don't know if that is reasonable or not.

Any info would help.

Thanks,

-LG-HeadwoundMcGee

[GT-Rick]

From my experience, CPU/RAM doesn't seem to be an issue with UrbanTerror. I would recommend getting 10k or 15k drives and RAID 0 (controller, not software based). I believe it's the drives that lag mostly with UrT.

[H3NRY]

GT-Rick, on 03 November 2009 - 08:13 PM, said:

From my experience, CPU/RAM doesn't seem to be an issue with UrbanTerror. I would recommend getting 10k or 15k drives and RAID 0 (controller, not software based). I believe it's the drives that lag mostly with UrT.

you can say that about most games. the server will not be doing much reading/writing other than the sever logs so the speed should not be a problem ( as far as i know) i dont know of any places but i would say go dedicated for sure, would definatly get better servers that way

[Diggs]

GT-Rick, on 04 November 2009 - 04:13 AM, said:

From my experience, CPU/RAM doesn't seem to be an issue with UrbanTerror. I would recommend getting 10k or 15k drives and RAID 0 (controller, not software based). I believe it's the drives that lag mostly with UrT.

Hmmm.... I would beg to differ. Our servers (3.4 GHz dual core, 4 GB RAM) use about 30-35% CPU per instance of 18-20 players. The maximum you will get on a box like that is about three instances. The drives do nothing during the game. They load the maps, write the logs and check the ban list in between games which is basically idling for a drive. I'm not sure where you got your info that the CPU does nothing during an instance and that the drives lag. Never heard that theory before in all the server work I've done. I've heard of the connection and/or CPU lagging, but never a drive.

I think Rick is jerking your chain.

[GT-Rick]

Diggs, on 10 November 2009 - 12:00 AM, said:

Hmmm.... I would beg to differ. Our servers (3.4 GHz dual core, 4 GB RAM) use about 30-35% CPU per instance of 18-20 players. The maximum you will get on a box like that is about three instances. The drives do nothing during the game. They load the maps, write the logs and check the ban list in between games which is basically idling for a drive. I'm not sure where you got your info that the CPU does nothing during an instance and that the drives lag. Never heard that theory before in all the server work I've done. I've heard of the connection and/or CPU lagging, but never a drive.

I think Rick is jerking your chain.

Top Output:

11396 urtpug 20 0 159m 58m 2964 S 18 0.3 2532:03 ioUrTded.i386
9003 zkat 20 0 159m 56m 2968 S 12 0.3 288:27.91 ioUrTded.i386
31175 srv1400 20 0 159m 66m 2940 S 6 0.3 182:31.93 ioUrTded.i386

UrtPug had 12 people playing, zkat had 12 and srv1400 (PhN Snipers Pistols Nades) had 12. The servers idle at 1-2% CPU, use 10-15% CPU for 12 people playing and spike to about 25%. That's per core. My overall serverload doesn't go above 4-5% unless I'm doing backups then it's because of my disk speeds and I have more than a few servers running. It's all about how many people are actually connected to the box one time, and there really aren't enough people playing at one time in my experience to really cause any CPU load. I have 8 cores though, your servers have 2.

Now look at my comment. I said "From my experience". I'm new to gameservers (don't really even sell them now), but I've been selling hosting/VPS for a long time and it's normally drive io/speeds that lag. Also, I'm not sure how you know the specs of a "box like that" enough to guess 3 instances, especially since no specs were given.

This post has been edited by GT-Rick: 09 November 2009 - 07:11 PM

[Diggs]

Rick-

He asked about a 20 man server. The CPU load rises geometrically with player count. By the time a server gets to 20 players most of the admins in these forums report loads in the 25-35% range. It has been discussed many times before. And I still don't understand what this is about hard drive lag?

You also talk about an 8-core server. He is looking for a server that will cost $20 per instance. You are not even discussing the same class server as what he can afford. A dedicated dual core server in the states is lucky to be had for $100/month. More likely $150/month. Dual Xeons probably $250/month but that is not what the discussion is about.

This post has been edited by Diggs: 09 November 2009 - 07:12 PM

[GT-Rick]

Diggs, on 10 November 2009 - 01:01 AM, said:

Rick-

He asked about a 20 man server. The CPU load rises geometrically with player count. By the time a server gets to 20 players most of the admins in these forums report loads in the 25-35% range. It has been discussed many times before. And I still don't understand what this is about hard drive lag?

You also talk about an 8-core server. He is looking for a server that will cost $20 per instance. You are not even discussing the same class server as what he can afford. A dedicated dual core server in the states is lucky to be had for $100/month. More likely $150/month. Dual Xeons probably $250/month but that is not what the discussion is about.

Ok, so if 20 people connected to a server and playing is 30% then he would be able to have at least 80 people or 4 instances (60% per core) connect at one time right (maybe even 5)? I think it'll be pretty hard for you to get 80-100 people to connect to your one box at one given time. I do understand your point and for gameservers it probably is the CPU that's the limiting factor. I'm used to working with VPS and webservers and disk usage is an issue there especially with hosting because of the databases. Two completely different things, which is why I said: "From my experience... I believe it's the drives that lag mostly with UrT".

If drives aren't an issue, and CPU isn't unless you truly expect you'll have 80 people connected to your server playing, then the $100 server should be able to give you 5 servers or 100 slots easily, right? I don't have much experience hosting smaller servers, but I'm planning on moving the gamservers I have now over to some HP blades I just setup that are dual dual-core (2.2 Ghz each). How many servers could each of those run, and with how many people connected at one time total (just rough estimate)?

[Diggs]

I envy you Rick. You get to play with some very nice hardware.

Keep us informed as to what you discover.

[GT-Rick]

If anyone is interested I can rent the servers out for probably around $150 a month if you play UrT. If you want more info contact me on IRC or PM me.

.

This post has been edited by GT-Rick: 09 November 2009 - 08:03 PM

[slackin]

nah, not at all rick, hd's dont ever bottleneck, especially when trying to write to ten different places at once, I mean HD's have practically no seek time right? ;p

[M0usep0d]

slackin, on 10 November 2009 - 02:12 AM, said:

nah, not at all rick, hd's dont ever bottleneck, especially when trying to write to ten different places at once, I mean HD's have practically no seek time right? ;p

maybe rick was assuming he was using b3, I could see a large increase in drive I/O then

[[T]BludShoT]

If the OP wants a dedicated box for $20 a month then he can forget it

[rfx]

Would be nice if someone has the cojones to try out Amazon EC2 cloud. Cheapest server and let it run a dedicated. CPU wise it should be cheap (around 70 USD in Europe), but that's without S3 storage, EBS volumes and most importantly: traffic.

I've some munin graph telling my that currently with my two very active servers I've a usage about 400kbit traffic in and around 600kbit traffic out.

Reserving an IP costs extra, in case it should be static.

Oh well, looks like it's getting expensive for permanent hosting.

Question remains, how many instances can be effectively run there in parallel.

[rambetter]

Hi. I'm evaluating Amazon's EC2 for my work. You don't want to go that route. An m1.small will cost you almost as much as a good deal on a dedicated, but the quality for running a game server will absolutely suck. You will get a lot of small time intervals where your game server process is starved for CPU cycles due to the "virtual machine" nature of their hosting. Also, as far as total CPU time over a longer period of time goes, you get the equivalent of a slow single-core CPU with m1.small, which won't be enough to run nearly as many servers as you could be running with a modern dual core dedicated server for example.

[Diggs]

Quote

BludShoT' date='10 November 2009 - 07:42 PM' timestamp='1257882142' post='243023']
If the OP wants a dedicated box for $20 a month then he can forget it

Read his question again-

He is looking to see how many 20 player instances can be supported on a dedicated box. If he can get enough instances running at $20 each, he thought he might be able to pay for a dedicated box (which is not likely).

This post has been edited by Diggs: 12 November 2009 - 08:56 PM