Hosting Game Servers

N00bie

N00bie

N00bie

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Joined
10 Mar 2007
Posts
750
Location
Milton Keynes
Hi Looking to start my own company hosting both websites and Game Servers.

Have a budget of £8k for a Server, but really dont know what i need and dont need? and also is this actually profitable ??

Probably not going to make my £8k in the first year but thats ok as long as i can keep a steady revenue then im happy!

Now please advise me :)
 
Are you looking to buy a single server and co-lo it? What are you going to do for network connectivity? What will you do if the single server fails?

IMO 8K is no where near enough for low latency game servers and only marginally good for a low bandwidth webserver.
 
So what you suggest is i purchase a rack, stick 2 separate server racks in for redudancy incase one fails?

And i was looking at specs of around Xeon 5560 sticking 2 of those in with around 72gb of Ram and 2 600gb 10k HDD.

And broadband well id have to look at something that would give me ultra high upload ? Any suggestions on who ?
 
If running the server from home you would have to sort out a proper internet connection, most ISPs won't allow hosting and even if they did you would probably need a lot of bandwith to host game servers and websites. You may even need a dedicated line or something which would cost a lot.

Then a decent router to manage the traffic, and back up / high availablity options if you expect people to pay for it which would probably mean 2 servers.

Probably a dedicated server / reseller package from a hosting service would be a lot cheaper.
 
Purchase a rack where? If you are thinking about co-location in an already active datacentre, then have you factored in the costs of a decent amount of bandwidth, failover routes, load balancing?

£8k is nowhere near enough for this, we spend more than that in 2 weeks on our kit in Manoc 1.
 
If you want to provide your own hardware, then speak to a co-lo (co-location) provider. No doubt you'll find somebody close but here's an example who are based in Manchester : Melbourne.

They provide you the rack space, physical connectivity, IP transit etc and take care of running the datacentre (power, cooling, security etc).
 
#Chri5# said:
If you want to provide your own hardware, then speak to a co-lo (co-location) provider. No doubt you'll find somebody close but here's an example who are based in Manchester : Melbourne.

They provide you the rack space, physical connectivity, IP transit etc and take care of running the datacentre (power, cooling, security etc).
Click to expand...

Any ideas on what the kind of cost is to do Colocation ?
I simply just want to be able to sell on the space on my Server, to Clans and clients.....is this a smart way to do it or am i living in a fantasty land?
 
My recommendation for hardware would be something like this:

Supermicro 1U chassis and dual socket 1366 motherboard
2x Xeon L5640 CPU's
32GB DDR3 ECC Reg RAM
8x 300-600GB SAS or WD Veloci Ent SATA's in Adaptec/3ware RAID10

You'll get the above for £3k(ish) and colo with a reputable provider (1U, 1amp) would be in the region of £60-70 /month ex VAT

If you need any more help, drop me an email :)

As an aside, I used to be involved in game hosting myself and a few of my clients still are and it really isn't what its cracked up to be any more, there's next to no money to be made!
 
axer said:
My recommendation for hardware would be something like this:

Supermicro 1U chassis and dual socket 1366 motherboard
2x Xeon L5640 CPU's
32GB DDR3 ECC Reg RAM
8x 300-600GB SAS or WD Veloci Ent SATA's in Adaptec/3ware RAID10

You'll get the above for £3k(ish) and colo with a reputable provider (1U, 1amp) would be in the region of £60-70 /month ex VAT

If you need any more help, drop me an email :)

As an aside, I used to be involved in game hosting myself and a few of my clients still are and it really isn't what its cracked up to be any more, there's next to no money to be made!
Click to expand...


Hey thanks for taking the time to let me know that, i was thinking of renting out Boxes to ppl that download torrents is that illegal ??
 
N00bie said:
Any ideas on what the kind of cost is to do Colocation ?
I simply just want to be able to sell on the space on my Server, to Clans and clients.....is this a smart way to do it or am i living in a fantasty land?
Click to expand...

If you click the link I included, you will find prices... ;)

Personally, it's very hard to make money in that market these days.
 
What would the margin difference be on reselling these services rather than buying all the kit yourself and paying to co-locate them?

As plenty of places are offering reselling services.

I wouldnt have thought it would be a massive earner, hence why I would be abit sceptical about paying how ever many thousand pounds upfront to purchase all this kit plus co-locating and bandwidth costs, then having to make that money back before even hit your profit margins.
 
OP I feel that you are underestimating your costs...this will be far, far more than £8k in the first year alone, and I'm guessing you will make next to no money back. Hosting is getting to be a game for the big boys these days. Nice idea, but unfortunately done to death...
I don't wish to sound harsh, but I do feel it would be a waste of your time and money...
 
As mentioned, price competition is going to be your biggest downfall, as to make enough profit, even if you go down the reseller route, your going to have to charge a bigger fee, which I gaurentee other companies which are using game hosting as a service on the side and not their main earner are more competitive on.
 
Having been in this position myself (albeit many years ago) I'd say it's not worth the time/hassle/money, especially these days with everyone doing it.
 
So many of the games these days just don't even seem to be bothering with dedicated servers, or when they're 'ranked' you need a license to make sell them.

I can vouch for Axer though, he provided our Colo when we had our own dedicated server for our local LAN centre. He knew his stuff and his transit was superb for gaming. Don't know whether he's changed it mind.

We did on the cheap.. ie. server case, but with desktop hardware and operating systems. To be honest, we didn't have any problems with it at all.

We weren't particularly trying to make any money of it, and were just trying to cover the costs of it, which we were, but as for making it worth while... can't say it's much cop.
 
Just out of curiosity, what's the market like at the moment for people who want to set-up a VPS & Application hosting company, again I know there is loads of people doing this atm, but is it good margins?
 
No, The margins are so tight the only way to do it is either bulk or carve yourself a niche with local business contacts.

Never say never but it is extremley hard.
 
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