[7-8-17] Another Back End Update

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hello everybody, I just wanted to give another back end update in GFL. There are many changes we are going to be making in the near future!

 

New Web Machine
As mentioned in previous updates, we are building a new web machine with updated software which should result in better performance. @balon and I are going to be working on this project, and we expect great results!

 

This project should be done within the next couple weeks. We will post an announcement with more details once we’re ready to migrate to the new machine!

 

Pterodactyl Update (Control Panel)
I’ve recently been spending a lot of time and energy in understanding how Pterodactyl (our future control panel) works. So far, this is the best control panel I’ve seen. This control panel has a lot of potential and we will definitely be using it with our future OVH machines.

 

There are many features that I’d like added to this control panel (thread #1, thread #2, and thread #3). They expect a majority of these features to be added in the future. I still think this panel is okay to use now. We may be able to implement automatic game updating by using the API. I’ve already created a custom Docker image including a couple useful packages/tools.

 

If you are a team member+, I posted a topic giving an overview of this control panel along with all of its features in the “Manager Tutorials” forum section. Feel free to view that thread! This concludes the Pterodactyl update. I will post more about this control panel in the near future!

 

European OVH Machine
As I’ve said in previous updates, our NFO European machine is nearly dead. I’ve been setting up servers for games such as Killing Floor, Rising Storm, and Chivalry Medieval Warfare. However, these server’s population are short-lived and die fairly quickly; our machine still ends up being dead. Here are a couple of graphs regarding our machine’s player count and CPU usage:

 

As you can see, the machine’s CPU usage hasn’t even reached 20% peak. With that said, our European Bunny Hop server has ten bots on it. Therefore, the maximum players we’ve reached in reality is 33. We are currently paying $165.00/m for this machine, which is definitely not worth it considering the machine isn’t even being put to use.

 

What has also been said in previous updates is our plan to move to OVH in Europe. This plan is still active and should be executed VERY soon. Before, we said we were planning on purchasing one of the GAME machines from here. In fact, we’ve purchased an OVH GAME machine back a few months ago. We were initially planning on using this machine as a replacement for our NFO machine, although the control panel we’ve decided to use doesn’t support linking files yet. Therefore, we needed a machine with more storage space. We planned to purchase the latest MC-32 machine listed here but @Ariistuujj pointed out that OVH opened a new datacenter located in Frankfurt, Germany (same location as our NFO machine). This datacenter does not support GAME machines yet. However, they had a GREAT machine offer which can be found here.

 

This machine has the Intel Xeon E3-1245v6 @ 3.7 GHz as the processor, 32 GB of RAM, and the option of having 2x2 TB of HDD or 2x450 GB of NVMe space (+$14.99/m for NVMe). The machine’s price is only $54.99/m (+$14.99/m if we go with NVMe). With the current servers we have on our NFO Frankfurt machine, I don’t really think we’ll need NVMe storage.

 

According to this CPU benchmark chart, the Intel Xeon E3-1245v6 has better single-thread performance than the processor in our strongest NFO machine (Intel E3-1270v5). Most game servers are mostly single-threaded meaning single-thread performance matters a lot. Our strongest NFO machine currently costs us $184.98/m, while this OVH machine will only be costing us $54.99/m (again, if we decide to go with HDD storage). 

 

Once the datacenter in Germany supports additional IPs, we will be ordering this machine. We will have to wait until our new web machine is built by @balon and I (we will be hosting a part of our back end for our OVH game servers on this web machine). After that is all complete, we will move our NFO European servers to our new OVH machine. I expect this to be all done in the next couple weeks or so (very soon).

 

Overall
This concludes our back end update. These back end changes should be happening in the next couple weeks or so and I am very excited!

If you have any questions, feel free to post here!

 

Google Doc

 

Thanks for reading!

[SwegBuster 879 / 15,758]

What are your plans for redirection for players from the current server IP's to the new ones?

[balon 41 / 2,192]

SwegBuster,

 

You can always lock the old servers, spam a join message on connect for a few weeks. That's what I've previously done. Or hope GSLT does it's job.. (it probably wont but.)

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

5 hours ago, SwegBuster said:

What are your plans for redirection for players from the current server IP's to the new ones?

As @balon said, we will lock the servers and spam chat messages. In games other than CS:GO, we can use this plugin (will have to hit F3 to connect to the new server). Unfortunately, this functionality isn't supported in CS:GO (what a surprise). 

 

If GSLTs (Game Server Login Token) worked as intended, we could transfer all the favorites over from the old servers to the new servers. However, I've heard stories where moving GSLTs over have no effect in CS:GO whatsoever (again, what a surprise).

 

Thanks!