Server Running a 50 player Server

[ButchCassidy]

With the announcement of the increase in maxplayer settings I thought I would share some things with Admins on the practical side of what it will take to run a 50 player server.
TWI will no doubt be issuing a much more informed guide but here are some things that will help out in the meantime hopefully.

Server Kit

The Wild Bunch server used for this test was a 1U Dell PE1950 running Winx32 2003 SP2

We named it ODIN as in God of War

In the box were the following.

2x Xeon 5160, (Dual-Core) 3.0GHz/1333MHz FSB 4MB cache
4GB ECC Fully Buffered DIMM memory/FB 667Mhz FBD
2x "Hot Swap" 320GB SATAII HDD
SAS 5/i: 4 port SAS controller with ARM966 processor.
2x Broadcom Nextreme II Net Cards.

These servers usually retail at about

 

[aceto]

i hope all admins will think about it more than only a minute. i dont want to see only laggy servers after this, update just because everyone want to have the most slots on his server.

thx,aceto

 

[Mike_Nomad]

i hope all admins will think about it more than only a minute. i dont want to see only laggy servers after this, update just because everyone want to have the most slots on his server.

thx,aceto

Very true, but you and I both know they will have to learn the HARD way.

 

[Ronin]

Tbh, we at DS13 are quite happy with the norm 32 slots, anymore on some of the small maps i would imagine to be total chaos.

I dont really understand who or what has been pushing for more slots on servers ? we generally have a full server nightly and are quite happy with 32 players on the go, why anyone wants more i dont know lol

More slots sort of reminds me of the CoD2 days, spawn get shot , spawn get shot, spawn get shot, all running around with the shotguns like headless chickens, cant imagine 64 players on lyeskrovy lol

 

[ButchCassidy]

TBH I think you are right to a degree the smaller maps do suffer from just too many players but I must admit the big set piece battles such as Konigsplatz, Berezina, Black Day, Tractor Works and Arad along with some of the medium sized CA and Infantry maps like Hedgehog, Zhitomir, wateverovko do play exceedingly well with more players.

I think 50 player servers will be just another option for people to try a bit like playing Danzig as opposed to Orel Infantry as opposed to Tank only.

Choice is the thing and this will allow people to have a bit more...

 

[dogbadger]

Yeah It would be good to see about 2 or 3 smooth running 50+ man servers in the US and phaps another couple join TWB in europe. Don't really need much more than that- just servers with the h/ware to make it happen.

 

[Floyd]

Thanks for the useful info, Butch.
Especially re: the TOE net cards.
Though not a 5160 powerhouse and with a much smaller cpu cache, I'll be interested to see what the more common 5130 series Woodcrest chips can handle when properly configured.

Floyd

 

[Zetsumei]

might it be possible for you guys to try downclocking that processor for some time to check out how other processors would hold out so basically the performance of woodcrest can be linked with the mhz of it.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

In the box were the following.

2x Xeon 5160, (Dual-Core) 3.0GHz/1333MHz FSB 4MB cache
4GB ECC Fully Buffered DIMM memory/FB 667Mhz FBD
2x "Hot Swap" 320GB SATAII HDD
SAS 5/i: 4 port SAS controller with ARM966 processor.
2x Broadcom Nextreme II Net Cards.

One question... what motherboard is this machine using? Or, is it a Dell Poweredge 2900?

 

[ButchCassidy]

I believe the motherboard is made by intel specifically for Dell servers.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

Thank you kind sir.... Dell is using different nomenclature Stateside.... but I found the machine. Impressive.

 

[ButchCassidy]

might it be possible for you guys to try downclocking that processor for some time to check out how other processors would hold out so basically the performance of woodcrest can be linked with the mhz of it.

I don't think we will be in a position to do that but try this link http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/intthru.htm/

If you do some digging here I think you'll find some useful info...

 

[Zetsumei]

difference in mghz is pretty lineair. with the woodcrests. The processor itself aint the problem there are enough benchmarks on single core apps etc. The main problem is the slot because slot amounts wont go lineair. Would be nice if the taxation raise when raising slots etc.

 

[ButchCassidy]

I know Ramm is doing some work on CPU usage etc for 50 player servers but I don't know how comprehensive that will be.

I know I have passed a list detailing CPU usuage for ODIN to TWI which shows usuage for all the standard maps and a great many of the maps to be released.

Without doubt INF maps will be the maps that will allow servers to increase the maxplayer settings beyond 32 player.

CA and Tank maps will of course be much more costly in resources and you will need a pretty good CPU to get anywhere near 50.

I think that whilst many servers will be able to increase in size they must also be aware of the big leap in Bandwidth usage that having a busy 50 player server will incur.
It is important that Admins do consider the whole picture when making the increase as RO using its present engine is not the friendliest to CPU's when running at 32 player let alone 50 players on a server.
Hopefully the maxplayer increase will bring some optimisation but I know that TWI have squeezed just about everything they can from the UE2.5 engine so I don't expect to see anything dramatic.

 

[Floyd]

...

I know I have passed a list detailing CPU usuage for ODIN to TWI which shows usuage for all the standard maps and a great many of the maps to be released.

...

Would you (or TWI) object to sharing that list?

 

[Funker42]

I was curious myself and did a google search on professional game hosting.

It looks like for $399 a month you can ren a dedicated server with the specs and bandwidth needed to run this:
From Gameservers.com

Dual P4 3.06Ghz Xeon
2100 GB Bandwidth
Linux or Windows Web Edition
10 Usable IPs
2GB RAM
1 x 120 GB HD SATA

I love RO and all, but $399 for a single 50 player game server is a bit steep.

 

[Zetsumei]

that a complete box and those 3.06 aint strong enough for a 50 player server thats old tech 3.06 they got new tech processors aswell but only 1.69ghz ones (of thesame type TWB uses)

Those 1.69ghz ones are about as strong as 3.6 or 3.5 of the old type. Just getting a server at them is 2 dollar a slot so thats not that expensive. .

I got 2 servers there although i don't have the time nor the people to fill servers up for tests. :'(

 

[daniel22]

Crazy ?

Crazy ?

My Server runs only on Inf. Maps good, all Tankmaps must reduce to 24 players, on an Linux System with 1 GB Ram, and 2 GHz. Thats a joke !

The Server crashed since the Game exist, dozen of Crashlogs in my System, no solutions from devs.

I think the Engine is overload with to many bugcode, that will be lag the old good UT-Engine.

I think its not a far way for RO, to die completely.

 

[Xendance]

My Server runs only on Inf. Maps good, all Tankmaps must reduce to 24 players, on an Linux System with 1 GB Ram, and 2 GHz. Thats a joke !

The Server crashed since the Game exist, dozen of Crashlogs in my System, no solutions from devs.

I think the Engine is overload with to many bugcode, that will be lag the old good UT-Engine.

I think its not a far way for RO, to die completely.

There's your problem for having a low performance server. Let me guess, it's an AMD athlon 64?

 

[daniel22]

Amd

Amd

yes it is, but all other games runs perfect, only RO not.

UT2004 runs very good, with 50 players, no crashes.

And when the game starts it came a AMD 64 Bit Logo, means that when you have this CPU, you cant play this game with 32 players on tankmaps ?