Gaming Server

D

DoMeHardR

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 16, 2002
Messages
227
I'm going to set up a gaming server to colocate and was looking for some advice in what to get. I'm brand new to the smp area so no flaming please :) At first, I will probably only be hosting maybe 6-7 servers but would hope to get a lot more going. I was thinking of getting 2x xp2000's and a gig of 2700 ram to start. For the motherboard anyone have any good recommendations? I don't really need anything fancy. Mainly just something reliable and inexpensive. Thanks.

If anyone thinks I should get diff cpus or something feel free to comment.
 
Forgot to say, from what I have heard the xp --> mp isn't very hard. I was going to do that on the xp's to turn them into mp's.
 
6-7 daemons on the same box, or 6-7 machines? You do understand that most daemons use up both a lot of CPU power and bandwidth, correct?
 
Game server usually don't use that amount of cpu power.... but more ram. Game server i have run went fine on single xp 2000+ but they used up a lot of ram (eg. 700 mb ram used) with 2 - 3 games (ut)
 
Yeah, I have run 5 servers UT servers on a much less powerful computer and it seemed fine. I think a gig of ram should be decent for now. Most of the servers are private for clans (10-12 players usually) and almost always aren't full. If it starts to get very slow I will upgrade it. Thanks for all the replys guys.

Another question,(kinda off topic) I usually run RedHat but I have heard wonderful things about FreeBSD. Would running UT under the linux emulation on FreeBSD be that much better?
 
I prefer Free from an administration and use perspective. It's far easier to work with than linux and everything is laid out nicely. The 4.x series is getting somewhat rusty in a few areas, but 5.x upgrades nicely, albeit still somewhat unstably with regards to ACPI (5.x-STABLE is still months away). For HLDS FreeBSD works remarkably well, and there are ports for it, so installation and most of the setup is scripted. I can't speak for UT since, well, I've never had an interest in that game.
 
I've heard for a "mission critical" 4.8 stable is what to use? Thanks for the input.
 
the freeBSD concept of stable is much more than any other stable Ive seen. The OS has to be out and working perfectly for at least 3 years or something before they consider it stable. I would reccomend running 2.6 on debian, or freeBSD 5.x
 
The stable branch lives up to its name. There are constant changes, so it's not like the same code goes for three years or more, but the branch certainly does. 4.8 was definitely a brick, 4.9 introduced one bug for me, but it was fixed after a few days in CVS. 5.2 has also performed remarkably well aside from the occasional ACPI issue (which can be disabled at boot if you so choose). If you absolutely cannot afford one second of downtime, stick to 4.x, but if you can risk an hour or two of downtime every couple months, try 5.x.
 
I just set up a Dual Xeon 2.4 with www.servermatrix.com for $199 a month including Server2003 and a gig of ram.

I've been with Server Matrix for about 8 months now and just needed an upgrade. We currently run 1 32 man Call of Duty, 1 50 man TeamSpeak and 1 24 man Spearhead server on a single 2.4.

We're hoping to add one more CoD.

BTW, ServerMatrix is part of The Planet, who hosts HardOCP sites and many others.
 
Oh sorry - I forgot to mention....

Why are you going with Colocation instead of just renting a whole box?

I did a lot of research before I set up my server and the thing with CoLo is they kill you with bandwidth charges. It was way more cost-effective to just rent a server from ServerMatrix.

I wanted one locally where I live in Albany NY but it just didn't make sense. Maybe since its a smaller city I didn't have as many options I'm very happy with my current setup. I just remote desktop to the server in Dallas and it's like I'm sitting right at the terminal.
 
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