Balancing Servers

[tehrichie]

What methods do you guys use to maximize server capacity to be profitable while maintaining excellent loads? Curious to see some methods that can be exposed ( I know we all have our own we wish not to share .)

 

The main things I want to see here is if other providers dictate certain servers on certain CPUS - such as CS:S servers only on CPU 1 - or CS1.6 server only on CPU 2 - or Public servers only on CPU1 - or vice versa.

 

Discuss!

[adamnp]

Do everything manually, monitor everything manually, verify everything manually, and understand what mods/plugins and slotcount and gametype affect what type of hardware, how it interfers with anyother gametypes and how to best utilize it, also keeping in mind public vs private/scrim servers and where performance is expected and not.

 

Automation is horrid for best optimization , and imo leads to lost customers, increased support time, and a weaker product.

[lpgservers]

Couldn't agree with you more Adam. I've seen the problem in my start in this industry and have learned to do things the right way.

[dimitrifrom31]

start with dedicating your machines to specific games, I got :

 

- 2 machines for source based games

- 1 machine for quake engine games

- 1 machine for racing games

- 1 machine for voice servers and game files

- 1 machine for website, TCA Website and master monitor

 

You can automate server creation if assigning to specific machines and later edit manually core affinity for exemple. Personaly Im not using core affinity anymore after few months ; I let it being auto balanced, just making sure the total CPU is not going over 50% during peak hours and checking manually that theres no core being overloaded.

[tehrichie]

What is the most common issue causing CPU 0 to get overloaded and having the games not spread out between the processors?

[Derek]

What is the most common issue causing CPU 0 to get overloaded and having the games not spread out between the processors?

 

Too many HL1 servers on one machine.

[tehrichie]

Too many HL1 servers on one machine.

 

Good solution to dictate HL1 servers to a certain core of their own, or evenly spread them out manually?

[Derek]

Good solution to dictate HL1 servers to a certain core of their own, or evenly spread them out manually?

 

Select core1 to 4 or 8 and leave core0 unchecked.

[adamnp]

Select core1 to 4 or 8 and leave core0 unchecked.

 

As previously mentioned in other articles in here, selecting more than the 1 core does not dictate to which cores the process will run under.

 

Quote from ECF.

 

 

 

Yes. Affinity can be changed in service setting for each gameserver.

 

For future reference, you cannot set affinity to more than one by checking multiple checkboxes.

 

Example: If you check CPU 0 and CPU 1, it does nto get bound to both CPUs. It actually would only bind to CPU 0 since it comes first. Also, you cannot do a bind to CPU 1 and CPU 3 etc.... It is either bound to one CPU or if you leave all the boxes unchecked then windows will bind it to all CPUs if the application is multithreaded.

 

Keeping in mind, it is normally perfectly fine to allow windows to set the affinity for all processes, the only time you might want to put a particular process on its own core would be if its something of particular high demand and you'd rather not have the process compete for cputime with other processes. However, with today's hardware and most games now taking some if not full advantage of threaded processing, you may even end up decreasing performance.

 

Again, best course of action is to manually compose your settings. Place and monitor different setting arrangements, monitor the usages taking particular notice to slotcounts and hours of normal operation...You'll quickly grow an internal preference on how you want to load your machines, and this also will reflect the type of product you wish to sell. Some people may call it maxed 10 servers before you, some may load it until its 99%.

[strikeR-]

Hi,

 

I have read so many posts about load balancing but don't have at the moment one answer at 100%.

 

Actually I Have COD4 / COD2 / CSS working with "Always Start at CPU 0" because they have multicore useless.

 

The HL1 based system (CS1.6 / CZ) have manually affinity (1 core to one server), but I want to automate all things the maximum as I can.

 

If I use the "Always Start CPU 0" on HL1 games it will automatically look for one core there are empty on the moment or will put all games working at CPU0 ? Witch method are you using on this games ?

 

Actually I only have Teamspeaks servers created automatically by WHMCS because haven't yet configured the games for that.

 

What are your opinion about that ?

How are you automate your process to the maximum possible ?

 

Regards,