Gaming Server

[MielkeHBP]

So, after about 2 years of consideration i've decided to build a gaming server and I have a question. I read on wiki that you can take a group/blades/cluster of servers and spread a workload across all connected servers. I was wondering if I bought something like this would I be able to set it up to distribute the workload of having atleast 1 thousand people connected and accessing information/constantly read and writing? The internet connection is NOT an issue right now. But I just would want to know if that wiki statement is true.

I just noticed the link doesnt work for me and I am currently working on fixing it.

 

[jtusa]

Originally posted by: MielkeHBP
So, after about 2 years of consideration i've decided to build a gaming server and I have a question. I read on wiki that you can take a group/blades/cluster of servers and spread a workload across all connected servers. I was wondering if I bought something like this would I be able to set it up to distribute the workload of having atleast 1 thousand people connected and accessing information/constantly read and writing? The internet connection is NOT an issue right now. But I just would want to know if that wiki statement is true.

I just noticed the link doesnt work for me and I am currently working on fixing it.

It's true, but you will likely run out of bandwidth far before you run out of processing power with something like that. You have to keep in the mind that the game server software has to support clustering as well.

 

[nweaver]

I have a beowulf cluster of atomic supermen...they are compatible with my orbiting brain lasers.

 

[randal]

Most game server software out there doesn't cluster, so it's useless. However, today's hardware is more than powerful enough to run multiple servers. In a different life, we used to run CS:Source servers all over the country - our calculations were (MHz-500)/15=#Players ... that equals ~180 players on an Athlon x86-64 @ 3200MHz. We also expected about 20MB of ram per player, so all of our boxes had 4GB of ram. At this point, 180 players (9x20man, or 4x40man + spares) with a good tick rate was doable.

Exception: The bandwidth. Every player is chewing up ~100kbps of bandwidth on a high quality server. 18mbps of bandwidth for one server is nothing to sneeze at; most of our colos only had 100mbps feeds for 15-20 servers. As mentioned above, your bandwidth pricing and availability will far outstrip your hardware in no time.

I know that more modern games like BF2142 eat bandwidth and CPU at ridiculous rates - that's why they generally cost a LOT more at gamedaemons etc. compared to Half-Life stuff.

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: randal
In a different life, we used to run CS:Source servers all over the country - our calculations were (MHz-500)/15=#Players ... that equals ~180 players on an Athlon x86-64 @ 3200MHz. We also expected about 20MB of ram per player, so all of our boxes had 4GB of ram. At this point, 180 players (9x20man, or 4x40man + spares) with a good tick rate was doable.

would be nice if most kept to that standard. after a while even some of the best hidef servers were just too overloaded. its inevitable...