Well well,

Here we are getting into something really interesting as many approaches are possible and no guarantees you a successfull business. As usual, I will first express my opinion and hope to get some feedback about it from you. What would be really great is that some people already running a successfully or at least a GSP with profitable results could explain us how its carrer took place. We do not need proof and you don't even need to tell us who you are but if you successfully ran or are running a GSP service, let us know how it all began.

Before positing here, please read the introduction post first.

ISP Service Choice:
Before setting up a network infrastructure, you need to decide if you are going to buy, build, place and manage your servers on a datacenter (housing/colocation) or if you are going to rent dedicated servers which are already built and which may or may not be managed as well. In the first case, the initial cost may be higher while the expenses will be reduced on the long run and totaly controlable. On the second case, your initial cost will most probably be reduced but you will pay much more on the long run and you will not be able to gain full control of the physical computer.
Ideally you should own your server by adopting the first solution but that may also not be an option in your area because you need to be relatively close to the data center. I will adopt the second solution at the beginning of our business because I live in a country (Switzerland) were housing solutions are not an option unless you are ready to pay dozens of thounsand euros per month for the same "rented" prestation I am getting in France. I just cannot afford the swiss price (more than 10 times higher) and I have to go for rented servers in France to be able to make some profit on the next couple of years. Of course, our objective is clearly to move on to another country once we reach a stable income to get our own infrastructure.

Initial Approach:
As I replied in the introduction post earlier, I would start with 3 servers, each having quite a precise role. Here is how I would set them up.

1. Production
   The production server is the one you are most likely going to rent your servers on. This server should only run the srcds boxes for each user or customer. You should install as few software as possible on this server and keep it essentially for hosting your game servers. Also, I would close all unecessary ports to limit the accesses. You may install a web server but I would not run the "client's" websites on it to keep it basic (e.g. for accessing the cpanel). You may also want to install an FTP server on it to let your users access and change their files. Ideally, you should make your production server replicable as it will be the most "expanding" part of your infrastructure.
   .
2. Research
   This server should look as close as possible as the production server altrough it may handle lesser volumes (lower on ram and bandwidth). This server will be used to see how certain games are installed and run, to test your developments, to benchmark a particular configuration and to perform any research that may help you improve the production server(s). You may also install and try beta software or new tools while keeping your production server stable and clean. I would suggest a staging phase for any new game, software, tool that you want to place over production so that you can run it and see how it behaves on the research server without affecting the production server.
   .
3. Web
   The web server should handle all of the consequent websites like your own website, the websites of your clients or the promotional websites you may want to setup for your GSP company. Also, if you are going to use huge databases to manage your customers and their servers, I would suggest placing that here but at a later stage, I would definitely have it on its own server for security reasons. Ideally, you may want to place some or all of the files like the maps and the skins on a centralized server, this could suit initially but again, I would definitively move it to it's own server for bandwidth purposes obviously.
   

Expanded Approach:
If you manage to get small profits out of the initial approach, you may want to consider setting up things a bit differently to make your infrastructure stronger and more easily managable. After having exanped the previous infrastructure, that is essentially the production servers to a reasonable number, it may be time to look into better range, meaning to increase your (new) servers performance by increasing the bandwith if possible, the processors models (e.g. C2D > C2Q > Xeons), the RAM capacity and type (FBDIMM) or the HDD (SATA to SCSI) or redundancy, always as long as the budget allows.
Otherwise, I would separate our own web servers and databases from the web server its own servers. I would also divide that one to a set of servers dedicated to a specific use (e.g. files, db, web), altrough it requires more networking operations to interconnect all platforms together which is easier and (maybe) safer when you are managing your own "physical" infrastructure rather than with rented servers.

This post was last modified: 04-09-2008 07:47 AM by kaine.

Ill post it here because this is the closest to it. Really you should stick to what you know. Not only by just hosting srcds (or whatever game engine) games, but by either not doing webhosting or doing reselling web hosting.

Well I am currently doing web hosting so I had not seen it that way but that is right. Prices on resseling shared hostings are quite low but I dont know about margins ^^
So reselled web hosting is a good solution if you don't want to setup & manage the web servers directly.

On the other hand apache (or virtualmin) is not that complicated if you compare it to srcds

Well yeah but DNS's and there is a whole crapload of things to deal with.

agreed, webhosting can be a whole lot more complicating than srcds, lol. If you think srcds is complicated, try supporting AA, or UT

Yeah if I had a GSP I would just do SRCDS and thats it lol. Then maybe Voice servers (are they hard?) and do reselling hosting at first just to make clan packages.

voice servers can be a pain.. I stay out of that a little. Pretty much though if you know the basics it isn't bad.

Oh god I dont know the basics XD.