Checklists for Going Live

Hey there!

Since it"s a question that doesn't require a lot of knowledge in coding, i'll fill you in! Remember something tho, everyone has his own opinion when it comes to priorities. Since you ask a global question and nothing too specific, i'll tell your the basics. (i've been, since the beginning of my adventure into server scripting and hosting, owner/dev or 3-4 shards in the past)

Okay! Enough about me.

  • The first question is, did you test it out thoroughly like a real player would?
  • Is the server into a state that has many bugs, average amounts, small amounts, bug free?
  • Is there enough content to keep a player into your server for months/years? (depends on your idea of how long of a journey you want it to last)
  • Do you have enough free time to give support to your incoming players? If not, do you have staff members to do it?
Those are the very basic questions you need to ask yourself.

Then you can push this a little more.

  • Did you protect your server from possible gliches/exploits/hacks players could sneak into to break it? (Yes this will happen sooner or later, why? Just because they can!)
  • Can you trust the people you work with?
  • Is there going to be additionnal content after it goes live on a weekly/monthly basis?
  • Do you have anything implimented to punish bad behaviors? Like rules, in-game punishments and so on?(i don't favor the *punishment* attitude into a server since it can give you a bad reputation. But sometimes, you need to have a firm grip to keep peace in your shard)

I could keep going but i think i covered a good amount of things that needs to be thought ahead. Keep asking yourself questions. If someday you find yourself just sitting and waiting, then there is something wrong.

Hope i helped ^_^b
 
Seems i can't edit my post any further(which is very weird).

I forgot something else that is very important which should be in the first questions.

  • Do you have the hardware and the bandwidth to support small to medium player population?
 
Oxtar said:
Seems i can't edit my post any further(which is very weird).

I forgot something else that is very important which should be in the first questions.

  • Do you have the hardware and the bandwidth to support small to medium player population?
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What do you need?

Running a home pc for server with 2.2ghz cpu with 968mb ram running WinXP.
 
The computer shouldn't be a problem since, as far as i read about it, isn't hungry on the CPU/RAM.

I would need to check out the source of this but i think it is near 300 mb of RAM. For the CPU, it all depends on how many items/players are into your world. With 2.2 ghz, i assume it is a computer for the only purpose of hosting and nothing more. If you plan on using this computer while hosting, it won't suffice.
 
john burns said:
What do you need?

Running a home pc for server with 2.2ghz cpu with 968mb ram running WinXP.
Click to expand...

I do not recommend a windows xp machine for ServUO or any other application that requires it to be open to the internet. It is not a supported system anymore and there are numerous issues that can come about including exploits that are available or will be available.

This and windows XP does not support .net 4.5 and 4.6 which ServUO may end up targeting at some point depending on how we decide to program some future features.
 
I completely forgot about the Windows XP being discontinued support. Thanks for the reminding dmurphy.

Assuming this, you might have problems installing windows 7/8/10 on your computer and hosting your server i'm afraid. And since time goes by pretty fast, keep in mind windows 7 won't be supported after 2020.

Since were speaking of OS, maybe dmurphy could enlighten me. Is there any problems with ServUO or the UO Client when using the newly released windows 10?
 
Oxtar said:
I completely forgot about the Windows XP being discontinued support. Thanks for the reminding dmurphy.

Assuming this, you might have problems installing windows 7/8/10 on your computer and hosting your server i'm afraid. And since time goes by pretty fast, keep in mind windows 7 won't be supported after 2020.

Since were speaking of OS, maybe dmurphy could enlighten me. Is there any problems with ServUO or the UO Client when using the newly released windows 10?
Click to expand...

Both ServUO and the UO client work well in windows ten. My machine I use for programming and testing is a windows ten machine.
 
I will chime in here. Note that I have never owned a public shard. I have been a systems administrator in my professional life (about a decade ago), and as a player on a few shards in particular these are things that cheesed me bad enough to quit.
  1. Make sure you understand how your server behaves when the process crashes. Ideally it should automatically restart without user intervention.
  2. Have remote access to your server at all times so you can restart the server process or reboot the machine if need be. This is a breeze these days with smart phones. Get yourself an SSH client on your phone and you're good to go.
  3. Give your staff members a way to contact you at all times, or otherwise give them administrative rights to the server itself. Combined with #2 this ensures that the shard is never down for hours on end just because you are at work or asleep.
    1. Yes, it sucks, but if it's worth doing it's worth doing right. Treat it like a production system like any other. Restart it at 2AM if it needs it.
  4. I don't know if this exists, but I would really like some sort of paging system to tell me when the server process has gone down or become unresponsive. Again, combined with #2 this helps reduce downtime. If I can't find such a script I may have to develop one.
 
Wow, lots of posts came in while I was writing the above :) You might look in to running a Linux distribution like Ubuntu 14.04 Minimal if you are comfortable with Linux systems administration.

I think the primary concern here though is bandwidth. Most American households do not have reliable internet connections. Even if they are blazing fast they periodically disconnect for a second or two (which spells disaster for a game server), or can spike in latency or packet loss. If you want a low-cost hosting solution I always recommend folks to OVH. I promise I'm not getting paid by them, even if I do sound like a company shill :)

Here's the link to thier VPS hosting: https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-ssd.xml . They are pretty cheap and have decent customer service. You can get a single CPU machine with 2GB RAM and 10GB SSD storage for $3.49 a month. The only dual CPU machine they offer is $13.49 per month and comes with 8GB RAM and 40GB SSD storage. All VPS options have 100Mbp/s guaranteed bandwidth on a 1Gb/s line with no transfer limits.
 
Norman Lancaster said:
Wow, lots of posts came in while I was writing the above :) You might look in to running a Linux distribution like Ubuntu 14.04 Minimal if you are comfortable with Linux systems administration.

I think the primary concern here though is bandwidth. Most American households do not have reliable internet connections. Even if they are blazing fast they periodically disconnect for a second or two (which spells disaster for a game server), or can spike in latency or packet loss. If you want a low-cost hosting solution I always recommend folks to OVH. I promise I'm not getting paid by them, even if I do sound like a company shill :)

Here's the link to thier VPS hosting: https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-ssd.xml . They are pretty cheap and have decent customer service. You can get a single CPU machine with 2GB RAM and 10GB SSD storage for $3.49 a month. The only dual CPU machine they offer is $13.49 per month and comes with 8GB RAM and 40GB SSD storage. All VPS options have 100Mbp/s guaranteed bandwidth on a 1Gb/s line with no transfer limits.
Click to expand...


OVH are worth using. They also include free DDOS protection on all their services which sadly, is a requirement nowadays since almost all new shards that gain any attention at all seem to be targeted.

I thought they guaranteed 240Mbits though?

Another supplier to look at is http://soyoustart.ie which are the budget line OVH supplier.OVH are already cheap but these guys are cheaper. They are an OVH subsidiary. They offer less DDOS protection though, so you need to weigh the pros and cons, also support is a lot worse.
 
The guaranteed bandwidth is different depending on the type of service. For VPS it's 100Mbits. For commercial-grade and "Gaming" dedicated servers it is 25Mbits and for enterprise hosting it is 500Mbits.

SoYouStart does not appear to offer VPS solutions. I would think that a VPS, especially one with way more RAM allocation that is actually needed, should be fine for ServUO. Thoughts?
 
Norman Lancaster said:
The guaranteed bandwidth is different depending on the type of service. For VPS it's 100Mbits. For commercial-grade and "Gaming" dedicated servers it is 25Mbits and for enterprise hosting it is 500Mbits.

SoYouStart does not appear to offer VPS solutions. I would think that a VPS, especially one with way more RAM allocation that is actually needed, should be fine for ServUO. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Sorry, yeah I should have mentioned they only offer dedicated machines but the prices are insanely cheap.

It all really depends on each server and their needs. A cheap vps is great to start off with and your first dozen or so players but I would definitely be looking into getting a dedicated machine eventually if the shard gained any traction. I like to run other services in conjunction with any of my projects too so it would be nice to host say a database on the same machine if I wanted to extend usability like adding web services. Each person's requirements will be different in the end of the day. Just need to keep an eye on how you are doing.
 
What's the big difference between not having a VPS or having one? The way you work your way into the server?

Because to me(my opinion), if you compare each other, the only difference is, how far your wallet can go and what are your goals. If you plan on having a low/medium population on your shard, then i'd choose the economic one of OVH. If it would become too much crowded for the server's spec, then you could check your options. No?
 
That would be my assumption, but remember that moving over to a new server is going to be a major outage for your players. At the very least it would be a time warp. Plus you have to reconfigure DNS entries for the new IP address. If I do choose to try my hand at shard ownership it will be the way I go, but I'd love to hear from folks that have done this sort of thing before.
 
Oxtar said:
What's the big difference between not having a VPS or having one? The way you work your way into the server?

Because to me(my opinion), if you compare each other, the only difference is, how far your wallet can go and what are your goals. If you plan on having a low/medium population on your shard, then i'd choose the economic one of OVH. If it would become too much crowded for the server's spec, then you could check your options. No?
Click to expand...


Like you mention, a lot of it comes down to economy. You could very well run a successful shard on a VPS. You have to remember though you are sharing resources with other users of the same node. Mainly CPU and I/O, both of which can cause issues if another user of the node is overusing them.

I recommend starting low and as your shard grows then your technology should too.
 
So a little wrap up.

Start with an homemade server (depending on your bandwidth). It could be someone you know/trust, that could be hosting your server. Given that you have a remote access, there shouldn't be any problem.

As your population grows, upgrade your server's capabilities.

Remember, the more you are visible, the higher the threats are. Protect your server.
 
wow, I am completely blown away at how quickly this small question garnered such a response.
Thank You to all who provided input on this. It is something to think about and decide what to do.

In one word----WOW.
 
If you are trying to become a serious larger server, I would STRONGLY recommend staying away from a VPS. Your just pooling resources between alot of other VPS on the same machine and you may come across lag spikes, and your not getting the full usage out of your machine.
You want a Dedicated machine for this.
On larger servers, your memory, cpu usage, bandwidth can get pretty high up there.

However, using a Dedicated Machine can get really expensive. It really just depends what your looking for out of a server. I've gone through dozens of dedicated servers trying to find the best ping to the EU as well as here, and I've come to notice that NFO servers gave our playerbase from Europe the best ping for a US based server, however they are pretty pricey.

If your looking for something a bit cheaper but still quite powerful, I would recommend Quadix.co.
 
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