Dedicated TF2 Servers

[CrimsonGT]

I do not even know where to start, and I am not sure this is the correct forum, but I will try to lay all of this out as organized as I possibly can for reading ease, and also cover everything I need answered.

Problem: - When TF2 First came out, I rented a server and started a clan. We have since been very successful and have had a lot of fun. I rented the server from MyInternetServices.com as they were the sponsor of the league we participate in, and seemed pretty reputable. The first month the server was excellent. It was always up, great pings, always updated within an hour of a new patch (that would break it) and the support was excellent. In November our server went from being full almost 24/7 to being dead for 2 weeks. Finally I contacted the company, and after a huge delay, they told me they forgot to update the server so it was not showing on master server list. They would not provide any sort of reimbursement whatsoever to compensate me for the time I paid for that was unused due to their mistake. Ever since then, our server's pings jump up to the 100's at random times, disconnect players, and we wait days at a time for our server to be updated to new patches (which break the server so no one can connect).

Tonight was the last straw when the new patch came out, no server update came, and my yet again popular server is dying thanks to this GSP going to absolute crap. (They have completely stopped giving any sort of support as well)

Solution: - As I am sure you can tell by now, I am absolutely infuriated. I have spent quite some time in the past month, and even more so tonight researching dedicated boxes and what not. I am not looking to become a GSP, but a couple of "friend" clans followed us to this horrid provider, and are experiencing the same horrible service that we are.

I am very interested in purchasing a dedicated box to run our TF2 Servers on, but I am not sure on what specs I will need for what we will use it for.
1) Most of the clan's servers are 20 slot.
2) All of them are 66 Tick due to the TF2 Caps.
3) Our clan server usually stays full for 8-10 hours a day.
4) We are interested in hosting between 3-5 Servers.
5) We are looking for an Atlanta or Virginia Location preferably.

Basically I am hoping I can get some help on where to go from here. I have almost completed my MCSA so I am pretty knowledgable about everything I need to know in that department. I really just need to know what specs to look for to host what we are looking for. (Probably 100-125 slots at 66 Tick). We of course want decent ping, most of us get between 15-40 on our current server on the days its not dead.

Our budget is really around 100$ which is why I listed 3-5 servers as I imagine 3 would be more realistic with 100$, but I am not sure considering they will all be ran at 66 tick.

1) What server specs would I need to look for as far as this goes?
2) What connection and bandwidth would I need? (General ballpark figure)

I REALLY appreciate any help you guys can give me. We are looking to get away from this GSP as fast as possible (pissed that I just paid for this month earlier today before our server died again).

---

Well I think I just found a pretty good host. I will need to contact them tommorow to find out if they have a location near Atlanta or Virginia somewhere, and get a test IP to ping, but here are the stats for the 2 im looking at...

1) AMD Athlon 64 4200+ Dual Core (109$/month)
1GB Ram (Upgrade to non ecc for 5$, ecc for 10$, not listed by how much)
Remote Reboot
160GB SATA II HD
5 IPs
100Mbps Port
2000GB Transfer

1) AMD Athlon 64 5200+ Dual Core (129$/month)
2GB Ram (Upgrade to non ecc for 5$, ecc for 10$, not listed by how much)
Remote Reboot
250GB SATA II HD
5 IPs
100Mbps Port
2000GB Transfer

Would one of these be good for what I am looking for? Is ECC ram needed for running some TF2 servers? Anything else about them look good/bad?

[BrutalGoerge]

those are pretty weak for game servers, especially tf2.

I recommend Intel and their new architechure.

For TF2, you can run one server per core

We have a quad-core xeon 2.4Ghz and it works great

10MB/s port
2000GB transfer
5 ips

we have 5 servers running on it, 3 TF2, a COD4, and a CS1.6
the 1.6 server doesn't use much power, so that's fine.

we only use about 700GB of the monthy bandwidth, so you might be able to get away with 1000GB a month.

The 5200+ one will give ya two servers with 20 players I think.

The 4200+ one, I duno how well it'd handle 20 players in each server.

SRCDS is not multi threaded, so each server is going to only run on one core.

If you want more than 2 servers running on the machine, you're going to have to increase your budget.

ours is $200 a month

oh the host is softlayer.com

when choosing a host, you have to look at their bandwidth carriers too. Make sure they're tier1, as that is the best for gaming (lowest latencies, fewer hops)

[CrimsonGT]

So just so I understand correctly, on a single core proccessor, you could only run one TF2 server? and on a Quad you could run 4? etc etc?

[BrutalGoerge]

well, assuming that they are all going to be full at the same time.

On ours, at 20 poeple, each SRCDS takes about 30-40%
at 26 people, it's around 50% spiking +-10%

You might be able to do 4 on an awesome dual-core, but I don't know you might overload it. The percentages I gave were avarages, the realtime usage fluctuates a bit. So with two full servers on one core, if they start using too much power, server FPS will drop, and the players will feel lag. I like one server per core.
You can't know for sure until you test it out, or someone with the exact same hardware replies, unfortunately.

[G_Fresh]

I Have 3 TF2, Plus 8 Other Server that Can Be full for a wee kstraight on a conroe 3060...

[CrimsonGT]

G_Fresh Wrote:I Have 3 TF2, Plus 8 Other Server that Can Be full for a wee kstraight on a conroe 3060...

How much RAM, what connection, etc?

[CrimsonGT]

I was reading up, and it was said that a 100 tick 24 slot server that was full 24/7 for a month would use about 550GB, was that not accurate?

I am glad to hear that you can run more than 1 per core, of course I would not want to run a lot more than that, maybe 2 per core, or maybe 3 total on a dual core.

---

So would this server be okay then for runnign 3-4 TF2 Servers?

1) AMD Athlon 64 5200+ Dual Core (129$/month)
2GB Ram (Upgrade to non ecc for 5$, ecc for 10$, not listed by how much)
Remote Reboot
250GB SATA II HD
5 IPs
100Mbps Port
2000GB Transfer

[Drocona]

Removed all the off-topic discussion and half-like flaming, please continue this discussion in private if you like, I will post a thread in the tutorials section about bits and bytes explaining it all in the near future since a lot of people don't seem to get what it actually is (not pointed at some of the posters in this thread)

Alright now back ontopic:

Yes Crimson, that server should be able to hold 75 slots total at 66 tickrate. 1gig ram is enough for 120 players so the 2 gig RAM in there is fine too. 2TB transfer is more than enough too.

Seems a fine server to me, don't bother the RAM too much, it's the least you need for a gameserver like SRCDS.

[fqdn]

what are the network providers? that is a very important part of your choice for a dedicated server.

[CrimsonGT]

Thank you very much

[CrimsonGT]

I just talked to them and they said "Yes, this is most certainly Tier1 Bandwidth, and The providers are Level 3, Time Warner and UUnet."

Should I go for it?

[fqdn]

those 3 providers should suffice, next step is to have some of your clanmates run a traceroute or use winmtr to see the path to the test ip. this will give them/you some idea of what the resulting pings/routes will be, after that the decision is up to you.

case in point: i colocate a server in los angeles and from my cable connection it takes 18 hops to get there whereas from my dsl connection it's only 6.

[CrimsonGT]

wow gotcha. Yeah it seems those of us with cable are between 30-45 ping, and the one guy with dsl gets 25 whereas on our current server, most of us with cable get 20-30 and the guy with dsl gets about 60.

Anyways, this server looks good, thanks for all the help!

[Drocona]

Those are very good pings should work perfectly fine


just don't get how cable gets lower ping than DSL though

[CrimsonGT]

Not sure, our current servers in Virginia, my clan mate is in Atlanta, GA and gets about 60 ping on it and I get about 30. On this dedicated server he gets about 25 and I get about 40 lol -_-