Trying to prepare myself

[The Fifth Horseman]

So in preperation for the "likely possibility" of a private server "mysteriously" being release somewhere on the Internet, I am getting my hardware shopping list together for a stand alone "semi-private" server.  Just what "semi-private" means is still up in the air.  Still looking into options on that front...HOWEVER... 

I suggest you wait until the elephant is actually in the room.
Hardware prices are anything but static - invest in it now and half a year later when the server software actually becomes available you'll find that you would now be able to get much better deal for the same money.

[Richpur]

I suggest you wait until the elephant is actually in the room.
Hardware prices are anything but static - invest in it now and half a year later when the server software actually becomes available you'll find that you would now be able to get much better deal for the same money.

Or when the elephant arrives it will cause the largest spread purchase of server components in a decade and prices will go through the roof.  :P

[Codewalker]

Or when the elephant arrives it will cause the largest spread purchase of server components in a decade and prices will go through the roof.  :P

I don't want to jump in
Unless this music's thumping
All the dishes rattle in the cupboards
When the elephants arrive

[Ironwolf]

I have in the past ran servers for both Halflife TFC and Soldier of Fortune 2. Here is my Newegg wish list for a CoH server:


SAMSUNG Internal Slim 8x DVD Writer SATA Model SN-208DB/BEBET                                                                            $21.99

ASRock N68C-GS FX AM3+ NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard Item #: N82E16813157309  $44.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory                     $264.99

AMD FX-4130 Zambezi 3.8GHz Socket AM3+ Quad-Core Desktop Processor FD4130FRGUBOX                                         $104.99

SanDisk Ultra Plus SDSSDHP-128G-G25 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) -$10.00 Instant          $399.96($99.99 each)

• Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed Black ATX Mid Tower Case Item #: 
• CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply                        $144.98

Subtotal: $981.90

I would run the disks with one SSD as the operating system and the other 3 in a raid configuration. You would have a blazing fast system with 32gb of ram and if needed you could raise that up. I would imagine this could sustain 64 players or so. If you want to host a larger game you are going to need a server farm and sharing the load across multiple machines as I believe NCSoft did.

[Codewalker]

My advice for a server running an MMO: Spend less on SSD (old school rotating disks would be just fine) and more on RAM.

[Ironwolf]

I agree - I just like the whole less moving parts thing :)

When I am building a no failure system, I really like the SSD's. It couldn't be a bad thing to have 64 or 128gb of ram at all. I know many servers go over 256gb.

[FatherXmas]

I have in the past ran servers for both Halflife TFC and Soldier of Fortune 2. Here is my Newegg wish list for a CoH server:


SAMSUNG Internal Slim 8x DVD Writer SATA Model SN-208DB/BEBET                                                                            $21.99

ASRock N68C-GS FX AM3+ NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard Item #: N82E16813157309  $44.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory                     $264.99

AMD FX-4130 Zambezi 3.8GHz Socket AM3+ Quad-Core Desktop Processor FD4130FRGUBOX                                         $104.99

SanDisk Ultra Plus SDSSDHP-128G-G25 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) -$10.00 Instant          $399.96($99.99 each)

• Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed Black ATX Mid Tower Case Item #: 
• CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply                        $144.98

Subtotal: $981.90

I would run the disks with one SSD as the operating system and the other 3 in a raid configuration. You would have a blazing fast system with 32gb of ram and if needed you could raise that up. I would imagine this could sustain 64 players or so. If you want to host a larger game you are going to need a server farm and sharing the load across multiple machines as I believe NCSoft did.

Sorry, that motherboard may have four memory slots but 2 are DDR2 and 2 are DDR3.  It's a bridging MB for AMD users who can't afford to upgrade all at once.  Here's an alternative.  +$10-20 depending if you count the rebate or not

Note neither your original choice or this one has 6Gb SATA III drive interfaces.  Not a lot of options in the under $75 range.

Skip the Zambezi FX chips.  Go with either the FX-4300 or FX-6300.  They are 2nd gen FX chips that have naturally higher clock speeds and some performance tweaks.  +$15

[Ironwolf]

Sounds good Father, I was just quick shopping while multi-tasking and wanted a 4 slot board.

I know the SSD's are overkill but I like less moving parts and after hard swapping many drives that fail - I wanted to lessen the chances. You would want a 64bit OS as well for this to be able to use all of the memory. 32 bit systems can only access 4gb.

I know that may be obvious to some but if you are building your first server it may be overlooked.

[FatherXmas]

And the Slim DVD burner is really for laptops not desktops unless it's compact ITX case.  I also updated my previous post when you were typing yours.

So 128GB for OS, 256GB usable RAID 5 data drive.  I believe there are still issues with SSD TRIM and RAID configurations but honestly I haven't been following that closely.  No big deal except for faster write speed decline because of delays in garbage collection.

[Codewalker]

I agree - I just like the whole less moving parts thing :)

When I am building a no failure system, I really like the SSD's. It couldn't be a bad thing to have 64 or 128gb of ram at all. I know many servers go over 256gb.

Don't get me wrong, I love SSDs in desktops and laptops. On a server though they may not always be the best choice. It depends on the expected workload.

It will certainly make the OS boot faster, but that happens once in a blue moon. On a game server - especially an MMO - just about everything is kept in RAM at all times. Only character loads/saves touch the disk and those happen infrequently enough that a good cache on your disks will hide the latency no matter what the backing storage is.

"No moving parts" doesn't necessarily mean less chance of failure. SSDs tend to suffer electronics failure more often than magnetic drives, and when they do it's a total loss. I've had at least one just start randomly disconnecting from the SATA bus. If it's a write-heavy workload they can also be less than optimal due to frequent stalls on full cell erasures (good/expensive SSDs parallelize this and manage to hide it... mostly).

Obviously if cost isn't an issue I prefer RAID6 or RAIDZ2 bulk storage on many SAS spindles with a few SSDs used as a big layer 2 cache for the most active data.

RAID1 is the only type of RAID I'd feel comfortable using on an SSD, and what I would go for to protect against one running out of write cycles. Wear-leveling algorithms have gotten better but aren't perfect.