Hello Everyone,

I was wanting to start offering game servers but i am not fully sure how to set them up.

how many games can i run on one server and how do i set it up to where customers can manage there own servers but now mess with other customers game servers

Jeremy

All I will say is don't mess with what you don't understand! Its like saying "I want to be a mechanic...whats a car?".

You can run 99999 servers on a server, but that particular server has 106 processors, several TB of RAM, and a few hundred hard drives!

And if you don't know how to restrict access to files and you call yourself a webhost?
You're the exact living example of what makes a kiddy host!

I suggest you get a very small machine and learn how to run ONE gameserver for yourself and your friends before you even think about starting a company.

Then do research and go find some options as to what you can use for serving and administrating customers game servers - if you have taken the time to learn game servers with ONE on a small box for YOURSELF - it shouldnt be hard to know what your looking for.

If you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with things, it's pretty simple there.

You don't need a billion processors or a billion megs of ram, a simple 2.x processor and 1g of ram should do you just fine. However, you've got to look at more than just processor and ram. You've got to consider network (who's going to be hosting), support, administrative staff (if you don't know how to set one up you'll at LEAST need an admin that does) and more.

Why tell him to not mess with what he doesn't know? All of us at some point didn't know jack about computers, the internet, anything.

I'd try setting a few game servers on your own machine, just to get a feel for it. Try to use the linux version if they have one available. Each one will probably be a little different, so I can't tell you how to admin each one.

Now if you know much about linux or hosting in general, you could probably handle setting up a vds/vps, and offer those to your customers. That way they can load whatever game servers they want and admin it themselves. Just make sure you use a solution that lets you restrict resources...so if customer A is trying to run 1,000 game servers, it's not going to affect everyone else.

If you don't have the time to learn all this yourself, then I'd try to find someone you can trust who knows all about this stuff, and hire them to set it up and maintain it for you. Get them to explain what they're doing and why, since you may have to do stuff yourself if they skip town or what have you.

well i can do all this file access and setting in linux but the problem is i dont think many games can run on a linux platform s i need help with other things like how to do file access on windows

The games themselves may not run on Windows, but many game SERVERS will. They're not always officially supported though.

Joseph

what you said really makes very little sense. why would someone create a single server to host that many game servers, that would be ludacris, and also it would be a lot easier to make a SAN network and link all the processors and drives together to up the speed and therefore there wouldnt be as much of a need of hard drives

so it would lower the cost also

Jeremy

If you're commenting on my "so if customer A is trying to run 1,000 game servers, it's not going to affect everyone else." comment, I don't think you understand what I was saying. I was merely stating that if you have one customer trying to abuse resources, it would only affect their performance and no one else's. And when I say game servers, I mean as in a counterstrike server, quake3 server, etc...the server program. I wasn't talking about 1,000 actual physical servers.

If that wasn't what you were commenting on...sorry don't know what you're talking about either.

No, he's referring to Joseph_M's post.

Originally posted by mindless
it would be a lot easier to make a SAN network and like all the processors and drives together to up the speed
A cluster, in other words. His numbers are off (you'd need way more than 106 procs), but large-scale computer architectures look a lot more like a cluster than they look like a dual-proc. In any event, you'd want a fairly transparent group of procs so games can migrate around to less loaded processors and memory groups.

You lot seriously need to get out more!
I was using something us British people are proud of, and you Americans tend not to understand SARCASM. Now stop being bitchy and grow up!
If he wants to go and make his games server company then let him, he clearly doesn't have a clue and its unlikely that he'll listen to the advice of more experienced board members.
Just remember:
NO RACKSHACK FOR GAMING! their network isn't designed for it
Make sure your servers are located where your customers are:
e.g. EU Servers for EU Customers
US Servers for US/CA Customers

Get a medium-power server, so a 2.4GHz processor (2.0 minimum) with a couple of GB of RAM (1GB minimum), and a regular hard drive (80GB).
It depends on the games you want to run, BF1942 for example runs better on a windows platform, whilst CS runs better on Linux. You can get less 18 Man CS games on one server than you can get 12 Man CS games on that same server.
Just play for a while, talk to gaming admins, get someone in who knows what they're doing.

How do we make profit or revenue from game server? Please explain to me, i am totally clueless here...

The same way you make profit from any other servers, sales. You lease the server out to x number of individuals.

Granted, on a game server you can't have 100s of users on a server (in fact, max would probably be 50 clients), but if you manage the server right you can do it easily enough. I kknow one or two that have 5, 6 game servers with 20-50 clients on 'em. They won't make a ton of $$$, but they do well enough to pay the bills.

well hears the ideal way which almost neve rhappens. Start at mid ranged pricing. Build up a totally awesome reputation. Then charge triple normal rates and still get customers. Believe me this is very rare but it does happen.

Cool, i am really interested to learn more about gaming server biz. Any good resources (such as forum) you could recommend for a newbie like me?

BTW, which is more profitable, gaming server or common web hosting?

Web hosting, by a long shot. Game servers have low margins and insane expectations. If you're going into game server for the profits, you will be bitterly disappointed. So will your customers.

Ya, unless you are familliar with Game servers, I'd say stay away, far away. The reason for this is the technical side of running a game server can be a pain (big pain). You got users contacting you to get this patch or that patch put in, or contacting you about code, and you BETTER know what you're doing to tell 'em something ;)