Central hosting discussion

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:29 am

Hi,

I'd like to have your opinion on central hosting and the way we can work on that.

I'll first start by re-posting what I've posted in the admin discussion about corporate ALFA:

Advantages of central hosting:
Central hosting would be a very good thing for us and would give a lot of benefits because NWN2 (and NWN1 as well) have never been designed to be operated like we do. They both suppose that the character files (.bic) are on a local file system and therefore expect a very high performance when accessing them. We, on the other hand, currently have them on a distant machine with a relatively high network latency. This cause problems when the game server tries to save/load files and there is a network issue.
Central hosting would give us a very low latency when accessing bic files and therefore would solve a lot of our problems.

Solutions for central hosting:
Solution 1: Have all the NWN2 servers hosted on the same computer. Zicada has started working on testing that and it seems to be possible. We will continue testing that to be real sure.

Solution 2: Have all the NWN2 servers hosted on computers located in the same place (and connected with a very fast network). This could be our backup solution if the previous one fails. It would cost more for the computers (if we buy them) and for the hosting fees though.

If we go central hosting we will either need to:
1- rent one or several computer(s) able to run NWN2 correctly. This costs a lot.
2- buy one (or several) NWN2 compatible computer(s) and have them hosted somewhere where a low latency network connexion is available.
There are two solutions here:
2.1- someone with access to this good solution gives it free to ALFA.
2.2- we have the NWN2 computers hosted by a professional company.

What solution do you prefer ?

Also could people give me an estimate of the required configuration for a NWN2 hosting computer for ALFA (processor, memory, disk space) ?
With this, I'll compute the costs for each solution using several hosting company prices.

Thanks,
H.

indio · Post by **indio** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 10:56 am

Let's try a cheap option frst and see how it fares:

Prices in Australian Dollars (85 US cents)
Motherboard: Asus P5K-SE S775, QuadCore, P35, FSB1333, DDR2, SATA2, PCIEx16, GbLAN, ATX, Supports 8GB RAM - $175
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40Ghz/Kentsfield/4MBx2/1066FSB/EMT64/XD/Quad Core) $365
RAM: OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB), PC2-6400 800Mhz, Vista Upgrade Dual Channel Kit, 5-6-6-15 $385 (x2 units) for 8GB of RAM

It's about $1300 Aus, which is probably $1100 US, or $1000 for any decent hardware fiend. And with luck, and cheaper components, we can do this barebones system (we don't need a video card) for well ender $1000.

It will probably be able to host 3 modules..possibly 4. Currently, that's what we're looking at in the short to medium term (maybe even long).

So let's pool together $1000 and buy a rig that someone can run Vista Home premium 64bit on, and make sure they've got a good pipe.

Best case scenario...it looks after ALFA for the next 2 years.
Worst case scenario...it's a part of a 2 machine network serving the same purpose at twice the price.

We've really got to stop this from becoming a "We need a state of the art server to run this game" scenario. Count the number of servers being built. Let's start from there.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:14 am

Thanks for your quote indio it will help me a lot when I'll look into colocation solutions (ie we buy the computers and have them hosted somewhere).

What I've looked at so far is the purely rented solution.
I've come up with this average price quote (from godaddy.com):
Pentium 4 3.0GHz, 2 Gig RAM, 120 Gig drive, Windows 2003 Std Edition, 500GB bandwidth per month (should be enough I think) : $131.96/mo
No Setup Fees.
For a Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz it would cost $146.96/mo.

I've seen similar configurations starting at $125.99/mo but with a $400 setup fee at serverpronto.com.

What I'm unsure of is if we can start at 1 Gig RAM and use Windows 2003 Web Edition. This would allow us to go down to $107.97/mo (with the Pentium 4).

I'll look at the colocation now.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 12:25 pm

Okay here are the details I've found about colocation.

Basically I have found two companies providing the kind of service we require for quite cheap: colopronto and colostore.
Colostore sounds the best.
You'll find their details here:
http://colostore.com/colocation.shtml

For $49.95 you can host a rackable computer or a tower.
With 1000 Gb of bandwidth (more than enough).
Up to 2 amps of server power.
Additional power $10 per amp extra.
I have no idea of the average consumption of a server though. I suppose that a quad core should use more than 2 amps but have no idea how much.

I will search a bit more.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 5:04 pm

1 gig of RAM wouldn't work, servers will need at least two.

Decentralized hosting again may not be a bad idea really. Obsidian has done an amazing job streamlining the server program, and the horrific requirements it had in beta are long gone. Setting up home servers wouldn't be that big of a deal anymore.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:45 pm

*nods* anyway, as I wrote in my platform, I really think we should first try to use decentralized hosting first and switch to centralized hosting when we need to.

I.e. when we have too many players and we start to have problems (CEBs or others).

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:20 pm

Unfortunately, the feasibility of home hosting isn't the primary issue. It's that such solutions are inevitably temporary ones and therefore not ideal platforms for mission critical systems. If each module is running independently of one another, it's manageable. But if each module is hooked into, and dependent on, a single database, it's not nearly as manageable. If we lose the database server, we can't play.

Ideally, we would have a database host that isn't going to just "pack up" and leave one day. To accept anything less means we have to be comfortable with the possibility that we may have lengthy black out periods (where the db server is unavailable) or have to start all over again in the event we lose the database along with the host. There may be some contingencies that buffer our risk, like daily db backups or replication with a slave database, but these are essentially the things we must consider going forward.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:56 pm

It isn't different from the shared vault in NWN1.
When it is down, we can only play on local vault.

If we go central hosting, though, it will be even worse. When the host goes down we can't play at all.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 10:01 pm

Actually, the concern is similar. We won't be able to play on local vault if the SQL central database is down, because all the critical systems rely on the database. When no database is available, any players trying to join are automatically booted back out of the game.

Closest thing to "playing on local vaults" would be if we had alternative "backup database servers" we could switch over to during an outage, but that would be undesirable in terms of how to resolve differences between the data once the main DB host came back up.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 12:34 am

Well, there's nothing stopping us from doing a combined system. We handle the central database on a hosting company, paid for by ALFA. It should be more reliable, and no one can just pack up their ball and go home with the vault. I just don't think we really need to worry about having the servers done centrally.

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 8:02 am

We could alert people that when we switch to backup servers all that they do will be erased when we switch back to the master server.

Advantages: they can still roleplay on our servers and we do not have to consolidate databases.

Disadvantages: we will have a roll back for game mechanics but not for roleplay.

And yes, GF is right, we can have a rented server for NWN2 vault and the MySQL database (and NWN1 backup vault) and TLD's vault has NWN1 vault and NWN2 backup. Or vice-versa.

TLD has written some automatic scripts that upload database inserts to the website who are then automatically inserted into the website's database.
We could use something similar for the MySQL backups (that is if we cannot use the MySQL default replication mode because of firewalls).

Vault backups on the DM FTP could then be used when we need to switch to a backup vault (hopefully this won't happen often has in the past).

PS: just FYI the dedicated server which currently hosts the NWN1 vault costs me $29.95/mo and it should be ok for the MySQL database for NWN2 and the NWN2 vault (the included bandwidth is 200 GB/mo and we are currently using less than 2 GB/mo for the vault).

Hialmar · Post by **Hialmar** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:29 am

I have summarized the current discussion here:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... 020#438020

If you want me to modify/add something please PM me or post here.

indio · Post by **indio** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:57 am

Looks well thought out mate.

Mikayla · Post by **Mikayla** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 4:18 pm

How many computers do we need? I mentioned in the Admin thread on this that I have a good friend with a hosting company, so, if I know what we need, I can ask him for it and see what he says.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 4:35 pm

If we go with full centralization, one REALLY big one (dual quad core, 16GB RAM). There may be a hardware scaling problem with a single server solution though (data traffic bottlenecks) but we can't determine that or the in-game effects without actual tests.

If we simply centralize the vault and database, probably just one dual core with ~1GB RAM.