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Roy

A Big Opportunity For GFL And Introducing Dagreek

By Roy - in Announcements

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Roy    10,832 / 0

Roy
Posted  Edited by SwegBuster - Edit Reason: fixed errors

Hey everyone,

 

I already made all of our staff aware of this a few days ago, but I wanted to make it official/public.

 

The Background Between Dagreek and I

In the last few months, I've been trying to decide what I wanted to do with Scorch Host, a new company I was creating. Progress was stalled because I've been trying to sort out other things in my life including GFL, my current full-time job, etc. @dagreek and I have been talking since around May or June since he found my post regarding our Anycast network and initially, he was going to be creating his own Anycast network. However, since it was very expensive to build a powerful network, he decided he wanted to be a client of Scorch Host when it released (since we'd be offering remote (D)DoS protection via Anycast). Around the beginning of Scorch Host's development, I offered him a position in Scorch Host, but at the time he declined the offer (understandably). 

 

Fast forward to the last two months or so. Dagreek and I have still been talking and I've stated that Scorch Host hasn't made any progress because of the above. It wasn't even a registered company yet. After stating this, Dagreek asked me if I wanted to build a company with him and use the company he has registered already. I accepted the offer. This company will have the same goals as Scorch Host, but we'll be both working to build it together.

 

There are still a lot of decisions that need to be made along with building a game plan for the company itself. However, we'll be taking care of that internally and once we have something official to announce, we'll let GFL know. I do plan to advertise this company highly within GFL as well and GFL will be using services from the new company (e.g. the future Anycast network which I have a lot of confidence in).

 

The Opportunity For GFL

Dagreek also owns a gaming community called Coffee House Gaming. They host a few servers in CS:GO, Squad, etc. As of right now, Dagreek has two and soon to be, three dedicated servers colocated in a DC located in Dallas, TX. Here are the specs of the machines:

 

Machine #1

  • AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper with 32 cores and 64 threads. Water cooled and overclocked to 3.8 GHz each core.
  • 128 GBs of RAM.
  • 2 TBs of NVMe storage.
  • 1 gigabit port.
  • Dallas, TX (soon to be NYC, read below).
  • Linux OS.

 

Machine #2

  • AMD Ryzen 9 3900x with 12 cores and 24 threads. Water cooled and clocked at auto speeds (around 4.0 - 4.4 GHz).
  • 32 GBs of RAM.
  • 2 TBs of NVMe storage.
  • 1 gigabit port.
  • Dallas, TX (soon to be NYC, read below).
  • Linux OS.

 

Machine #3 (Not Colocated Yet)

  • Intel i9-9900K with 8 cores and 16 threads. Water cooled and overclocked to 5.0 GHz on all cores.
  • 32 GBs of RAM (uncertain).
  • 2 TBs of NVMe storage (uncertain).
  • 1 gigabit port.
  • New York City.
  • Windows OS.

 

Dagreek offered to host any GFL servers for free at this time on these machines since the machines are already built and he can afford the current and future rack himself. With that said, there is plenty of room on all of these machines. Dagreek is only hosting game servers from his community on these machines and that's about it. The above calculates to a total of 52 cores and 104 threads. GFL has never had this much room before. In fact, not even close. With that said, the performance on these machines is unbelievable. They all are very good in my opinion, especially for single-threaded performance (what matters the most with SRCDS and most game servers). While I personally dislike Windows, there are some games that are only supported on Windows and don't work with Wine (e.g. DayZ). Therefore, we'll be able to expand into that game as long as it's okay with Dagreek on machine #3. Plus, the Intel i9-9900K overclocked to 5 Ghz is probably one of best CPUs out there regarding single-threaded performance at this moment.

 

If there is ever a time that Dagreek would like GFL to pay a certain amount for the rack, we will more than likely be doing so. If the company doesn't work out, Dagreek stated he can still host GFL's servers, he also stated it would be appreciated if we can chip in payments towards the rack if this is the case though, which is fair.

 

With that said, I understand there will be a lot of comments stating "this is too good to be true". However, I was given proof these machines were colocated and was also given root access to machine #1 and machine #2 which both lived up to their expectations (it was crazy seeing 32 cores and 64 threads in htop by the way, which can be found here). I also confirmed the RAM count, storage type/size, and CPU clock speeds which also lived up to their expectations. I setup a few dummy servers as well and they all ran well from under our Anycast network. Our Anycast network only had a ~1ms ping to the machines which was acceptable/good.

 

Now in regards to security, this was one of the biggest concerns. I've been taking measures internally along with Dagreek himself to ensure nothing malicious can happen. Now in the case of Dagreek becoming malicious, the most he can do is delete our server files and possibly global databases (not the website, though). The game servers don't connect to any global databases containing sensitive information and each server and database is backed up regularly. GFL still currently owns its Anycast network along with IPs. Now, I doubt any of this will happen and after talking to Dagreek for 4 - 5 months now, I do trust him. However, it's always important to be prepared. In the case of things not working out completely, I am going to be forming a contract that states GFL has x amount of days to get their data off of the machines which is fair and Dagreek agreed.

 

Finally, we will be taking all of this slowly. We will probably be keeping two machines from Nexril for a bit and expand by using these new machines. Once everything is proven stable and good to go, we can fully move over to the new machines.

 

Moving Servers To A New DC

Now, in the next few days, Dagreek will be working to move the servers to a new data center which should be a long-term move. This is because the current DC located in Dallas, TX only supports 30 TBs of bandwidth with the rack and that can only host around 200+ servers (I'd say average, for GFL anyways). The new DC will be located in New York City. This will give our European players a better ping. The average ping from the West Coast to this new location is around 60 - 70ms which is pretty decent in my opinion, but that also depends on the ISP and routing.

 

Once this is completed, I will let you all know and we can start putting up official game servers for GFL.

 

Dagreek's Role In GFL

I have given @dagreek the Technical Administrator role within GFL because I feel that's the least we can do. Dagreek won't be playing a role directly in GFL at this moment. However, the machines will be owned by himself. I also told Dagreek if he's ever interested in playing a direct role in GFL in the future, just let me know.

 

Conclusion

Basically, I will be building a new company with Dagreek. Dagreek offered to host GFL servers spread across three machines that will be colocated and I accepted. The machines come with very high performance and a lot of room. With that said, Dagreek expects no payment from GFL at this moment. It's an offer that was too good to refuse. If this all ends up going well (taking it slowly obviously), there's a chance GFL won't be paying anything for their physical game machines. This means GFL will be able to save more or spend more money into the community itself or other resources (e.g. buying things to make our game servers better).

 

Dagreek has been given the Technical Administrator role, but will not be playing a direct role in GFL itself, for now.

 

That's it for now! If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reply.

 

Thank you!

Edited by SwegBuster
fixed errors

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Ben    2,378 / 31,861

Ben
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I'd like to also mention that because of this opportunity, TF2 is expanding a little bit with two more servers being hosted on one of those listed machines. 

 

Thread can be found below:

 

76561198043643390.png

 

 

 

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