Looking for a high performance game server
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@coliver said in Looking for a high performance game server:
Yeah... either way maybe Vultr's high performance stuff would work for you.
Will definitely look into it, thank you
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@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
Looking around for a high performance (in terms of single thread performance) game server. We're using a Core i9-9900K with NVMe SSDs and enough RAM at the moment, which is pretty good, but the machine has some serious issues. Reboots without any reason at random times in different conditions (0% load, 10% load, 100% load). No log entries at all. Looks like a hard reset to me, not a clean reboot.
Hoster doesn't accept our problem reports, so it's time to move on. Shouldn't be a big deal because 100% of our workloads are dockerized, even the game servers itself.
Suggestions? I'm looking for something like...
- 8th Gen Intel Core or Xeon or newer, at least 6 cores - the game engine doesn't like AMD
- 4,0 GHz core frequency or more - the game engine is pretty old and we need every MHz
- 16GB of RAM, 64GB preferred
- 512GB Storage or more, SATA or NVMe SSD
Budget?
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~ 100 EUR per month
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@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
~ 100 EUR per month
that should buy you a lot of Vultr.
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@Dashrender said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
~ 100 EUR per month
that should buy you a lot of Vultr.
They only offer an E3 1270 v6, which is a quad core, for 120 USD
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/97479/intel-xeon-processor-e3-1270-v6-8m-cache-3-80-ghz.html
https://www.vultr.com/products/bare-metal/Storage is also an issue
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@Dashrender said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
~ 100 EUR per month
that should buy you a lot of Vultr.
Not really. But what it might get you is a physical game server in a colo
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Dashrender said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
~ 100 EUR per month
that should buy you a lot of Vultr.
Not really. But what it might get you is a physical game server in a colo
Yep, that would be the last option. We want to rent the hardware.
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If you want performance, you shouldn't run a VM on shared host somewhere where you have zero control of the resources used. You need a dedicated host / hardware. So bare metal hosting or colo.
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@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
If you want performance, you shouldn't run a VM on shared host somewhere where you have zero control of the resources used. You need a dedicated host / hardware. So bare metal hosting or colo.
Oh, that's a very common mistake. A (type 1 hypervisor) VM has next to no performance impact. Hosted VMs on the other side are often running on overcommitted hosts.
But yes, I'm looking for bare metal for rent.
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@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
If you want performance, you shouldn't run a VM on shared host somewhere where you have zero control of the resources used. You need a dedicated host / hardware. So bare metal hosting or colo.
Oh, that's a very common mistake. A (type 1 hypervisor) VM has next to no performance impact. Hosted VMs on the other side are often running on overcommitted hosts.
But yes, I'm looking for bare metal for rent.
I just wanted to clarify because it's common for people to think that running virtualized has only a few percent performance impact when in in fact there is a major impact when it comes to high performance I/O - unless you can use SR-IOV and bypass the entire hypervisor. Or bypassing the hypervisor with PCI passtrough on the controller. That goes for both NICs and NVMe drives.
Anyway, if you're looking to rent a server it would be very difficult to find one with a high GHz desktop CPU. There are no high GHz server CPUs. Server CPUs are tuned differently.
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@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
There are no high GHz server CPUs.
I was wondering if this was the case - I'm expecting that Intel is building more for modern multi-threaded applications today, so there isn't as much need for high CPU speeds.
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@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
If you want performance, you shouldn't run a VM on shared host somewhere where you have zero control of the resources used. You need a dedicated host / hardware. So bare metal hosting or colo.
Oh, that's a very common mistake. A (type 1 hypervisor) VM has next to no performance impact. Hosted VMs on the other side are often running on overcommitted hosts.
But yes, I'm looking for bare metal for rent.
Vultr has that too. never looked into it.
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@Dashrender said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
There are no high GHz server CPUs.
I was wondering if this was the case - I'm expecting that Intel is building more for modern multi-threaded applications today, so there isn't as much need for high CPU speeds.
They have both those that are optimized for maximum number of cores and those that are optimized for highest frequency.
But I think they run them a little less "hot" to maximize reliability.Best single thread performance Xeons are the E2200 series. It's not a "real" server CPU with massive I/O capability, lots of cache and multi-CPU capability but it might be perfect for this application. E-2288G is the fastest overall model with 8 cores @ 3.7GHz.
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@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
If you want performance, you shouldn't run a VM on shared host somewhere where you have zero control of the resources used. You need a dedicated host / hardware. So bare metal hosting or colo.
Oh, that's a very common mistake. A (type 1 hypervisor) VM has next to no performance impact. Hosted VMs on the other side are often running on overcommitted hosts.
But yes, I'm looking for bare metal for rent.
I just wanted to clarify because it's common for people to think that running virtualized has only a few percent performance impact when in in fact there is a major impact when it comes to high performance I/O - unless you can use SR-IOV and bypass the entire hypervisor. Or bypassing the hypervisor with PCI passtrough on the controller. That goes for both NICs and NVMe drives.
Anyway, if you're looking to rent a server it would be very difficult to find one with a high GHz desktop CPU. There are no high GHz server CPUs. Server CPUs are tuned differently.
Like I said before, we are already using a Core i9-9900k, the upper end of available desktop CPUs, hosted by Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex62-nvme). Also, there are fast Xeons available, like the E3-1285 v6 for example (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/99978/intel-xeon-processor-e3-1285-v6-8m-cache-4-10-ghz.html, even though it's just a quad core).
As for the performance implications: I'm very well aware about them and what rules to follow to avoid them. But thanks for mentioning it. Virtualization is completely out of scope of this topic, because I will run the game servers dockerized on bare metal.
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@Dashrender said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
There are no high GHz server CPUs.
I was wondering if this was the case - I'm expecting that Intel is building more for modern multi-threaded applications today, so there isn't as much need for high CPU speeds.
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@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
ey run them a little le
That would be one valid option, thanks for mentioning it.
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@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
Like I said before, we are already using a Core i9-9900k, the upper end of available desktop CPUs, hosted by Hetzner
Yes, but it's not a real server with server grade components. It will increase the probability of having problems.
Problem with the desktops CPUs are that Intel doesn't make server chipset for them and there are no motherboard manufacturers that makes server motherboards for desktop CPUs.
Now, you can put a desktop motherboard inside a server chassis so it will look like a real server but it will still have desktop components inside and lack things like ECC memory etc. That is probably what Hetzner has done. They also most likely use desktop NVMe M.2 drives instead of the enterprise grade NVMe components. Difference here is durability, reliability, performance under heavy load and efficient cooling.
There is one exception on the CPUs though and that is the i3, celeron, pentium CPUs. They can be used on server chipset like C246 and support the use of ECC memory. Primarily intended for entry-level servers though. They share pinout with Xeon E-2100 and E-2200 series.
Also, if you want maximum performance you shouldn't be looking at E3-1200 series anymore. They're two generations old.
Xeon E3-1200 v6 -> Xeon E-2100 -> Xeon E-2200. -
@Pete-S said in Looking for a high performance game server:
@thwr said in Looking for a high performance game server:
Like I said before, we are already using a Core i9-9900k, the upper end of available desktop CPUs, hosted by Hetzner
Yes, but it's not a real server with server grade components. It will increase the probability of having problems.
Problem with the desktops CPUs are that Intel doesn't make server chipset for them and there are no motherboard manufacturers that makes server motherboards for desktop CPUs.
Now, you can put a desktop motherboard inside a server chassis so it will look like a real server but it will still have desktop components inside and lack things like ECC memory etc. That is probably what Hetzner has done. They also most likely use desktop NVMe M.2 drives instead of the enterprise grade NVMe components. Difference here is durability, reliability, performance under heavy load and efficient cooling.
I agree for the most part. Our opinions on ECC may differ, failure rates aren't as high as they have been 10 years ago. I would use ECC anytime when it comes to critical systems. It's always good to have, but not as important for my usecase.
It's well known that Hetzner uses cheap hardware, never said anything else. The machine uses a cheap consumer grade https://www.gigabyte.com/de/Motherboard/B360-HD3P-rev-10#kf board, 2x Samsung PM/SM981 and 64 GByte of Non-ECC RAM. That's what you get for the money. We're willing to pay more, but we have to actually find something
There is one exception on the CPUs though and that is the i3, celeron, pentium CPUs. They can be used on server chipset like C246 and support the use of ECC memory. Primarily intended for entry-level servers though. They share pinout with Xeon E-2100 and E-2200 series.
C246 (and other chipsets) do support Core i(5/7)-CPUs. Just do a quick google search and you will find several boards from different manufacturers that have Core i on the list of supported CPUs. In fact, a Core i is just a Xeon with a different configuration so they don't support ECC for example. I don't know about newer chipsets.
But ... i don't have to use Core i. A similar Xeon will do just fine.
Also, if you want maximum performance you shouldn't be looking at E3-1200 series anymore. They're two generations old.
I know, was just an example.
Xeon E3-1200 v6 -> Xeon E-2100 -> Xeon E-2200.
agree
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@thwr The problem is that your budget doesn't allow for what you require without cutting corners (giving you less than you want/need). I don't know what you NEED, or if it's want vs need, or whatever. But you may be best off buying your own hardware, and stashing it in a colo if that is a better choice than onprem for your needs.
What specs you mentioned on good hardware as a VPS or dedicated host, simply doesn't exist for your budget. It'd likely be 2-3x that on a reliable and useful platform.
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See above - we are willing to pay more but I simply can't find something like this
- 6 Cores or more
- 4,0 GHz base freq or faster
- at least 32 GB RAM
- Flash storage
can't be this hard. But I guess I will go another route: Two quad-core hosts with 16GB RAM each. QC CPUs tend to have faster clock rates.
