-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 David White schrieb: | Because of this, I've had discussions with Ivanovic and Mist, and we | feel that it may be time to consider trying to fund our own server.
To have a short list of what we need regarding speed: * We do need at least two cpu cores available, the game server would completely consume one core, the other would be for database and "everything else". The CPU should also be of "decent" speed, that is some dual C7 1GHz won't be enough. It is more like it should be a rather recent 1.5GHz+ AMD or Intel CPU, no idea which non-x86 deals there are for root servers. * Since the game alone is already mem hungry and we do have many players on the server, the minimum of RAM needed is 1.5GB, better 2GB if possible. * Harddrive: Something like 50GB would already be enough since we don't host too big amounts of data on the machine. Still most hosts provide more than this, so it should be no problem. * Network: 100MBit network is the minimum if we gather basically everything there. The offers I found are at least that we have 100MBit until as long as we use less than 1000GB per month and only 10MBit once this limit is crossed in the current month. One offer (the one I prefer so far) seems to be 100MBit with really no traffic limit. Regarding traffic something like 300GB *should* be enough, to be on the save side I would say 500GB are needed. * Operating system: Hehe, tricky question, right? Probably most rather recent Linux distri would do, personally I tend to prefer Debian if possible. So just the data without any explanation: * 2 CPU Cores each >=1.5GHz * >= 1.5GB RAM * >= 50GB harddrive * >= 100MBit/s, >=500GB per month | After some research, we have found that for about 90 euros/month, or | $150US/month, we should be able to obtain a dedicated server with a dual | core CPU, 2GB of memory, and a 100Mb connection. We feel that such a | server would be sufficient to run all of the above listed services. I had a look at some sites for machines which meet the requirements above. I have mainly been looking here in germany, so the prices are in euro. I will link what I found at those hosters the first usable machines for our purpose. The listing is *not* sorted in any means. 1) 1und1.de: http://www.1und1.info/xml/order/ServerRoot;jsessionid=D56305EA2160B40F4C040A4874F872B0.TC30b?__frame=_top&__lf=Static CPU: Athlon 64x2 4200+ (2 x 2,2GHz) RAM: 2 GB HD: 2 x 200 GB Network: 100MBit when <1000GB/month, 10MBit when >1TB/month, can reactivate the 100MBit in the control panel without costs (some "bot net protection stuff"...) OS: SuSe Linux 10.2 64-Bit ~ Fedora Core 6 mit Plesk 8.2 (64bit) ~ Fedora Core 6 Minimal ~ Debian-4.0 Minimal ~ Ubuntu 6Linux 10.2 64-Bit Price: 99€ per month, 1,00 € once, first month free minimum lease: 24 months 2) strato.de: http://www.strato.de/server/business/index.html CPU: Opteron™ 165 (Dual-Core) RAM: 2 GB HD: RAID1 2 x 250 GB Network: 100MBit when <1000GB/month, 10MBit when >1TB/month, can reactivate the 100MBit in the control panel without costs (some "bot net protection stuff"...) OS: Linux Business Edition 2.0 Price: 139€/month, 49€ once minimum lease: 18 months 3) 1blu.de (no direct link, server is named "dedicatedserver xxl") https://www.1blu.de/pakete_details.php CPU: 2 x AMD Opteron 246 RAM: 4096 MB RAM HD: 2 x 250 GB (Hardware-RAID1) Network: ??????, "unlimited traffic" OS: openSUSE 10 Price: 99€/month, nothing once (limited offer, normally 16.90€ at 12 months lease and 89€ at a 3 month lease) minimum lease: 12 months or 3 months 4) server4you.de: https://www.server4you.de/de/dedicated/showplan.php?products=1 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3400+ (2x 1.8 GHz) RAM: 2.048 MB HD: 2x160 GB, SATA, 5.400rpm, 8MB, RAID 1 per Software Network: 100 MBit, no limit on traffic OS: openSuSE 10.1 ~ Fedora Core 6 ~ Ubuntu 6.06 LTS ~ Debian 4.0 Price: 48,99€/month (+4,99€/month if "only" 12 months lease and +9,99€/month if just monthly), 98,99€ once minimum lease: normal 24 month, others above 4) ovh.de: http://www.ovh.de/produkte/superplan2008plus.xml CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6550 (2x 2.33 Ghz, L2: 4MB) RAM: 2 GB DDR 2 HD: 2x 250 GB, SATA2 RAID 0/1 Network: 100 MBit, really unlimited traffic OS: http://www.ovh.de/items/distributionen.xml (almost "whatever we want") Price: 89€/month, no setup fee minimum lease: 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, whatever we choose (in the german version it is "only" 75€/month if we took the 12 months deal) Important note about ovh: ovh originates in france and has a french, polish, german and UK domain, each seem to have slightly different prices. The french version has the 89€/month without taxes, the german one is with taxes. The servers itself are in france anyway, all use the same including the same server config. The prices in the uk version are basically identical to the one in the german store, the bad point would be no "free switching of the OS later on" (this is possible for french and german site) where the good point would be that it is possible to pay by credit card, the german site only allows wire transfer. Conclusion of the hosts found: In my eyes ovh looks best, the prices are very clear (at the other shops you have to search through many tiny letters to find the "real" costs) and it seems to be affordable with a high quality of service and the fastest hardware of those listed. Another benefit of ovh would be that we are free in the choise of support language. The other hosts seem to only have german as main support lang, which might be a problem some time in the future. server4you seems to be cheaper but I am not 100% sure about the price structure there, the hardware is plain "desktop hardware" and they "only" guarantee an uptime of 99% where the others state 99.9%. I don't know how reliable they are either. With the current list I do favor ovh, if you find any other good offers please do send them. I have no personal experience with any of those hosts so I can't say anything first hand. | So how to raise the money? Ideally we would pay for a year up-front, | since that's likely to get us a discount. This means we will need | somewhere in the region of $1700. We currently have about $200. Personally I would say that once we got 300€ we can try to get a server leased and test how things work out with ads/donations. In general I would prefer a contract for 6 month if the price is identical to 12 months and 12 months only if the price is really better for the 6 months version. Before we can really start to raise money via ads we should be (part of) a foundation so that we don't have to pay taxes for the money we get. And for using "donations only" it would probably be better to be part of a foundation, too. With the money we will get from google for SoC (500$ per successful applicant) and something between two and four applicants we could already pay the server for some time, too. But there will be no money from google before october and by then we should be part of a foundation or we have to pay taxes on the money. RE "buying an own server from the money from SoC": Would probably be possible, *but* we would encounter longer down times when we have hardware failures, at the commercial hosts it would just be some hours and the hardware is replaced. Beside this with a rented rootserver we would have recent hardware anytime, if we needed more, we could just switch. And rented hardware has the benefit of not having any "assets" that we would have to move if we join a foundation anytime and want to leave it afterwards again. So probably just renting the server is the best solution. Okay, what is left to say: If you know any good/reliable and cheap hoster that does meet the requirements listed above, please answer with a link to the offer in here. Cheers, Nils Kneuper aka Ivanovic -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH6uW6fFda9thizwURArQOAKCDcdrlMCmAc5CNReJAnjEe7RPeRgCfWYPG 2juDwkEsN2aqIiOw7XhF4bU= =3sAM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
