if you were getting stuttering from disk reads, I'd look at a better RAID controller. We tossed the Dell PERC raid controller in favor of an Areca raid controller (90 megabyte sustained read on the Areca vs 35 - 40 megabytes on the Dell PERC) and haven't looked back. Although, even with the PERC, I never had any stuttering.
On my home server, on the Asus, I'm using a crappy Dell CERC (PERC = Power Edge RAID Controller - CERC = Cost Effective RAID Controller) raid controller, running 2 Windows VMs, a FreeNAS VM, and a CentOS VM (that runs my lame bot server) and don't get any stuttering either. It sounds like you may have just had a faulty controller, or one that ESXi didn't quite fully support .. I don't know, I'm just taking a stab here... --mauirixxx -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chad Austin Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 1:26 AM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Bladecenter anything worth? I used my dual processor 2.33 ghz E5410, (4 cores per processor for 8 total) with 16 GB RAM, a few 750 GB 7200 RPM drives, and a few gig Ethernet ports. On any disk reads from any of the VMs, there would be minor stuttering on all game servers across all the VMs. It was bad enough where the server was unacceptable for a match or scrim server, but would probably work fine as a pub. I was running them at 500 or 1000 FPS (or whatever the windows limit was) and servers on both 100 and 66 tic. I will read over that link soon. On 2/22/2010 4:58 AM, Rick Payton wrote: > Define "lag"? > > I used to run a 20 slot tf2 server, 4 l4d servers, and a counter-strike > source server under ESX, and I currently run 2 CS Source servers under > ESXi on wildly different hardware. > > My "powerful" server, which is ran from work, is a dual quad core 2.0 > GHz E5405 Xeon box (Dell PowerEdge 2950 actually). In that lone VM, it > runs a 24 player server with 20 bots active on round start, and I get no > lag, other then what the connection provides. When it was just 20 humans > running we still had no lag. BUT - that was a single VM on a box that > runs maybe 10 other low cpu usage virtual machines (Active Directory, > Exchange, Sharepoint 2007, Symantec AV management server, real time > backup, and some other random stuff). > > My ESXi box at home is a home brewed box (Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe, 8GB > ram, AMD x2 5200 CPU). The same Counter-Strike setup (24 players, 20 > bots) lags like a mofo until you start killing or kicking bots. It run > on my home connection, so there's never more then 3 humans playing on it > via our LAN. > > My point being, if you run server grade hardware, you shouldn't get any > lag, anything else, YMMV. > > I've been very pleased with SRCDS performance under the various ESX/ESXi > environments I've had the opportunity to play with. > > I didn't do anything special either. I literally installed ESXi, fired > up a CentOS 5.x VM, installed srcds, and off I went. No kernel tweaks, > NOTHING. I ran 3 L4D servers open to the public for awhile, no problems > there, under both a Windows Server 2003 VM and the aforementioned CentOS > 5 VM. > > Try get in contact with Karl Weckstrom ([email protected] if I remember > correctly) , he has a ton of experience in running srcds servers under > ESXi, he was very helpful and answered a ton of my questions. I haven't > seen him responding on this list os of late, so I don't know if he's > still active or not, but in any case, that knowledge isn't something > that's going to go away anytime soon, so I highly recommend contacting > him. > > Here's a small archive of our previous conversation on this subject: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg33278.html > > --mauirixxx > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chad Austin > Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 10:43 PM > To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list > Subject: Re: [hlds] Bladecenter anything worth? > > I used VMware ESXi for hosting SCRDS, but I got lots of lag and had to > stop. > > If you find a way to virtualize and have no lag, please let me know. > > On 2/22/2010 3:07 AM, Christoffer Pedersen wrote: > >> Hi. >> >> Thanks for the reply, i could really use that. I will do some more >> > research for this, and if its affordable, ill go for it. If not, i will > keep with my 1U/2U rackservers. At my primary work, we do have a big IBM > bladecenter, i may ask my boss about the power consumption > >> Thanks again. >> >> - Christoffer >> >> On Feb 22, 2010, at 8:55 AM, Matt Stanton wrote: >> >> >> >>> Obviously, virtualization does cause you to lose a small amount of >>> hardware power to the extra operating system overhead of vistualizing >>> many machines on one physical server. What you can gain in >>> > reliability > >>> may make it worth it, though. >>> >>> Basically, you could guarantee that any 'dedicated server' is >>> > available > >>> much more reliably. If you connect your bladecenter to a SAN of some >>> sort, and are able to intelligently distribute VMs over the blades, >>> > then > >>> if a piece of physical hardware goes down, the VM can be >>> > automatically > >>> booted on hardware that is running properly, with very little data >>> > loss > >>> because of I/O that was interrupted by the hardware issue. Since all >>> the data from all the servers is stored on the SAN, the data is >>> > somewhat > >>> shielded from hardware failure. >>> >>> There are a few virtual machine platforms that will allow you to >>> accomplish this, including, I believe, VMWare ESXi (I think they >>> > changed > >>> the name of this recently) or Xen... You'll have to do your own >>> research into these if no one else replies, since I have absolutely >>> > no > >>> experience with virtualization. You will also probably have to >>> > expect > >>> that you will be spending a huge amount of money building a SAN that >>> > is > >>> both fast and reliable. If you run the datacenter that the servers >>> > are > >>> hosted from, then you could also expect better cooling and power >>> > usage > >>> efficiency by going this direction, and if not, you will at least be >>> using less rack space. A bladecenter will require a lot more power >>> > per > >>> rack than a rack full of 1U/2U servers, so you may have to pay extra >>> > per > >>> rack for the extra amperage you'll need. >>> >>> On 2/22/2010 1:29 AM, Christoffer Pedersen wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Hi everyone. >>>> >>>> Im looking to build up a new farm of servers for my company. We are >>>> currently using 1U and 2U servers for our hosting, but i have been >>>> thinking of, if it was better to build the whole stuff in >>>> bladecenters, and virtualize. I just want to know if this is any >>>> > good? > >>>> I have never tried to host srcds on virtual machines, so i would be >>>> happy if you could help me here :) >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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
