Requirements, hosting options, etc.

[CShadowRun]

Hi. I'm rethinking my server hosting a bit, currently i have 2 servers, both from gameservers.com
TF2 20 slot ($19.95)
CS:S 10 slot ($14.95)
I'm hoping to cut my costs a little, and add some more flexibility by going dedicated/VPS (so i could host my website, ircd, and some other small things)

So, the options as i see them are...

Hosting at home?
I have plenty of resources here. The main bottleneck would be my internet connection, which is 8mbit DSL. No faster is available. I actually get 5mbit down, 400kbps, i have a FreeBSD router which supports traffic shaping.

Using my VPS?
I currently have a VPS, it only has 128mb ram. I could upgrade it i guess. But again this would cost, and i'm not sure what i'd need to upgrade it to.

Going dedicated?
This would be an excellent solution, but i think it's out of my price range.

Colocation?
Again, i think this is too expensive, expecially with the cost of buying a 1U rackmount server.

Feel free to suggest any other ideas you have.

Apart from your opinions on how i should host my servers, i'm also wondering on the system requirements for this, bandwith, memory, cpu, etc. Is there some sort of calculator thing that works this out? that would be useful. If not some information on how much resources are required per player on CS:S/TF2 would be great.

Thanks for your help

[CGS|Todd]

purchasing a server from a gsp is probably going to be your most cost effective option. if you want to host from your house, its the upload speed that will be the bottle neck. most dsl is not symetrical.

vpses generally don't have enough juice to run a server, unless you pay for a lot of resources, at which point you will be spending a lot of money.

[CShadowRun]

That's a shame, i'd really like some extra control and i reckon a 512mb VPS is within my budget, i'd still like to know about the system requirements for my servers.

[ClanWoof]

VPS = huge neg. They are very bad for hosting game servers from. I rented a "dedicated" box from a company and turned out it was really just a VPS ran good for a month or two then went to shat.
Reason being, I'm thinking they put alot more than the box could really handle and it could not support my servers.
Also renting from a gsp is going to be the cheapest and least amount of work.

[CShadowRun]

ClanWoof Wrote:VPS = huge neg. They are very bad for hosting game servers from. I rented a "dedicated" box from a company and turned out it was really just a VPS ran good for a month or two then went to shat.
Reason being, I'm thinking they put alot more than the box could really handle and it could not support my servers.
Also renting from a gsp is going to be the cheapest and least amount of work.

Did you by chance buy from VPSLink?, but in any case any company that lies about there services is going to be shit anyway.

The place i'm getting my VPS from is very high quality, if yours ran for 2 months ok, then maybe mine will last.

[ClanWoof]

Nope that was not the company, if you like I can pm you the name.

[CGS|Todd]

CShadowRun Wrote:That's a shame, i'd really like some extra control and i reckon a 512mb VPS is within my budget, i'd still like to know about the system requirements for my servers.

the problem with vpses is not the memory but the shared cpu. its generally not feasible.

[CShadowRun]

Guess i'll have to stick with the GSP for now until i can pull in enough money for dedicated/coloc. Oh well

I'm still intrested in the specs that this would require, though.

[CShadowRun]

I'm friends with the guy that runs my VPS company, He was also intrested to see how game servers worked, so he set me aside a 512MB section.

I ran a 32 slot CS:S server, filled up with max difficulty AI and 4 players, played surf maps, did everything. Nothing made it lag.

Heck, it hardly even lagged when i was downloading TF2 with hldsupdatetool, while running the 32slot CS:S server

Hosted with VPServe, currently his clients are all from his consultancy work, but hes planning to branch out to support new customers, so if you want some place to host your servers in the UK, watch this space!

I also have a friend that hosts many public servers on VPS's and has no issues either.

In a nutshell, VPS's do most definatly work, providing you are with a quality host that doesn't oversell.