SGS on VPS?

Networking & Multiplayer
#1

I hope this question doesn’t come of as too simplistic or uneducated.

I would like to start experimenting with SGS, but I am not used (and don’t have time) learning on throw-away programs so I would like to make something “real” and put online whatever I make. Now I don’t plan to host it on my home computer as a server so I am looking at other cheapest possible solutions for this. VPS (virtual private) hosting comes as first cheapest thing to my knowledge but they come with a very tight upscale of features and prices.

I suppose RAM is the only real limitation at this as disk size and bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem (and they don’t seem to limit CPU time). I know this question can’t be answered precisely but I just need an educated guess… what VPS plans should I be looking into if I would like to run some rather simplistic SGS application with up to 20 simultaneous users? VSP plans usually come with 64,128 ,256,512,1024… MB plans (some also define guaranteed and burstable RAM availability)

(it’s also hard for me to guess that because I am quite new to java (but not new to programming))

Best regard, java is great - I don’t know why it took me so long to find this out …
Janko

#2

Hmm.

Its a bit of a tricky question to answer. Part of the question is what sort of user load you wish to support?

If this is purely for loads that you can handle with the SDK single-stack server then you might be able to do it this way. Unfortunately amount of processor and memory (and disk) you will need is really dependent on what your game does and how many people you have connected at once. Honestly my best answer is to take an old PC and stand up the SDK server for development, test that under load, and then figure from there what your particular game’s requirements are.

You most likely wont be able to run a multi-stack this way. A multi-stack architecture takes more then just boxes, the entire back-end has to be built for minimal latencies and high throughput. This means better networking components then your likely to see being used in a vanilla web hosting provider.

The word “virtual” in VPS scares me a little, though, even for single stack. Does this mean you are running in a Solaris zone or other virtualized system where you are actually sharing the box with other users? If so this is going to introduce additional latencies into your processing.

The cheapest, and best way, to host your game at the moment is to get into the Playground program where Sun is building the first Darkstar ready back-end and making it available for free to selected developers.

#3

Thank you for your reply. Yes VPS is multiple users sharing one box with each one running in their own separate virtualized environment . So it’s multiple times worse than running on own box, but it’s the cheapest option to get root access to server with install anything rights.

I am aware now answer is hard to give even if I said up to 20 users because of the various game types from turn based 2d to 3d real time action and the network schemes it uses. I am currently interested mostly in the lowest (turn based + chat for example and then moving up) and I will experiment as you advised.

Getting into the Sun Playground would of course be GREAT but I am more about experimenting with smaller projects than seriously making one “big” one for now and I gues that wouldn’t get me into the program. But I plan to apply once something more serious shapes up. ((Well I hope a little that I will be able to start a concrete sgs application by apr. 5 but I have one hard to make contract work deadline on apr. 10))

Best regards,
Janko