Your Server: Understanding

[CairiFEA]

Just a heads up for players looking to buy, or already have bought a private dedicated server.

This will go over some VERY important information that is ALWAYS overlooked.



Want to buy a server?

Of course you are going to be looking for a computer with a massive hard drive, huge amounts of ram, insane video card as well as a gigantic processor. Right on! Here are some tips!


HARD DRIVE space doesn't matter at all for your server. The larger it is, the bigger you can make your data base and hold all your personal camping pics and music.
Be real, your server only takes up as much as a WoW installation at most. Get a standard 80gig or even up to 250gig. Even 250 is over kill, but it seems to be the growing standard for new computers.

VIDEO CARD only affects your personal experience with the game. It won't help your players at all. 100% for your enjoyment. And having an out-of-this-world video card is a huge waste if you play WoW; since it is possibly the most graphic friendly game still widely played.

RAM is the essential part of your server. This is where most people want to spend money to get crazy amounts of RAM. RAM is your computers ability to store and access commonly used information at awesome speeds. Often, your processor and hard drive cannot keep up with your ram. Look, when you are working on your computer your hard drive spins up, and then stops. After that it only spins up every now and then. THAT essentially is when your Hard Drive feeds more information to your RAM; and when you are working, your ram is doing all the work. The more RAM you have, the faster information can be sent to and from your system; and at less intervals. However, RAM is the most overlooked aspect of the server at the same time. Windows can only support a VERY SMALL AMOUNT OF RAM to actually put to use. Want 16 gigs? forget about it. 8 gigs? No way. How about 4gigs?Bingo. 4 gigs is the limit windows 32bit (xp, vista, home, pro ME, etc etc) can handle.
Here is what I mean,

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the industry about what's commonly called the Windows “4GB memory limit.” When talking about performance tuning and server sizing, people are quick to mention the fact that an application on a 32-bit Windows system can only access 4GB of memory. But what exactly does this mean?

By definition, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte 
of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long
 can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).

Now, 4 gigs is still a lot of RAM? Right? Windoes Vista requires at least 1gig of RAM to function it self, so now your 4 gigs is roughly 3 gigs. How about your video requirements? In all, all your hardware that requires disk space can bring down your 4 gigs to about 2gigs in no time flat.

What about Windows 64 bit
It's an option. 64-bit is available to use, but it causes many headaches. Many of your applications will not work, or they will have a very hard time installing. This is meant for more savvy uses to build applications and integrate their systems easier. (Mass servers; NOT ascent/mangos <--- those wont run on 64 bit)

How about Linux or a Mac? Well, do you know much about running ascent on a mac? How about Linux? It won't be much help either sadly.


PROCESSOR == Heck ya! Super fast!
Your servers processor is a very important part of your system. Think of it like this.
Your Processor is a Doctor, and your RAM is the waiting room. If your doctor is very fast but your waiting room only holds a few people; it slows down the over all performance as now you have to look for new patients outside of the room (accessing the hard drive which IS SLOW) If you have a MASSIVE waiting room and a slow doctor, well at least you have a good source of patients. Well, if you have a massive waiting room, and a really fast doctor, everything runs smooth and quick.



CONNECTION == Everybody hates lag, but what exactly is it? Lag or high latency is caused by a slow or reduced connection to the server. This can be causes by several factors. The connection speed used to connect to the internet can make or break a server. low population servers can be hosted on standard DSL/Highspeed as they are reliable and run at a good enough speed to allow for sufficient contact between the host and the user. Your connection is a pipe. If you have a small pipe like dial up, only a few people can crawl thru there at once. The more people, the slower they go. The faster connection you have means a bigger pipe. Now you can allow hundreds of people to run thru your pipe with lots of room.
A fast connection is also limited to the speed of the server. You can have a T3 connection (really fast) but running a 1.2Ghz with 512RAM will make your server slower than ever. Having a fast connection to a computer that can keep up is awesome.


My Advice!

Stick with a simple yet efficient machine. Be realistic. You won't have 5k players on your server in the first week, month, and possibly year. When that time does come to upgrade, you will have a bigger understanding of what you need.


For now, this is what I would recommend to get the job done.

# Intel® Core 2 Duo® or Core 2 Extreme®
up to 2.93 GHz
# Intel® Intel 965P chipset
# 1 x PCI-Express X 16 slot
# up to 4GB Dual-Channel DDR-2 6400 800 MHz
# 1 X 10/100/1000 Mbit LAN Controller
# DSL/ADSL/Cable


This computer will run your server at a good pace. It isn't for massive use, but it will easily get you from low to high populations. It will also save you lots, now that you know what to look for when buying a server.

For higher population servers, the upgrades you are looking at would include,

=Significantly faster internet connection,
=Faster Processor, possibly Quad Core, allowing for more programs to run simultaniously without slowing down your system
=Better RAM. RAM comes in various qualities. Not all RAM is the same. If you have reached your limit for Windows RAM usage (4gigs) you can look around for better. Look for DDR RAM by major companies. no-brand RAM can cause system crashes, especially when your system is over clocked, causing page faults and fatal exceptions. Good names to look for when buying RAM include
+Crucial
+PNY
+Kingston
+Samsung
+Panasonic
+Corsair
+Ultra (submitted by Krilio)

You want to avoid SDRAM. DDR RAM is Double Data Rate meaning it goes 2x faster than SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory...which is slow)



Hope this helps everybody looking to understand servers a little more.


Cairi,


Edit: Updated.

[Skuxta]

Nice guide man. Im sure a lot of people will put it to good use. Maybe should get a sticky. I will rep you 2moro when I can.

[TheSpidey]

Great guide

[CairiFEA]

Thanks guy; if this got a sticky I'm sure it would help a lot of people learn what to look for and what to ignore when looking to upgrade to a decent server.

Cairi,

[CairiFEA]

ty for +Rep

[Lich King]

Great guide +Rep

[mafiaboy]

nice, i red it all

[ultiserv]

Ulti-Serv.com :: Hosting Services

^^dedicated WoW Private Server Hosting

P.S: Our dedicated servers are much better than the "recommended" components listed in this guide

PR Manager: [email protected]

[CairiFEA]

lol Utiliserv; I don't think you grasped the idea of what this post is about.

Having a server that is 'much better' pretty much means you don't understand anything this guide put forth. Oh wells,


Cairi,
and ty again for +Rep

[CairiFEA]

bump for those that need,

gonna let it die after this one.

[Krilio]

another good ram company and part company is Ultra ....you should add it in the top

[mgX]

well actually the limit for ram on a 32bit system is 3½gb :P but anyways.... you will only be able to access 3gb of mem with your server application...which is where ive started to really god damn hate microsoft...even on 64bit systems you cant access more, and for big ass servers, 3gb just wont cut it AT ALL....for the more advanced server software, you really would like to have pathfinding and collision stuff loaded into the mem, which is an awful lot...unless you have a fast scsi/raid solution which will be able to load the data dynamically... Problem is, that you want to have pathfinding loaded at all times, and then probably load the collision data on the fly when people walk around....still, its alot of data having in your mem, which could easily fill the 3gb at your disposal... So, unless you have some sort of clustering setup, or a memory-server kinda thing, you really dont need more than 3/4gb....

And as for cpu...the more cores the merrier! (doesnt count for mangos because mangoose sucks). Much rather get a quad than a dual...

[MisterEMU]

+Rep awesome!

[CairiFEA]

mgX, that was some very useful information! I would like to add it to the information I posted; think you could clean it up a little(edit/repost) so I can add it in there?

Thanks man ,

and yeah, quad core is much better; but for a simple low pop server that you dont want to run to much of a $$ bill, duo core is fine.

Cairi,