Couple of questions...

I have enough people interested in this that I could get a ded server and start offering servers. I have a few questions.

Anyone know how to go about remotely setting up a CS server? Im pretty sure its just uploading of the CS files and admin mod and upload the latest version of HLDS. Am I right?

So what then? Give everyone SSH login to their own cs dir?

what about server load, how many can you run on say one p4 2.0ghz with 512+ mb of ram?

Few answers:

- Installation is VERY easy via SSH.

- Number of servers on 1 box depends on the number of players per server. I would say 4-5 servers MAX on a p4 box, especially if its a rackshack box (ide harddrives).

- You can get web based control panels for your customers. or do as you said and give them SSH access to the dir.

- Dont expect amazing performance if your planning on using a rackshack box for gaming.

The P4 IMHO is not a good gaming server.

And if you plan on running more than one server per box, the box needs to be a dual. Yes you can put more than one on a single CPU, but on every map change and on some player joins the server will lag and pings will jump.

You will find many posts in here about people running 97 games of CS on a single CPU. Lies.......

The installation of HL itself is easy. However getting some mods to work is a bit tricky for the first timer, because of bad documention.

Yeah - map changes really trash the CPU.

Prolly what was happening with ECGN when I was with them as a customer. They have had a lot of problems lately, but I wont get into my personal opinion of them right now lol. I will just say look elsewhere if your looking for a CS server.

1) Bandwidth
http://www.cs-onp.com/files/transfer.xls
gives you a rough idea what you'll be using on a normal public server.

2) Offering a few mods is always a good idea. The main ones being CS TFC DoD: www.dayofdefeatmod.com NS: www.natural-selection.org

3) Offering server addons is equally important, a complete list can be found at www.metamod.org which is the program you'll be using to load the addons.

4) For anything more than 1 or 2 HL servers you'll want more Ram on that Box, and proper drives if you can get them. Otherwise you'll start to have serious lag issues. Oh and dont even think about running a cpu whore like NS on it :)

That XLS file is a great thing to have!

altho for a 10 person server under megabytes per month it says 79,000.00 (im off on the hundreds there)? 79 thousand megabytes? Talk about running up your BW bill. I assume it means 79 megabytes?

I believe this assumes high server activity, but for HL servers and I believe for other game servers aswell, high total Bandwidth is more the norm. I have 8 (highly tweaked) 12 player HL servers on a dual processor AMD rig with 2GB RAM and SCSI drives (the main differences to your setup)

Each HL server uses about 50-70 GB per month, which is huge, but actually quite low considering they are full 22 hours a day, you can expect more if you haven't optimized the servers for low BW and lag.

Well with most dedicated servers I have looked at only coming with 400mb of BW that would be an issue. Where are you getting a ded server from that allows GB of transfer? :pimp:

Ask around, maybe put a request in here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=32

I'm sure there are dedicated servers around. In my case I dont sell the servers but have sponsorship and co-use agreements with a few gamehosts, they provide me with a few servers, I solve all their HL related problems. So I'm afraid I cant recommend anyone who would suite your needs.

Vampire what are your Maxrates set at?

My servers are set at 10000 and a few of them can drag down over 150 Gigs a month. (20 player CS)

50-70 gigs seems likes a really low number, but then again you didnt say how many players per server.

I have 8 (highly tweaked) 12 player HL servers

They are all 12 Player, the figures your quoting are around what's considered "standard" Bandwidth (you'll get similar results from the Spreadsheet)

Pushing the Bandwidth down is about more than just setting a maxrate (mine is 8000) you need to look at what exactly is using your resources where, how to minimize them and then test them extensively to make sure gameplay doesn't suffer as a result. This applies to both to both BW and "servers per server", I wouldnt normally recommend more than 3 20 Player servers on a high-end server, but with sufficient optimization around 5 are possible without overly lagging clients.

I am stupid.....

:D

Servers come with 300-400 GB not MB *kicks himself in the arse* lol

So yeah with 400 GB of available bandwidth that would be no problem hosting say (3) 16 player servers at max usage for the month. Assuming that not all the servers are going to be full 100% of the time then you could probably safely put 4 on there and not go over your 400gb limit.

Quite probably the BW will be fine, but you'll want quite a bit more than a "p4 2.0ghz with 512+ mb of ram" to satisfy the needs of 3 16-Player servers.

Does it really matter if its SCSI raid vs IDE Raid. I know the newer 7200 RPM's with the 8mb cache on em compete with the SCSI on performance. SEE ARTICLE (http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/20020305/index.html) I have seen dedicated ide raid servers that advertise 8mb cache somewhere. Anyways, how much does it matter?

Well SCSI matters IMHO, on the other hand you can live without it, my real worry for your server is RAM (more is better ;))

So if I had the chance to get a server on internap bw with p4 with raid and 1gig of ram for under $200 I should jump on it? lol

depending on amount of bw, yes =)

If your going to run more than 1 Game per box dont get a single CPU machine. ............ Unless your customers dont Know what lag is, or dont understand that a 300 Ping is bad.


3 Great running 20 player servers on a Single CPU machine = Lies

yup pretty much, but ram is a big issue aswell ...

so how many will run on a dual zeon or dual athlon ?

Well to give you a comparison I run 8, 12 Player or 5 20 Player servers on one of these boxes:


Dual Athlon MP 1900+
Tyan Thunder K7 S2462UNG Marken-Mainboard
4x 512MB ( 2 GB ) Infineon DDR Ram PC 266
Adaptek Dual Ultra160-SCSI-Controller
Quantum 36GB U/160-SCSI-Festplatten mit 10.000upm-1 und 8MB Cache

It's all german but you get the idea :)

When you start removing bits from that, start removing overall players, same as BW there's no unlimited CPU.

Well thats good. Now I just need to find people who want game servers....

Good thing I run a pc shop from my home too, parts wont be expensive. I should just build something like that and colocate it instead of getting a dedicated.

Heh finding people to use it shouldn't be too hard.

Try the forums at www.unitedadmins.com and server.counter-strike.net, but please dont advertise blatantly, same as in here there are rules on who can post what where. Other than that irc is also a good place to try, same rules for there though, don't advertise openly, just talk to people, say hi etc... and hope that someone will want a gameserver :)

I just did a check so I can see what kind of machine I can put together, tell me if this will do the job lol....

1U Server
P4DC6+ i860 Ultra 160 SCSI ATX MB
Dual P4 2.0ghz XEON
2gb RDRAM
RAID - 2 x ATLAS IV 9.1GB 10000RPM ULTRA-160 WIDE SCSI 68PIN LVD

cost to me is about 1500 or so. Lets say theoretically I charge 100 for a 20 player and I run 5 off the server. $500 a month - colo fee lets say $200 leaves 300 profit a month. So it would take me 5 more months roughly to make my money back on the server. Thats not bad then. Everything after that is profit minus support cost. (my time mainly, few others as well). Any clues on where to get the business from? lol

100 for a 20 Player is a bit on the high end, but hey its your choice.

You dont have advertising, support, website, or problems in that equation, so you may want to add them 1st ;)

True - well website and support arent an issue. I have 2 others to help with support. Advertising is another story lol....

ok so what about a p4 1.7ghz with 2gb of ram and IDE RAID on good BW. I can get 4gb or ram on it if I want. How many people will it support. Could I run 4 servers off it?

I have 3 people willing to sign up.
16 player
18 player
16 player

so will it hold that plus say another 16player?

What about less servers but more players? would it hold 2 32 player?

Because its not a dual-processor I would have to say no, everything else about it is fine, just lacking an extra processor :)

hl server software doesn't utilise dual cpu servers..... probably it will help you on map changes but not more.....

apollo the point is that we're talking about multiple servers on one box.

Due to the ammount of CPU each server uses it's hard to go beyond around 50 players per server (split to individual server processes) overall with only one CPU, and it will cause serious lag issues. With a dual-CPU setup you can effectively get up to 100 players on a server.