[1-26-17] Back-End Update

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hello everybody, I just wanted to give an update on the back-end of GFL and what I’ve been working on. I will be making another update very soon that involves many front-end subjects and changes. 

 

OVH GameServer (EU)
As a few of you know, we’ve purchased an OVH GameServer machine on the 17th of this month. I did this so we can get started on setting up the back-end (security and such).

 

I have been working on it with the help of Amp (@setup.sh). Due to Amp’s busy schedule, it is difficult to find time to work on the new machine together. However, we are close to being done our part.

 

Afterwards, we will most likely be testing things until @KILLER-Banana finishes the Linux back-end. I am very excited about this new machine! We are basically paying for better hardware for a much lower price than NFO. As long as we can ensure our geo-location is set to somewhere in Germany (read the “Geo-Location” section for more information), we should stand an equal or better chance at receiving population on OVH than NFO.

 

Overall, I hope this machine brings new life to our European division. I look forward to expanding into other servers once we get this machine online.

 

Our OVH IP’s Geo-Location
I’ve been studying how geo-locations work for some time now. After taking a look at how the Steam Master Server chooses servers, I found that it highly depends on your geo-location. Therefore, ensuring our IP’s geo-location is set to a popular area is very important.

 

We have tried OVH’s European locations out in the past and the servers we had there never received population. This was the same case with other server owners I know. Once we would try the servers out on NFO, they would populate instantly. At the time, I didn’t know how the Steam Master Server worked.

 

On the 17th, we purchased eight permanent IPs for our OVH GS machine. While ordering these IPs, there was an option to set the “geo-location” of the IP. We set the IPs to Germany in hopes the IPs would be set to somewhere in Germany. However, that was not the case. Using a website such as IPFingerPrints, the IPs were located in Paris, France. 

 

After contacting OVH about this, they said the IPs were purchased from a Germany geo-localised pool from RIPE. For those that do not know, RIPE is a Regional Internet Registry (also known as “RIR”) for Europe, The Middle East, and Central Asia.

 

@Ariistuujj and I spent hours yesterday (25th) trying to figure out how to set the geo-location of our OVH IPs. Originally, we thought this would be done through RIPE by setting the “geolocation” and “language” attributes for the IP. However, after further investigation, it turns out RIPE does not provide geo-location services. It is the same case with ARIN (the RIR we will use once we expand into the US with OVH). Instead, there are several companies that provide geo-location services. The two we are interested in are MaxMind and IP2Location. We will be contacting both of these companies to see if we can get our IP’s geo-location set to Germany. We will likely need to contact OVH and claim ownership over our IPs via RIPE (e.g. OVH assigning the IPs to an “organization” we create). 

 

With that said, I am unsure what geo-location database Steam Master Server uses to receive the geo-location of an IP. I’ve sent an e-mail to Valve on the 25th in hopes to get some insight on how the Steam Master Server works, however, as expected, no response (yet). According to this Mailing List thread, they use IP2Location and MaxMind (the ones we’re interested in). However,I haven’t seen any proof yet.

 

Overall, as said before, having a good geo-location will be important while expanding with OVH. I along with @Ariistuujj will do our best to ensure our IPs get correctly set to Germany!

 

External Backup Machine
Having an external backup machine has been on my to-do-list for quite some time now. However, I am getting closer to doing this. At the moment, we have daily backups along with manual backups by myself. I am looking into buying a backup machine where we can store automatic backups. I believe we will have 15-minute SQL backups on this machine along with daily FTP backups.

 

At the moment, we are looking into purchasing the “HOST-32L” ($77.00/m option) from this page. While $77.00/m seems expensive for a backup machine, I believe it will be worth it. 6TB of space along with OVH monitoring the disk, 8-thread processor, and 32GB of ram at $77.00/m is a great price in my opinion. 

 

I will continue to look for cheaper options that will suit our needs. However, if there are none, we will go with this option! I will most likely be making the backup scripts from scratch using bash (unless there are scripts already made to suit our needs).

 

NFO VDS
Recently, I decided that replacing our NFO FrankFurt machine with a NFO VDS until we move to OVH would be the best choice. This would save us around $130.00/m. After looking at the machine’s graphs, I just saw no point in keeping the machine:

 

After moving a couple servers to the VDS, I noticed that we were put on a slow-ish processor (compared to our machine’s processor). This along with virtualization would cause poorer performance than the machine. I ticketed NFO about moving us to a stronger VDS that includes a processor with better single-core/thread performance than the old VDS’s processor. They had a VDS available with a processor slightly stronger. Therefore, they moved us over.

 

We are now on a VDS with the “Xeon E5-2690v2 (Ivy Bridge-E 3.0ghz)” processor. I still plan on moving our servers over to this VDS and cancelling our machine. In the end, this is a temporary solution until we move to OVH.

 

FastDL Revamp
Another thing I want to do is revamp our FastDL VPS. This includes better security and blocking out non-GFL servers from using it. At the moment, this is a low priority since other servers using our FastDL doesn’t cost us any extra money (we have unlimited bandwidth with OVH). I hope to get this done in the next couple months.

 

Overall
There is obviously a lot going on in the back-end of GFL. In the near future I will be posting many things involving the front-end!

 

Google Doc

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited January 26, 2017 by Winter
Fixed a tag ;3

[Vauff 895 / 15,473]

Would securing the FastDL stop web access to the file listing/files? I know me and a few others on the ZE server use it to go in and download maps manually for a few different situations. Such as seeing if a map has been tested before, to download a map that's going to be tested while the previous map is being played to not have to sit and wait, mass re-downloading maps on the server after a CS:GO/OS reinstall (we even have a spreadsheet with download links for doing that). It would be a shame to lose these features.

[Alucard33rd 1,175 / 15,140]

Thanks for all the information! Very helpful in understanding whats going on.

 

@Roy do you know why the { } and [ ] characters are switching around. Any reason for this or is it just me.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, JerryHatTrick said:

I'll be quite honest - I have no clue wtf you are talking about with any of this.

However, I always appreciate effort in building better servers & such.

 

Thank you!

TBH, it makes a LOT more sense once you become a manager.

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

13 hours ago, Vauff said:

Would securing the FastDL stop web access to the file listing/files? I know me and a few others on the ZE server use it to go in and download maps manually for a few different situations. Such as seeing if a map has been tested before, to download a map that's going to be tested while the previous map is being played to not have to sit and wait, mass re-downloading maps on the server after a CS:GO/OS reinstall (we even have a spreadsheet with download links for doing that). It would be a shame to lose these features.

We would still have this feature  

 

9 hours ago, CrusTi said:

Thanks for all the information! Very helpful in understanding whats going on.

 

@Roy do you know why the { } and [ ] characters are switching around. Any reason for this or is it just me.

 

 

 

TBH, it makes a LOT more sense once you become a manager.

What do you mean by switching the {} and [] characters?

 

Thanks!

[annoying furry 6,293 / 63,455]

2 hours ago, Roy said:

We would still have this feature  

 

What do you mean by switching the {} and [] characters?

 

Thanks!

I have noticed this as well, initially I attributed this to my phone, I think he means that when he types { } it'll show up as [ ]. (Even happened as I was typing this)