plethora of questions

[lyfestile]

Hi all,

I'm exploring the possibility of creating a hosting company that caters specifically to game servers. I love gaming, and I'd like to put some of my tech skills to use, but I have many many questions.

From my experience, the web hosting market is extremely bloated, however game hosting although bloated itself, is nowhere near as bad as web hosting, and I have a feeling that with great support for customers, it's still possible to enter that market. Or am I completely wrong, and game hosting is just as bloated as web hosting?

I'm as comfortable working with a unix os, as I am a windows os. Taking this into account, I have several questions:

1) Which OS would make more efficient use of available hardware if I were to run SRCDS? Again, I'm proficient enough with linux that I can build a custom kernel with specific SRCDS optimizations if that's what it takes to squeeze out a performance increase.

2) I can program in C#, and have experience working with ASP.net. If I were to use a windows os for the server(s), it would be easy to integrate SRCDS servers to a ASP.net web portal. An alternative would be to build the portal in JSP, which would integrate with a similar difficulty curve regardless of the OS, and it leaves my system flexible. PHP is another alternative... Opinions on this?

I plan on researching co-location hosting in my area (vancouver), and I have a bunch of hardware related questions, I'd like to do my own benchmarks on various system setups to find a good balance between efficiency / hardware cost / cost per month of space. Unfortunatley I don't have the funds to do this, although ideally this is what I would like to do. If anyone has hardware usage statistics I could take a look at from their own servers, I would greatly appreciate being able to parse through them.

I realize that some of these questions don't really have a good short answer, but any advice is welcome, thanks in advance.

[Hairamoose]

to answer ur first question: Linux is the better OS to host servers than windows thus makeing Linux more efficient

[Mooga]

Truthfully, Linux and Windows works about the same for SRCDS. The only MINOR thing I've notices are once in a great while the Windows updates will break while the Linux one does not, requiring a re-update for windows (very rare). Linux also technically has autoupdate which does work with most of the modern games.

Please note that making money from a game hosting company is very difficult. Part of the problem is price ranges. People wont spend 2 bucks a slot when people are selling crappy server for 49 cents a slot. Plus, physical servers and colo is expensive. Plus you need to have a support team.

Just remember: Hosting servers is a JOB and a BUSINESS, not a hobby.

[Spartanfrog]

I would use Linux personally but really it does not matter. I also would be careful about starting a new business in the current economic state as game servers would be the first to go if expenses needed to be cut. Also really if you are interested in starting a business, you should colocate in an area closer to your customers (which I assume would be in the US unless you plan to solely be a Canadian GSP). As for hardware usage and etc, some bigger GSP's sell off equipment as they grow and the equipment is always fine for starting up. Checkout colocrossing.com. You might also want to check bigger companies websites as they usually brag about the hardware they use. Your best bet would also just rent a control panel rather than develop your own because it can be very time extensive.

If I scared you away then sorry but you really need to think about what your plan is before jumping into the business. However, if you really enjoy game servers it can be very enjoyable just do not look to become rich .