Yet another Dedicated Server Question!

[RRP47]

Okay, time for another dedicated server question(s)
 
We currently have 3 dayz.st servers...and we are tossing around the idea of moving to a dedicated server.
 
Now, besides cash, what's needed? To me, its ultra confusing. Whats the ideal specs to run multiple servers on one box? we're looking at;

 

 2 x Intel Xeon E5520

16GB memory

1TB Hard drive

100MBPS Network Port

Unmetered Bandwidth

 

Thats just the basic, not including all the extras we can add.

 

Now to host, you need a windows license and TCAdmin?

 

Sorry for the millionth question about dedi boxes, just want some concrete info about them, before we bite off more than we can chew. Only conrete info I've come across is "go dedicated" lol, so I ask, HOW!?

 

Thanks in advance guys!

[Defent]

You generally have to rent the windows license. ~25€ is the average price I guess.

(For windows server 2012)

Things you might want to ignore: (From personal experience)

- Fuck all kinds of addons like CPanel and Plesk (Costs more A MONTH and does absolutley jack shit in my opinion)

 

Things you might want to do:

- Win 2008 r2 web server is actually not bad, it's generally cheaper and works just as well. (afaik).

- Get software that does what you want to do, ideally find the lowest cost for it or some that does not cost anything at all. (Referring to FireDaemon restarter, does good stuff but is costly.)

 

TCAdmin is only needed if you want to be fancy. It's not needed most of the times if you get root access to the server through lets say, remote desktop.

(There are free alternatives to these! Always check the free alternatives before deciding to go with something like TCAdmin or the other addons like the ones I mentioned earlier)

The thing you want to focus in this case is the network. DayZ requires abit of network since its uploading constantly. 100mbit can throttle some, try looking for something of atleast 200 (if possible and in price range).

The CPU is more than enough, even though they are 2.5ghz. I'm not sure if you really need a double E5520 though.

Ram is good and hard drive is good.

 

Unmetered bandwith is perfect!

So ideally you'd want a bit more upload speed. Say for example, does the service provide you're looking at offer a MAXIMUM of 100mbit upload or, 100mbit guaranteed?  - Always worth checking out.

Some providers are quite sneaky with this and you'll have to contact them in order to get the real information. I know OVH.com only gave me a max of 100mbit upload, while my current gives me minimum of 300; and I usually get around 700-900mbit up and down.

 

A few questions:

 

Maximum of 100mbit or minimum of 100mbit?

How many servers do you aim towards hosting?

What type of RAM is it? (Ghz, dddr etc)

What type of HDD is it? 

Can you pick SSD?

What's the cost you're looking at?

What Company are you looking at?

What Location are you looking at?

[RRP47]

Vilayer is showing we can upgrade to 1GBit/s uplink port for a small fee. Doesn't say guaranteed. So....? lol

 

We're looking to run about 4 maps currently. Panthera, Napf, Sauerland, Namalsk.

 

Possibly one or two more later down the road? But for now, 4.

 

we're also thinking about upgrading the hard drives to 2 120GB SSD drives, as we look thru the options it seemed like a good idea. New to the dedicated idea, so bare with us lol.

 

So you're saying TCAdmin isn't necessary for a dedicated box?

 

Sorry for all the questions, lol. Want any and all info prior to pulling the trigger.

[RRP47]

Maximum of 100mbit or minimum of 100mbit? - Doesn't state either, just 1 GBit/s upgrade

How many servers do you aim towards hosting? - Call it 4 in current state

What type of RAM is it? (Ghz, dddr etc) - DDR3, 1066mhz

What type of HDD is it? - 1 TB SATA 3, 7200 rpm

Can you pick SSD? - Yes, thinking about 2 120gb ssd as stated above

What's the cost you're looking at? - $130 just for the box

What Company are you looking at? - Vilayer

What Location are you looking at? - Kansas City, MO

[Defent]

TCAdmin is not needed unless you plan to rehost servers or if you want to have some funky web access to the server. 
(You can always go for free alternatives like ISPConfig: http://www.ispconfig.org/)

Yea, that hardware should support 4 maps, no problem.

 

SSD is good, the thing is though. The arma 2 folder can become quite big and you'd often want some space left over. 

(I myself run a single HDD 1gb)

 

The ram leaves room to be improved upon, especially since they are 1033's. I thought a server of that power would atleast have 1333's.

 

I see you're looking at Vilayer

Contact the support and ask them if they have any solution for you regarding the internet speed. Be mindful though, Vilayer does not offer refunds (atleast not for gameservers, you get some stupid Vilayer credit)

 

They mention 1000mbps in network. Howerver I do not know if this is internal or external to the internet.
What country do you want to host the server in?

 

 

Sadly I do knot know of any other hosting company that offer service in Canada USA (apart from http://OVH.com (Canadian French)).

You can probably find better and cheaper servers than that, however, most of them are located in Europe, take for example companies like:

http://oneprovider.com/  (I believe they are resellers of OVH servers) (French)

http://www.online.net/en (Not sure these also resell OVH servers) (French)

http://www.hetzner.de/ (The one I use) (German)

Edit: Sorry, Kansas is not in Canada, it's in the US, my bad.

[RRP47]

Would the 1066's make the server suffer that much? there is no option to upgrade to different memory, just the amount of memory. We can change it from 16gb memory, to 32 gb of memory for a fee of course.

 

Just trying to understand exactly how this should work, and how to set this stuff up.

[Defent]

When I had 8gb of ram and ran a dayz epoch chernarus server with 50/50 players it used ~5-6gb of ram.

(Edit: the entire machine used that amount)
So the server is not that ram heavy.

Ram is more of a point to make applications run smoother and be able to handle more calculations. Faster the better. 
Stay with 16gb of ram for now unless you notice your server lacking in that section. 

My current machine runs 32gb of ram.

So in short, the server would not suffer much. 

Try compare the price and the server specs to other hosting companies and see which ones give you the best offer. 
Remember though, always check for customer reviews!

[Axe Cop]

@Defenting: I am just wondering how did you get a single ArmA2 server to use "~5-6gb of ram", its limited to 2 GB tops i would say (because it's 32 bit, 2^32 = 2 GB if you didn't know ) :) )

anyway in my opinion faster ram doesn't do much, ArmA2 client and server is very CPU heavy and sadly not multithreaded so you a faster processor with more GHz is usually better than 2 quadcore CPU (for a single server, if you run 4 server that should help distribute the load).

And obviously you need a lot of upload, you can see how much upload your server is using if you log in as an RCon admin ingame and typ "#monitor <refresh interval in sec>" e.g. "#monitor 5".

SSD is good, but not that much of an improvement over a HDD for ArmA2, only the startup time is a lot faster but who cares unless you restart the server every 10 minutes? :D

Also as said before TCAdmin is not needed if you know your way around managing a windows server you are better of doing it yourself anyways.

 

I don't how how much experience you (or the guy who does that for your server) have setting up an ArmA2/DayZ server?

If you just rent a dedicated server you have to do everything yourself, installed a MySQL server and setting it up, then the game and stuff obviously and all the DayZ config, auto restart etc.. I am just saying its some work. :D

[RRP47]

I know how to script and set up dayz.st servers....lol. I have two servers I've scripted myself. but as for dedicated, not a clue. I understand it's more work, and that's why I'm here seeking guidance and knowledge on how to do this.

[Defent]

Ah yea, that's true Axe Cop. I ment that 5-6gb was the overall usage with an arma 2 server running at full effect. Sorry, should have been more specific.

Though it was a while ago, so I might have gotten the numbers wrong. 
 

The scripting part is no different. It's still an Arma2 server. However you need to do all the stuff that surrounds the machine and the server, like downloading a mysql server and all that.

[RRP47]

Is there a step by step guide on how to set this up somewhere? Everything I've found has been rather vague and don't want to screw this up. Also don't want someone to do it for me, I'll never learn that way lol ;)

[Axe Cop]

you can just do that on your home computer or whatever, it is the same.. a dedicated box is just a server hosted in data center and nothing "special".

so its very similiar if you install an ArmA2/Epoch server on your machine right now and if you want just do that to get familiar with it and have a local test server  :)

 

about tutorials or something, there is nothing really good I would say, but some youtube videos might help, just search for "setting up an epoch server" or something that will get you started

also you can find lots of tutorials for the basics like "Installing MySQL server" (which is needed for DayZ, doesn't matter what you use, I have the official one from http://www.mysql.com/ )

there is a guide at Installing MySQL on Microsoft Windows but the latest version is pretty easy to setup, you just install it like any other program, keep in mind you have to open the firewall ports for ArmA2 (MySQL can stay hidden behind the firewall if you don't need external access from a website it might be best not to forward it). So you should understand the basics of windows servers and port forwarding maybe, this is nothing like Dayz.St you have to do everything you want yourself, (install MySQL, ArmA2+OA and merge it , Epoch, evtuelly other stuff like a webserver so install Apache+PHP..)

 

have fun (maybe you learn something on the way, if you want to)   :)