Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : Game Servers : Game Server on VPS

[LuxuryServers]

How would I go about doing this, could I have 3 game servers on one vps or 1 game server and a hosted site on a vps, also lets say what's the avrage specs for a vps to host a game server for counter strike

[Deroba]

You can have as many games are port count allows you, which is very very high for a realistic number of game servers you could have. Unlimited sites of course...

I would go for a nice processor and internet port speed, worry less about high ram and focus more into speed. This will allow a lagless gaming

[sdpenaloza]

Depending on the game you can try running on a vps, the main issues will be Internet speed, processor usage, which can lead you to some issues. (mainly will see these rear their ugly head when you have a full server)

from an old post about counter strike:
(can't link with new account too apparently)
from post: Counter-Strike Bandwidth Usage?
------------------------------------------------------
Hello, I noticed that the average person uses anywhere between 3k-5k for in and 3k-5k for out when playing counter-strike. With that being said I'll round up and use the worst case scenerio of each player using a total of 11k/s per player.

For One Player
11k/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days
=
28512000 K/month or 28512 MB/month or 28.51 GB/month

For Twelve Players
28512mb/month * 12 = 342144 MB/month
28.51gb/month * 12 = 342.14 GB/month

Those are the figures on a worst case scenerio if my caclulations are correct.
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bandwidth is pretty manageable on the overall use, but getting a good latency is the key mostly for fps

depending on the game you might be able to pull it off(counter-stike is one of the less resource hungry games) tried team fortress 2 and it took about 150-250 mbs ram(minor memory leaks (thank steam for that) pushes up to about 300-400mbs on extended play), thats with bots mainly with some players. I don't have experience too much on counter-stike, but most fps will tax your cpu a bit 5-8% cpu on a quad core so might be an issue with others on the server.

If you know about tick rates there is believe 33, 66, also 200 or something insane like that and thats framerate server updates the screen for all clients so bandwidth there will be scaleable.

This is all before considering in voice communication in game.

for sure you can probably run the game, but counterstike people will nitpick on latency and choppyness (if slow cpu), should try maybe sell per slot like some servers do to make it manageable =).

and like said above vps can handle websites easily (1 server/ 1 website) sounds like a good plan =)

[sdpenaloza]

sorry for the double post i timed out on the last post, 2 servers is probable also but depending on the game it might be a bit much (depends on the vps hardware too though), and left 4 dead 1/2 for some reason most resource hungry fps i seen so far (even if it only does accept 8 players in a server, probably due to memory leaks)

[Mike Johnson]

I don't think you will be able to get acceptable performance out of SRCDS on a VPS.

[edge100x]

Annuit, a properly configured VPS can actually support game servers of any type very well. Dedicated CPU cores and dedicated memory are key components to this, as is using the right hardware.

[JohnJ]

Originally Posted by LongArms

How would I go about doing this, could I have 3 game servers on one vps or 1 game server and a hosted site on a vps, also lets say what's the avrage specs for a vps to host a game server for counter strike

I wouldn't recommend running game servers AND sites on a single VPS.

[WinsNexus]

Game server on a VPS. Would not do unless you were on a clustered VMware ESX host environment with resource pooling. Only way that a Virtual would ever come close to a physical.

[Michaels75]

I would not recommend you running a game server on a vps,most of all your service providers wont support it,as it will load there other clients,and might bring all the nodes of server down,so instead you should try some dedicated server for this purpose,

[yaramon]

as long as you have a powerful vps you can run it no probs

[[FreeGuildWebsite]]

I'm currently doing some HLDS (Counter-Strike 1.6) dedicated server testing on my VPS through JaguarPC, it's running it quite well with bots, AMX mod, and lots of other stuff.

Newer game servers like Team Fortress 2 and etc. however may have a little more of a problem on a VPS, and it may be more wise to run those servers on a fast dedicated server instead.

I'll try to remember to post an update on bandwidth usage on a 16 slot server after 30 days.

[kasra007]

rather have a dedicated server to run a game server. on a vps cpu isn't exactly dedicated per vps so it could effect the players experience.

[edge100x]

WinsNexus, I would recommend against a pooling or cluster-based system for game servers, in favor of dedicated resources. Predictable performance is key for game servers, and you don't want the system scheduling others onto your CPU or moving your VDS around at inopportune times.

kasra, you are right that dedicated CPU and memory resources are important to guaranteeing performance. A good Nehalem+ HVM VPS (based on the latest Xen, VMware, or Hyper-V) with dedicated resources will perform right near the speed of dedicated hardware. In fact, it can outperform prior-generation bare-metal. Even without dedicated resources, a high-end VPS on an underloaded machine will likely be good for game servers; if he rents from a reputable company that does not advertise dedicated resources, he may be able to work with them to ensure high performance.

[[FreeGuildWebsite]]

Originally Posted by kasra007

rather have a dedicated server to run a game server. on a vps cpu isn't exactly dedicated per vps so it could effect the players experience.

I agree that any newer game server probably won't do well on a normal VPS (under $100.00, at which point you should probably just get dedicated).

CS 1.6 though is running great on a single core VPS I'm on though. With MySQL, cPanel, Apache, SpamD etc. all running, server load was about 0.20, and it used about 86 megs of RAM. It was lower than that but I installed AMXmod with some plugins and bots. With tickrate 100 (pretty CPU intensive), the server managed a pretty clean and steady 93 FPS with 7 bots playing at once according to fragbase.ca.

Team Fortress 2 however pretty much brought the server to it's knees because of the RAM requirements.

Anyone know how to build a quality co-lo server?

[eduo]

I have ran a CS source and left 4 dead server on a vps before, setup properly and on a good vps it can run well.

For cs1.6 you would need to download hlds i believe.