Question about "Check if Running Every" and Lag

[deacon]

Has anyone else had problems with HL based games and "Check if Running Every"? Specifically, when set to the default setting of 5 our games always lagged.

 

 

 

Just on a hunch I set this value from 5 to 600 and the constant lag changed to a major lag spike every 10 minutes. Whatever number I changes this variable to the lag followed religiously.

 

 

 

I finally set the value even higher (120 minutes) and the game servers plays well for a few days and then goes crazy.

 

 

 

When I run the game server w/0 TCAdmin Monitor or the associated services running the server seems fine. As soon as I start the servers w/ TCA they have big lag spikes and choke is usually a problem.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

D

 

 

 

Here is some background on the servers:

 

 

 

Each of the servers are located in different data centers w/ different providers.

 

 

 

I have a total of 4 DOD instances running, 2 per server.

 

 

 

1) Provider 1

 

Intel dual xeon 2.4

 

2048 MB RAM

 

120 GB 10K ROM HDD

 

 

 

1x 32 Player DOD - Always Full

 

1x 32 Player DOD - Usually Empty

 

 

 

2) Provider 2

 

AMD dual Opteron 242

 

2048 MB RAM

 

120 GB 10K ROM HDD

 

 

 

1x 32 Player DOD - Always Full

 

1x 24 Player DOD - Always Empty

 

 

 

 

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[dgx] - Digital Gaming eXtreme

 

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www.dgx.us -- deacon@dgx.us

 

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[ECF]

I would assume if this was a widespread problem we would have heard about it from other clients as well.

 

 

 

To my knowlege, no one else has complained of an issue like this.

 

 

 

Do you happen to have the Memory Limiter active on those servers?

 

 

 

 

 

And what about stats collection?

[deacon]

We're running Win 2k3, so nothing other than what the OS does itself. The application is running a heapsize of 393216 which should devote approx 768 MB RAM to the game and the game is not currently using more than this. Again, if I stop the TCAdmin Monitor server and the associated game instance service and just load the game it runs fine.

 

 

 

-D

[ECF]

If you like, you can put in a ticket and have it looked at. But we haven't had any complaints from any clients about the system and/or game monitor causing any lag issues.

 

 

 

When I mentioned the RAM limiter above, I meant the one with TCAdmin itself. If you click on a server, and then on Service Settings. See if there is a check on the box marked "Enable Low Memory Usage (Might cause lag)"

 

 

 

If there is, uncheck it and restart the servers.

 

 

 

I can say from past experience, that DOD servers of that size will take over 768 mb of ram. Ours used to run at 900 mb to a gig when it was full. Just FYI.

 

 

 

 

[deacon]

I follow you. No, enable low memory usage is not checked... I skipped right over that when I saw "might cause lag". That's path is heading in the exact wrong direction I want to go.

 

 

 

As for the memory usage, I've enabled stats monitoring to check how much RAM is actually being used and it didn't peak 512 when the server was full. Just as a sanity check I'll up their heapsize to 524288 which should give us a full gig dedicated to this instance.

 

 

 

If that still doesn't work I'll open a ticket. I just wanted to make sure the community didn't already know about this BEFORE I engaged support.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Deacon

 

 

[ECF]

The memory size was more of an FYI. However it still doesn't explain the lag spike at the moment the servers are being checked when running as a service.

 

 

 

Collect some info, and if needed put in a ticket, and I can have Luis look at it to see if he can find anything.