Game Server Spec

Linken

Linken

Linken

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Hi guys!

First time building a server so needed some input from some server gurus!

Essentially this server will be hosting an online game a team of us are developing and was not sure of the exact specifications needed - as far as I know the bandwidth is the main requirement when it comes to stuff like this.

We currently are on a 120MB download/20mb Upload line - which should be fine for Alpha/Beta as we don't expect to exceed more than 500 players in this period.

We run a pretty big MYSQL server so I would like to have quite a bit of ram to allocate to MYSQL independently, and at the start we only plan to run one realm but would like the room to upgrade (so perhaps a few HDDs could come in handy)

Just starting out so don't really want to break the bank so much for our first investment but here's what we have so far:

These items have been donated from the team members (spare parts etc) the rest we need to buy.

  • Windows 2012 Server Key
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 1x 128GB SSD
  • 5x 500GB HDDs

For the remaining parts that we needed, we came up with the following parts:

  • Intel XEON E3-1220 (There are 3 versions of this, wasn't sure which was the best one, v3 is Haswell)
  • Akasa AK-CC4009EP01 Venom Pico Performance Multi-Platform CPU Cooler
  • ASRock Z77 PRO4-M S1155 Intel Z77 DDR3 mATX (mATX just because it was slightly cheaper - but will probably find a better ATX board)
  • Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower PC Casing ATX Black
  • Corsair CS450M Modular 450W ATX PSU

All input & help is appreciated!
 
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I think first and foremost you should consider where about you plan to have the server. Is it going to be mounted in a rack or as a standalone PC just sitting somewhere.

Fail over is everything when it comes to servers ... you never want a single point of failure that will take you offline for extended periods. With that in mind you will probably want to look at proper server hardware rather than building a box. The advantages a server gives you will be dual power supplies (if one goes pop it will still be up), multiple network connections that will allow you to fall over properly should one fail (or indeed the switch its connected to dies), multiple processors - the more processing power you have the easier your job will be in the long run especially if you are running multiple services (MySQL and your game code) as well as the sheer amount of memory you can have in a server dwarfs that of your typical ATX(E) or slightly larger motherboards.

I think unless you can get in touch with "someone in the business" who can advise you better about the path you are on you will be best guessing.
 
We are still in early development stages so ideally it would be something starting relatively small that we can upgrade in the future as we grow.

Don't really want to shell out a big amount at this early stage if we can prevent it.

We did just plan it to just be a standalone PC sitting somewhere, but as you say there's not much room for expansion such as dual network connections and two CPUs etc.
 
You mentioned you are running a large MySQL server database already. If i may ask, what are you currently running it on (or is it cloud hosted)?

Assuming its a physical machine... if you are wanting to slowly grow you might find it is beneficial to keep that where it is already and just build a regular PC for now to develop upon and scale up separately in the future. I believe that would give you the option in the near future of upgrading your database server when it is time to.

The advantage of this approach would be that your outlay for a traditional PC will be small and you can save the money for the future to build what you need when you know it.

Without knowing more about your circumstances or development environment it would be pretty hard to nail down a fixed spec for a machine to host your game. But assuming again that you know all of those things I imagine the engine developers websites would be a good source of information as to the minimum and above specs for the machine would be.
 
SQL database is installed on our current server machine which has really poor specs.

But yes I think a basic standalone PC would be the best way for now as well. I don't think we're going to need a 'proper' server just yet.

But getting components that could potentially transfer into the future server machine would be good. Like a Xeon CPU for example instead of just getting an i7 4770k
 
I would probably invest into a UPS, which has support for your OS to shut down the database if there is a power loss. This can be reused with a new/larger server.

Smaller faster disks on a SAS controller are usually the way to go for databases, instead of larger slower SATA disks. Since you have the disks already, you might want to get another 500GB disk and do some mirrored stripeset (10)?

MySQL itself is currently partly open source and you might want to swap to some full open source solution like the forked MariaDB etc. to be sure you don't have to pay for security update or something in the future. Maybe going for another OS as well to save software licences?
 
The problem with buying things just now to use in a server later is in most likelihood you wont be building a server... you will buy one from HP/Dell pre-configured to your budget. And an investment into a UPS without knowing how many servers you plan to run on it might be a premature one. The point about the disks is very much valid though.

To save you a bit of time and effort I would suggest the following to give you a starting point if you are looking for a "computer" to do you just now as a server which could be later re purposed into a workstation when you opt down the server line.

intel i7 4820K (its relatively cheap and comparable to an i7 4470K)
Corsair h80/h100 (low cost cooling for a beefy chip)
Asus Sabertooth X79 (again, cheap as long as you can get one with a bios updated to support haswell CPUs and has 8 slots for DDR3 memory)
A reasonable (again determined by what you want to run) amount of DDR3 memory (you wont need ultra fast stuff so again not too pricey).
A suitable case... others can advise you on that.

Addi tonally for your storage requirements id recommend a dedicated RAID 5/6/10 compatible card (Overclockers stock LSI branded ones but im not too up on them to give an opinion at this time) rather than relying on the onboard (fake)RAID which you can set up so you dont lose any of that precious data from your database. (again before I get jumped on this is not a backup solution - simply a good idea). You will still want a way of doing dedicated backups. If you need any ideas for that let me know and I'll be happy to provide you with a couple of ideas (think along the lines of a RAID external enclosure and regular software backups that you can dump your data to... you might even want to look into Crashplan or other similar online backups as well).
 
Apologizes for a quick 2 post... but I thought it would be beneficial to highlight that there are parts in the post above not mentioned for various reasons.

GPU: You will need one, but probably not a highend one unless your game code somehow works using OpenCL or CUDA (I'm doubting) as the i7 in question does not have an internal GPU.
PSU: To Preference... I would imagine anything around the budget area of 600-700 or so watts with decent efficiency would be fine maybe even overkill.

A compatible list of CPUs for the Sabertooth can be found here:
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/list.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=1&s=42&m=SABERTOOTH X79&os=&hashedid=n/a

The Xeons are mentioned so if your heart is set on one of those and it is listed then i dare say you can try it.
 
Thanks for the input IHxInfi & disi,

That UPS looks like a great idea - after a bit of research the APC BE700G-UK looks good for approximately £60.

For a GPU I have a spare 260GTX to put into the machine if needed which will be more than enough.

So yeah probably looking at a 600W PSU. And those parts you listed might be still a little over our budget. We're looking to spend about £400 on these components, idea was to get us a starter server which we can continually upgrade as we grow but I think that may be a harder task than I thought!

Case - I'm not sure about, need a normal desktop case that can easily swap around HDDs that has room for at least 3. Don't have to use all 5 HDDs - but would be nice!
 
That's £400 + all the spare parts we have of course!

So, Mobo, Case, CPU, Cooler, PSU for under £400 with room for server expansion. Possible?
 
Linken said:
Thanks for the input IHxInfi & disi,

That UPS looks like a great idea - after a bit of research the APC BE700G-UK looks good for approximately £60.
Click to expand...

USB-Port is fine, the software/driver you install on the machine will shutdown the machine if there is a power outage.

We got three APC-Smart UPS 3000W and also decided to go with USB and software/daemon on one of the machines, rather than an additional NIC. This worked very well during our testing, but touch wood we didn't need it in production yet. You can also program the sequence in which the ports should shut down etc.
 
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Will be ordering this soon.

So here we go:

YOUR BASKET
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD316G2133HC11ADC01) £107.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
1 x BitFenix Shadow Tower Case - Midnight Black £54.98
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
Total : £337.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).



This will be paired with the following spare parts:

3x 500GB HDDs, 1x 128GB SSD, a Xeon E3-1230 v3 (Haswell 1150) and a GTX 260, UPS for backup power and a key of Windows Server 2012.

How's that look for a first server to get us going?

(We opted out of ECC ram for now until we go live, this is more for development for the next 6-12 months really)
 
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