Dear Andrew: All my personal experience is with Linux servers, but there are lots of folks that use Windows servers. The choice of operating system is more a religious discussion then a technical discussion.
If you are having problems with 20 avatars, then something is not right. Each week at "Office Hour" on Wright Plaza we regularly have about 20 avatars. And in addition, we have hundreds of scripts and thousands of prims. So, my personal opinion on reliability is based on the performance each Tuesday of "Wright Plaza". Personally, I tend to favor Carinet, but there are lots of hosting companies available. The trick is to get a server with as much memory as you can afford. Budget *at least* 2GByte of RAM per region. Its not tough to setup a grid. The details are on the wiki at opensimulator.org. One thing to do is to consider running the five grid executables, known as a UGAIM for User, Grid, Asset, Inventory & Messaging on a seperate server then any regions for best results. MCortez is around this mailing list and will probably reply next (or at least soon). Charles Krinke ________________________________ From: Andrew Hughes <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 11:44:18 AM Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Help needed for stand alone grid for 800 users... HELP! Hi Chris, Thanks for your comments! Right now my thought was the 4 sim islands. We were going to use a windows server to run these. Would that be an issue? I am thinking that your solution is probably best. Does anyone know any cost effective server hosting companies? My thought exactly about balancing the users to only have access to a certain island (or conduct classes that way so that we can balance the load during classes). I just want to make sure we can expand as the program grows for the school. I hate to provide them with this solution and find out we cannot scale up to their needs in the future. Does anyone know how I can contact McCortez? Sadly, I just was running a LAN version in a classroom with 20 kids... It crashed over and over (0.6.5) and was so slow we could not even get the kids in. This was a test to see what we could handle in the school with one server. It scares me to see this situation, and hopefully by getting this advice I can help these school have this as a distance learning service within this VW. My guess is to run a grid. It's easy to make the regions, but again that is still using 1 server and seems to not like to play nice with me right now. lol On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Charles Krinke <[email protected]> wrote: Well, let me jump in here a little bit. If I were going to set this up, I would start with four OpenSim regions, each running on a different Linux server. I would put them in a square and make the landing point at the four-corner junction. I would then make each of the four regions a seperate classroom and plan on reliably handling 20-30 simultaneous in each of the four regions. When I had sufficient experience, i.e. one quarter (or semester), then I would consider expanding (or coalescing two regions into one server) based on the quarter's (or semester's) reliability or stability. I think MCortez said something very similar to this a few posts ago and he would tend to know also. Charles p.s. At this point, one can expect to handle 20 avatars simultaneously in one region comfortably. p.p.s 40 Avatars simultaneous in one region is 'iffy'. p.p.p.s One can have as many regions as one has servers to serve them from. p.p.p.p.s I would probably run a grid and allow this grid to connect regions rather then running a number of standalones. ________________________________ From: Andrew Hughes <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:49:26 AM Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Help needed for stand alone grid for 800 users... HELP! Guys, Thanks for all your help on this! I wanted to provide you with the information regarding what we are aiming to achieve with the school. I hope the info below sheds light on what you guys think would be the best solution to my challenge. Let me know what you guys think! 1. How many users at one time will be logged in at the same time For the fall semester, we may have up to 3 simultaneous classes of 20 students, plus teachers and observers, so perhaps up to 70 users. A few additional students not attending a class session may also be logging in at the same time to work on assignments etc. We will try to stagger the class schedules to reduce the number of users on the server at any one given time, but the 3 class scenario is may happen on occasion. 2. How much material / baggage will each avatar have (10 outfits, 100 outfits, etc.) This will increase over time as we fill out the sim. Initially I think each avatar's inventory will be pretty limited. Students will need enough variety to allow 20 individuals to mix and match outfits pieces to look unique (or at least distinguishable ). Over time we would like to develop additional items and outfits that students can earn for completing assignments, good grades, etc. In addition to outfits, students will probably accumulate a certain number of items as they complete class activities. For example, if the class activity is to go to the market and collect items on a shopping list, these could start to pile up in their inventories. 3. How many classes will be handled at one given time For the fall semester, 3 simultaneous classes of 20 students + 1 teacher will probably be the max. This is simply because our teachers will be working in shifts and sharing three workstations here in Beijing. 4. How big is the pipeline between the kids home to the server There is probably going to be some variation here. Some kids may be logging in from well equipped school computer labs for class sessions, others may be logging in from home to do an assignment or have a tutoring session. On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Michael Cortez <[email protected]> wrote: Andrew Hughes wrote: > Thanks for your info, it's really shedding light on this issue. I > might not of explained what I am after in detail. I am not looking to > run 1 sim, I am looking to run multiple sims that will handle the load > of 800 users. I do not know how to make those sims (not regions I know > how to make the xml file and make another island) but the server side > software connect together on one machine to handle the load. To make > that type of grid, does anyone know where we could actually obtain > those servers? OpenSim itself includes the executables necessary to create a grid and have multiple OpenSim instances (each with 1 or more regions) connect together. These are what you would normally call the UGAIM (User Grid Asset Inventory Messaging) services. These services will need at least one server to run on, along with a database server such as MySQL or MSSQL. You mention 800 students, do you know what kind of concurrency you need? If your talking about only 30 to 60 students being live on the grid at a time thats a completely different scenario then having all 800 on at once. If you only need 30 to 60, I would suggest 4 to 6 regions with no more then 2 per OpenSim instance. This way they can all spread out when doing work, and not be crowded. A properly constructed lecture hall at the corners of 4 regions (each hosted on a separate server) would allow 30 to 60 students to gather to participate in a large event, while still spreading their concurrent load across multiple regions. Documentation is still pretty light on the entire system, but I would look at the "Standalone vs Grid" section on this page: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Configuration Hope that helps, -- Michael Cortez _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev -- Have a creative day, Andrew M Hughes President Designing Digitally Inc. -A Second Life ® Gold Solution Developer. -A proud member of the Better Business Bureau with an overall BBB rating of A-. -General Services Administration (GSA) IT Schedule 70 Contract Holder. =================================================================================== Address: 8401 Claude Thomas Rd. | Suite 23 | Franklin, OH 45005 Phone: 866-316-9126 Fax: 866-701-0029 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.designingdigitally.com Blog: http://www.designingdigitally.com/blog/ =================================================================================== CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. 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Neither the sender nor the company for which he or she works accepts any liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. =================================================================================== _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev -- Have a creative day, Andrew M Hughes President Designing Digitally Inc. -A Second Life ® Gold Solution Developer. -A proud member of the Better Business Bureau with an overall BBB rating of A-. -General Services Administration (GSA) IT Schedule 70 Contract Holder. =================================================================================== Address: 8401 Claude Thomas Rd. | Suite 23 | Franklin, OH 45005 Phone: 866-316-9126 Fax: 866-701-0029 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.designingdigitally.com Blog: http://www.designingdigitally.com/blog/ =================================================================================== CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. 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