How many servers can I run?

[matte563]

Dual Xeon Quad Core

[BehaartesEtwas]

ah ok. then I meant 12 not 6 servers you can run :-)

[lol554]

(04-10-2010, 06:05 PM)reaction Wrote:  You can go higher however the servers clients will experience bad rego, lag spikes every now and then etc. You will find allot of GSP's (Game Server Providers) cram allot of servers on there box these days.

Thats why we got load balancing to handle the work!

[BehaartesEtwas]

load balancing? that doesn't work for srcds. (or what do you mean by load balancing???)

[Terrorkarotte]

I guess what he means is moving the process to an other cores if needed.

[lol554]

(04-13-2010, 06:44 PM)Terrorkarotte Wrote:  I guess what he means is moving the process to an other cores if needed.

You got it right!

[Peter_Pan123]

normally you could say 1 gs for each core. but it depends of the cpu / mhz and which product > older cpu / newer e.g. and the gs which you want do set

[CannonessHannah]

The problem with allocating several game servers to a single server is that most people make the decision without looking at the proper variables. You have to consider it not on the average load of the gameserver on the computer, but on the peak load, because all it takes is for all the gameservers loaded to hit the peak at the same time for it to become very sticky.

If you're lucky enough to have more than one physical server you can scale this radiculously high if you use plugins and load balancing software, but the average setup doesn't have anywheres near that.

One per core is a good "safe" estimate, but you can run anywheres from one to six reasonably on a single core processor depending on several factors including the mods loaded, the game you're playing (standard HL1 Deathmatch is less demanding than say Counterstrike or Action Half-life), how many bots if any are being used, how many player slots you're running, and your ISP's maximum burstable bandwidth and connection speed.

I was running 4 CS servers quite well on a single-core Pentium III processor for a while. Mind you P3 was bleeding edge at the time and the servers were simply running adminmod and were 12 playerslots each.

It all comes down to the configuration of both the software and the network. A good computer with a poor network is going to get bottlenecked anyways and inversely it doesn't matter how good your network is if the computer is running with processing power somewheres from the battle of Waterloo.

[Terrorkarotte]

Also it depends on the game you are hosting. If you have experience with the usage of css, and take that to dods or tf2 you are doomed to fail. The orangebox requires more hardware to achive the same results

Here in europe normally the bandwidth isnt the bottleneck cause you get 100Mbit connections.

Still the biggest problem in guessing what the hardware can hold is: you cant say it. Its not only the cpu, ram and connection. It also comes down to mainboards hdd etc. once i helped someone with a core i7 920 that could not maintain as much slots per server as a core 2 duo with 2.2 Ghz. Still the amount of total slots is on the core i7 higher.

If you get a new system you cant get around testing. Estimating will fail in most cases. What it makes even harder is the fact that with linux the cpu usage is never correct and only a hint to what maybe is going on.

[CannonessHannah]

Everything is variable in PC setups, and that is why these kinds of questions become difficult to answer. I had one friend who asked me why their computer wasn't performing for a Jedi Academy server and it basically boiled down to the front-side BUS having a speed somewheres from the 1980s. Some less scrupulous computer developers will do things like that, so just because you have a newer computer doesn't mean you can run twenty 32-person slot servers or something, you have to be very discerning about the connection.

It always strikes me as frustrating and saddening both that 100Mbit connections are common on the consumer level in Europe whereas in Canada and US you are usually lucky to get 5Mbit speeds. I pay a fair premium to get 100 Mbit speeds here in Canada, though it's less of a problem here than I hear it is in the States.

[BehaartesEtwas]

(04-23-2010, 02:27 AM)CannonessHannah Wrote:  It always strikes me as frustrating and saddening both that 100Mbit connections are common on the consumer level in Europe

only for servers located in some data center, not for home servers unfortunately...

[lol554]

(04-23-2010, 04:50 PM)BehaartesEtwas Wrote:  

(04-23-2010, 02:27 AM)CannonessHannah Wrote:  It always strikes me as frustrating and saddening both that 100Mbit connections are common on the consumer level in Europe

only for servers located in some data center, not for home servers unfortunately...

In Denmark, we have this - But its very sad because:

The people who DOESN'T need a 100 mbit fiberconnection is able to get it...
But the people who NEED a 100 mbit fiberconnection IS NOT able to get it...

Its really sad , also im never going to be able to get fiber in my area because the biggest ISP in Denmark, TDC, owns that fibernetwork in that area, and they only want to sell bad ADSL-connections..

[Jessay]

So many factors what game or games you plan to run for optimal performance one per core tends to give the best results.