At what point to upgrade server hardware and best way to do so.

[andrew2110]

The server has been running very well recently, dropping <1% of outgoing packets which I figure are down to users having bad connections and 0% dropped incoming packets in nearly 5 days I take as a sign that the server is running quite happily. CPU seems to run between 20 and 30% most of the time. My concern is that a new facebook page is due to start promoting our game heavily soon and we should expect to receive between 600 and 800 CCU rather than the 80 to 120 CCU we have right now.

So my concern is making sure the server can handle this.

Currently I have 1 dedicated server running both smartfox and the mysql database:

Option 1: Seperate smartfox server machine and the database machine? Will this cause issues with the latency between the two machines (I'll host the database server with the same company and in same location as the smartfox server so should be within the same data center)

Option 2: Pay the extra money for a more powerful server, the downside being even a more powerful machine will eventually just fall over?

option 3: I'm over reacting and by looking at the image you can tell that the server will be able to handle 800 CCU no problem!

[andrew2110]

Another image to show the sort of load the server is under at present.

[Lapo]

Hello,

option 3: I'm over reacting and by looking at the image you can tell that the server will be able to handle 800 CCU no problem!

This one
I don't think your server will break a sweat with 800 CCU

You have a good machine with 4 cores and enough RAM to go higher than that, at least in most scenarios. What type of game are you running? If it's a fast action game with over 20pps (packets per second) and more than 4 players in each Room then you might need to separate the SFS and DB. Otherwise you should be fine.

As regards option 1, it's surely a good idea but you will have to spend more money for a dedicated DB server and I don't think it's the case now (not for 800CCU). If you run the DB machine in the same hosting center you won't incur in performance issues, so no worries there.


Hope it helps

[andrew2110]

That helps a lot thank you!

The level of processing that actually happens on the server isn't actually much at all, it's a multiplayer horse racing game but the races aren't actually simulated on the server itself, a "host" is selected at the start of the race and they take the authority for deciding how the race is ran. The biggest concern was that its quite a write heavy database but I can do a lot more to optimize the database.

Thanks so much for the reply, saved me a couple of hundred dollars a month!

[Lapo]

Yes, the CPU usage in SFS2X is very low, that's why I don't foresee any problems with a higher load.

As regards the database you can keep an eye on it as your traffic increases, and if the load becomes too high you can always move it to a dedicated machine. If you're already prepared to do so it will take little time and won't cause too much downtime for the users.

Cheers