Where was the bottleneck? Were they running into OS limitations and they had to use VMs to get around it?
One part of Stephen's lengthy post that I agree with is that there is no need to run a VM just to run one or more game servers. I went further then voicing an opinion about something that is for the most part intuitively obvious - I actually did it to show that the VM adds overhead, overhead that in some cases is significant and limits that number of servers you can run. On my Sempron box, which is fairly low end by todays standards, I can still run an OP4, hl1mp:s, and Oz server. I can't do that in a VM because the VM itself consumes too much memory and CPU. On one of my faster boxes, I'm running a VM with OP4 and hl1mp:s servers. So far its seems to be running OK, which simply shows that in a non-stress situation you can do this. However - the VM still sucks a lot of resources, resources that I could use to run more servers if I was running them outside of the VM. Virtualization as we know it today isn't the future. One of Microsofts kernel engineers came to an OS class I took last spring to speak about the future of Windows. He spent most of his time bashing linux and telling use we were stupid for not studying Windows (we studied Linux and did a lot of kernel programming - something you just can't do with Windows) but when he got done ranting and raving, he shared how Windows of the future was going to be a multi-kernel multi-cpu system where there will be massivly multiple dedicated cores, and each task on the core will have its own OS components. We are going to get away from massive context switches on a few cores to limited context switches on many cores and cores with dedicated tasks. Want to rent 100 game servers? No problem, I have a 16x16 core cpu (something we will see in the next few of years) and I can lease you 100 cores for your 100 game servers. Because I can do this with one box, my overhead is low and I can lease it to you dirt cheap. I'll even throw in a couple extra cores for free so you can run stats programs and host a few web sites for your servers, etc. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Weckstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 6:13 AM Subject: Re: [hlds] HLDS Consumption > There's more than one purpose for virtualization. One is density. > > Case in point - VMWare did an experiment with ESX and Citrix density. On a > native 2003 server with Citrix Presentation Server, they were able to get > around 250 simultaneous users on the box with 80-90% CPU and Memory > utilization. > > When they did the same test under VMWare on the same hardware using > multiple virtual machines, they were able to get just over 1000 > simultaneous connections at the 80-90% CPU/Mem utilization level. > > It's all about where the bottlenecks are, and I'm not saying you could > repeat this in every scenario - but generally with a bare-metal > hypervisor, you can leverage your hardware much further than you would > normally. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Midnight > Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:31 AM > To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list > Subject: Re: [hlds] HLDS Consumption > > You need to run several game servers on a VM for a real test. If you > are just running just running one you can only really tell if the FPS is > unstable and that's probably about it. Anyone who would rent a VM to > run servers wants to run more than one, otherwise they would just rent 1 > server from a GSP cause it is cheaper. > > On a broader sense, there is no reason to try and run games in a VM that > I can think of. If the idea is to slice and dice a big server and offer > it up in smaller affordable pieces, that's exactly what GSP's already > do, and you can buy a server from them piecemeal and just pay for what > you need. The idea that there are huge margins built into the pricing > of game servers and you can save money with a VM is a farce. If that > were true then a new GSP would spring up, with lower prices than > everyone else and take all the business. The free market already keeps > prices at very competitive levels. > > The purpose of VM's is to run multiple different OS's on the same > hardware and/or to be able to configure several copies of an OS each > with their own software and configurations and run them all together to > maintain high hardware usage efficiency. In the case of game servers > there is no need to double up OS's on a box to increase CPU efficiency > because you can just install multiple game servers under one OS and > achieve the same thing with less overhead. > > If a GSP wanted to rent a VM server to someone to run game servers on, > they will price it based on how much CPU & RAM the games in the VM are > expected to use (unless they want to give away free CPU), exactly the > same way they would price it as if those games were not running inside > the VM. Only now the pricing is harder to estimate because it's hard to > tell how the user will setup and run the games, the load is less > quantifiable because you give the user more leeway to load things up as > much as they possibly can. Therefore the price should be higher to > accommodate the worst case. If they don't price the VM high, it won't > be long before a few users abuse it and the GSP will see that they are > loosing money and either cut it or raise the price. > > You would be much better off just asking for a discount for ordering > multiple servers, or if you need a lot of servers you can just get your > own box. There really is no need for a middle ground between a single > server and a dedicated box - multiple server discounts already fill that > void. > > > > Ook wrote: >> OoksServer.no-ip.info:27019 - hl1mp:source running on Win2000 guest on >> Sun >> VirtualBox 2.0.2. Host is Phenom 9600 quad core idling at 3% cpu. Guest >> is >> Win2000 with 1GB ram idling at 1%. Guest is running in headless mode. >> >> OoksServer.no-ip.info:27016 - hl1mp:source running normally on Sempron >> 2400, >> 768MB ram. >> >> I'll run them for a day or so. If anyone wants to try them, feel free do >> to >> so, and comment here on any differences. I don't have the bandwidth to >> really load them up and do some real stress tests, so there may not be an >> noticeable differences. If this was a commercial setup, I've have a lot >> more >> memory in the box, and I'd run several VMs at once, and dedicate a cpu >> core >> to each. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> please visit: >> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds >> >> > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
