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Whosat
Singapore Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58301Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Singapore Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58301Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Hey guys, I'm planning to set up a dedicated server running on my spare box running an i5-2500k. I used to overclock it to 4.2GHz while I was gaming on it and it has an SSD and 8GBs of RAM.
Do you guys think setting up a virtual environment allocating 2 cores and 4GBs of ram is enough for one server running Shine/NS2+? I need some processing power dedicated for other purposes therefore the need for separating the NS2 Server.
(Its been more than a year since I last ran an NS2 dedicated server so I'm quite a bit out of the loop. My region has no dedicated servers and we are currently surviving with 200+ ping on aussie/american servers)
Do you guys think setting up a virtual environment allocating 2 cores and 4GBs of ram is enough for one server running Shine/NS2+? I need some processing power dedicated for other purposes therefore the need for separating the NS2 Server.
(Its been more than a year since I last ran an NS2 dedicated server so I'm quite a bit out of the loop. My region has no dedicated servers and we are currently surviving with 200+ ping on aussie/american servers)
Comments
Overall your setup sounds totally fine (beside maybe you have to allocate 3 cores for ns2 in case of using windows (ns2 uses about 2-2.5 cores there).
Ram usage is about 1.2 - 2.6+ GB and to avoid hitting the 3 GB you should restart your server daily.
Thanks for all your input Ghoul!
Totally, I'm using a i7-2600k with the default speed of 3.40 Ghz for 20 slots and i still have a idle buffer even in late game.
just make 10 ( to test) then if player connect all , play 1-2 rounds to test and see if any person say "server have fps hitching / froze"
i have played many new server >> They make 20 slot and install a bunch of "un-need mod" >> Cause server loading slower and sometime your screen "freeze" for 1 sec
Not like other server use a mod " High ping kick" >> that only make your server empty
Just install vanilla server , 12 slot >> tag "welcome all play 4 fun - lag free" for example
You can find all needed console commands here : http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Console_Commands
Oh its also over clocked to 4.8ghz, stable!
Is there an issue with this? I've installed the latest PhysX and DirectX and VC++ runtime.
Server is running but not shown on server list. The only issue was the error as mentioned in my previous post.
All ports forwarded correctly. No mods installed.
EDIT: And I now see the problem. I had wrongly forwarded TCP ports instead of UDP. Silly me.
I thought the dedicated server only uses one core? Did it change recently?
With the latest build (b273) you should at least assign your ns2 server 2 cores
I have such a box, decommissioned from its more serious duties. It has 8 physical cores with Hyperthreading and 8 SAS disks in RAID50 on a decent controller with 512 MB battery-backed-up cache. It has 24 GB ECC RAM which can be upgraded if needed.
I am considering putting a bunch of game servers on it, if my employer agrees to let it run in the server room (which is likely). The internet connection is a 100/100 low-latency business-grade fiber.
My concern is that by the sound of things NS2 server code is not very optimized and the 5620 runs at a mere 2,4 GHz. It's not really a single-thread monster. It does however benefit from the massive cache associated with the Xeon 5600 series, and it scales out pretty damn well for professional use.
Is the advice still to "use consumer grade overclocked desktop chips" or has the code improved over time?
If the code is still not optimized, what would you expect is the minimum required LGA1366 Xeon chip (in the 5500 or 5600 series) needed to run a decent NS2 servers with at least 16 player slots?
That server should be able to handle a few ns2 instances (16-24 slots each) just fine. Since ns2 uses LuaJIT you don't need a single core performance "CPU monster" anymore unless you want to host really high player slot counts (30+ per server instance).
In this matter the ns2 code runtime complexity is still easily O(n^2)
Usage has improved over the last few patches, but the bigger the server, the faster you will run out.
What bandwidth do you believe I should expect for each player?
Except for downloads of assets from the server I can't see why a symmetric 100/100 business fiber line shouldn't be enough?
The issue with bandwidth usage came up in the past a some ppl host their ns2 server literally at home.
Due to that they did run into the bandwidth issues.
Internally ns2 even has a bandwidth per player limit (bwlimit), which is by default 30 kByte/s (ofc you can and might want to increase it).
Having that bwlimit in mind i would say the bandwidth usage can be described by the following rule (upload wise):
player count * bwlimit * 1.2 + ~150 kB. The 1.2 is a factor to take care of any non directly player entity related traffic, same goes for the small extra of ~150 kB for stuff like e.g. HTTP requests
Ofc this is just a rule of thumb so no guarantee that it works out. So far i never have seen my server using more than 50 kB/s per player.
BTW no assets are downloaded from the server at all unless you set up the "workshop backup server" script on it.
Hmmm, I could actually host it from home by the sound of things ... I use a 20/10 Mb/s (actual speed 18,8 / 9,6) business line on a GSHDSL circuit.
But if the company accepts hosting the server I'll save on power. :-) Dual 5620s and 8 SAS disks has more power draw than i'd like to keep on 24/7 at home. Plus my fiance is not happy about the noise of these servers either (better than the old sandbox HP Bladecenter I was playing with... but still noisy).
I think i'll go with a GUI-less Windows HyperV server installation and some virtual server instances. That should make it easier to back them up, and to have more different servers I can enable or disable. The visualization overhead should be less than 4% CPU power on the Xeon 5600 series.
Do players expect some kind of web front-end for stats these days? I remember running such a thing back in the good old DoD and CS days, when version numbers where still below 1.0 ...
I would love to say yes. BUT after my experience of now ~ 2 years of hosting a ns2 server ppl these days actually only care about 2-3 factors:
Most player don't actually care how well a server is maintained etc. as long as it keeps running and is popular. If you want to make some vets happy you should enable the mod ns2plus (which shows the players a stats overview at the end of each round).
Talking about mods you certainly should have a look at Shine (makes your admin life easier) and NS2plus (let you set up the ns2 client after your heart's desire) anyway
If you want to get some stats about the server itself, i suggest to just use Gametracker.com and devicenull's ns2 servers overview
Setting up a VM locally in Windows will have a high amount of overhead.
With a box that handles 16 physical threads and a pretty good SAS RAID50 disk systems it seems a bit ... excessive ... to have only a single server running on it?
32cores(16 actual cores hyperthreadded)
2.4 or 2.8ghz xeon cpu
64gb memory 266mhz memory
8mb onboard video
Though i do have a pci-e to pci-x bridge which works okay, it's not supposed to be used for gaming, i did however load up NS2 and was getting 40fps with a 6600gs(nvidia)
I would love to ship this over to Australia, but the thing is 88-90KG just by itself, fucking 4U ancient tech. I've done some fan mods to it, but it's gonna cost more then $100 just to ship it here and i could almost purchase a secondhand hardly ever used version for that much, so i might aswell forget about it.