Dedicated server hardware

The Mighty Gerbil said:
What about Dell as a company? I'm just asking because of Tek's recent dealings with them I don't know if he's satisfied with their customer support or not.

Maybe you listed it and I missed it but what kind of connection are we hooking up to? Most of the sites seem to mention bandwidth as the main bottleneck to a game server not the hardware.
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Dell home and Dell Business are two completely different stories. I worked for my schools server maintenance area and Dell when it comes to the business and server hardware are quite solid.

On the main point, the config HCS picked out looks great and I definitely think we should trust his judgement on the final purchase.
 
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Corpfox said:
Oh yeah, for games: most definitely, COUNTER-STRIKE! CS: Source would be nice too. But the rest is pretty much expected; L4D,
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My name is Atown, and I endorse this message .
 
From what I've learned of Dell, there servers are great. Home PCs are a completely different story, but I've heard great things about the servers. I'm not too keen on server specs since I've never really run one. As far as where the server should be, I'm with the idea that it should be centrally located. If it's on the west coast, it's unuseable on the east coast and vice versa. If I had to narrow it down more, I'd say in the Chicago area. I know a lot of people can easily connect to Chicago servers without much lag. Someone told me it has something to do with how the internet is laid out in America but I don't know how much truth there is to that.

Concerning what we have on the server, I think that's going to be a rotating thing. We might put TF2 on it now but then drop it for something else when a new hot game comes up.

Here's a question I'm wondering if anyone's considered: what about a renting policy? Let's say a couple guys here decide to get a CS CAL-O team going and want some server time for practice or matches. Will we have a policy in place for that? Also, what if another group wants to use our server for something (perhaps a similar situation)? I'm sure we'd have strict rules on who we would let use the server, but is it something we've thought of? Would we charge outside groups a small fee if they wanted to use it? Might be a nice way for us to generate a little cash to help with keeping the server up to date. Just some things for people to think about.
 
Here is the link to the Dell system for anyone who wants it . I pretty much think HCS knows far more than I will ever know about servers I'm just trying to think of any other pertinent questions, large purchases always warrant caution for me :p ... Ummm lets see... I've been curious about what hardware our current provider gameservers.com runs so we can avoid it -_- but I could only find a loose description of their dedicated hardware configuration.

Dual Quadcore 1.6(5310)
Linux or Windows Web Edition
4GB RAM $399.95/month
1 x 146GB 15k rpm SAS

That's a dedicated server intended to run multiple games though what we have currently is not dedicated. Seeing as what HCS has picked out far exceeds gameservers dedicated specs I don't think we will have a problem :).

What OS are you putting on it HCS If I read your listing correct (um I think you may have cut and pasted multiple entries for the OS category IDK) you're saving lots of money by not buying one from Dell right?
 
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currently our GS hardware is being changed in chicago, they are upgrading to quad cores.
 
The Mighty Gerbil said:
Here is the link to the Dell system for anyone who wants it . I pretty much think HCS knows far more than I will ever know about servers I'm just trying to think of any other pertinent questions, large purchases always warrant caution for me :p ... Ummm lets see... I've been curious about what hardware our current provider gameservers.com runs so we can avoid it -_- but I could only find a loose description of their dedicated hardware configuration.

Dual Quadcore 1.6(5310)
Linux or Windows Web Edition
4GB RAM $399.95/month
1 x 146GB 15k rpm SAS

That's a dedicated server intended to run multiple games though what we have currently is not dedicated. Seeing as what HCS has picked out far exceeds gameservers dedicated specs I don't think we will have a problem :).

What OS are you putting on it HCS If I read your listing correct (um I think you may have cut and pasted multiple entries for the OS category IDK) you're saving lots of money by not buying one from Dell right?
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I am hoping to use a bare metal hypervisor called esxi and then run linux based virtual servers. The virtual servers will be centos 5 based. If you have a preference(and wish to admin the virtual server yourself) many other choices are available.

since each virtual server will require it's own ip that is one thing that could torpedo that thought. If it does then the operating system will be centos 5 and individual accounts will be setup for the game servers.
 
I think Centos is definitely the best option for game servers. Personally I've used Centos 5, and several different versions of Fedora for servers. For simplicity Centos definitely wins, but it also has some missing software in it's repositories.
 
Centos tracks RHEL not fedora. Centos is built for long term stability not keeping up with the jones's software wise. Any security fixes are backported to the Centos stable versions however.
 
Yes but RHEL is based on older versions of Fedora. Personally I currently use Fedora 9 on my server as opposed to Centos 5 because the repos are much more robust, but for a game server you don't really need anything beyond the basic packages.
 
RHEL has a 5 year lifecycle..fedora has an 18 month lifecycle. For a server stability, and security is key..and you don't get the best of both of those with fedora.
 
Hey toj and tek...any further questions? If not shall we pull the trigger on the hardware and start researching the costs for ABBA?
 
Hescominsoon said:
Hey toj and tek...any further questions? If not shall we pull the trigger on the hardware and start researching the costs for ABBA?
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I can't think of any other questions, but I'll need to call our Accounts Manager and figure out how we're going to get all the money into one account so we can make the purchase. (Our grand total is spread across a Paypal account, a checking account, and a savings account.)

I'll be out of town this weekend, visiting Elihu for his birthday, but I'll try to get things moving again early next week.
 
Any updates on getting the server? Would love to play TF2 with 12 on 12 on the new server. :p
 
From what I recall, we were going to have all our current chapters that we have on the rented servers and put them on the new one. So TF2/UT3/COD series, and possibly even older games like CS/CSS.
 
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