Jump to content

Pro-level server maintance questions


DobriyDed

Recommended Posts

Hi! 

Have planned opening ARK server, relatively large, ~300 players cap for cluster 
After digging forums some hardware- and os-related questions are still not clear to understand, so asking for help :-) 

Hardware /software config

Spoiler

I7-7700k (4C/8T@4,2) / 32 gb 3000 mem / sata 6gbs,   raid 1, 2x2tb drives
Hardware firewall , 100 mbs inet connection 
Ubuntu + LGSM scripts
S+ and 1-2 light mods for players ease of living


Questions 
- Hardware config 

  • Is 32GB is enough for Scorched, Center, Ragnarok and Aberration + mentioned quantity of players? (mem mb/player varies very wide in different posts, what's the current situation in real world?)
  • Is HDD config enough for peak disk IOPS performance? 

- Software

  1. is rumors about windows (comparing to linux) better memory usage for ARK server are still a rumors?
  2. 'Classic' setup is 4 Users (1 per map) for 4 maps leads to 4 copies of ARK and longer downtime in updates. Makes it easier, to be honest. 
    Is 1 user and 4 tasks (1 copy of ark , 4 different configs) have any  bright sides comparing to 4 copies? Is it have any problems running in LGSM envirorment?
  3. -useallawailablecore for all configs(maps) is safe? Or it's better to config 2 cores for each of config(map) and forget about load balancing? Is useallawailablecore still leads to stability issues?
  4. RawUDPSocket problem is still persist? 
  5. Any configuration tips for Ubuntu, except maximizing open files limits?
  6. What is HDD space consumption in 2-3 month playtime? Seen numbers 500gb-1Tb for similar workload. is it true? 

Thanks in advance for your help!


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Figures from my Windows based Cluster (i7-7800X, 64GB RAM, 512 GB M2-SSD):-

Typical memory usage is between 3.5 Gig and 5.5 Gig per map.  Maximum survivors at any one time gets to about 19 on Ragnarok.

The Island's save directory has reached 1.0 GB, and Ragnarok has reached 1.67 GB. This is after approx. 1 year of use with no wipes.

I've switched away from RawUDPSockets because that prevents survivors from immediately reconnecting if their client crashes, and doesn't offer any noticeable benefits.

I've used the Windows "affinity" flags to restrict each server/map to a number of the CPU's cores.  I wouldn't use "-useallawailablecore" on a cluster because I don't know how many cores the server will try to use and I don't know which cores it will try to use (there is no documentation to explain the details).

I think your aim of 300 player cap for the server is a bit optimistic unless you have some serious server hardware.  i.e. server grade CPU, RAM, SSD, and network bandwidth.

Ark is more CPU intensive per user than memory intensive.  Survivors with large bases and/or large numbers of dinos are known to cause lag for other survivors.

Having said that, I wish you well.  I say "go for it" because there's nothing like having practical hands-on experience for a serious learning experience.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, DobriyDed said:

@DuoMog, thanks for reply ! 

Will start from one platform with I7-7700k as a main powerhorse, adding another hosts and moving instances to them when performance is not enough.
Mentioning SSD - is ordinary SATA drives can not handle workload? 

On Windows, I'm finding that 3 cores dedicated to Rag and a different 3 cores dedicated to the Island still results in lag when there are more than about 14 users on any map.

I'd recommend using SSD if you can.  If you need to use HD's then maybe set the auto-save to 60 minutes or longer so the world save doesn't interfere too often.

Go for it...  Running a server is a great experience, even if it's not the experience you were expecting :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would recomment a windows server. I don't know if there is realy a big difference in memory usage. But it's very clear that the windows version is better supported than the linux version.

For the HDD: You don't need that much space. I havn't seen a save file grow over 200mb. You can expect it to grow to 100MB+ within a few month. ARK itself does backups of the save file, which take some space. The biggest factor of how much space you need is how your backups are setup. I recomment excluding all the backup files ARK does and use incremental backups. This way i only need a few GB for my 4 server cluster for backups, while keeping backups for 30 days and having a backup cycle of 4h.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DobriyDed said:

@Thorium, thanks for advice ! 

Are you using external backup system or just rely on internal ARK backups of map state and char's  (.ark files in ShooterGame\Saved\ map folder)? 

 

I use an external backup system. I use duplicati.

I wouldnt rely on ARK's backups, alone for the case if the HDD/SSD fails you lose all data.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

'Classic' setup is 4 Users (1 per map) for 4 maps leads to 4 copies of ARK and longer downtime in updates. Makes it easier, to be honest. 
Is 1 user and 4 tasks (1 copy of ark , 4 different configs) have any  bright sides comparing to 4 copies?

Different configs for different maps are very usefull! If you are running center/rag, those maps have some spawns that i need to change to make it "better" for me and my players. f.E. i added spinos to the swamp (for rag, // only got a 2server cluster rag/island atm) and used the same config on island, swamps were spinohell, that wasnt swamp anymore...it was spinoland. Or if you want to use some mods that are only usefull on some servers, f.E. classic flyers, would be useless on aberration.

 

You can copy/paste most of the configsettings anyway, but i would never want to use one config for 2 or more servers again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding memory (RAM) usage.
It depends on how long your server exists without wipe. My record was about 15G for only one map/server Instance. And this 15G where reached with only 10 - 15 players online.

Currently my servers instances are using this:

 11806 Mb TheIsland 	2 Players online	(about 3 Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)
  7729 Mb Ragnarok 	0 Players online	(less than a Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)
  7066 Mb Aberration_P 	1 Player online		(less than a Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)

Savefiles are this big:

380 MB	TheIsland
107 MB	Ragnarok
 43 MB	Aberration_P

 

(Server is running on Linux Debian)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@McBane @botterle @Thorium @DuoMog , thanks for advice ! 

Summarizing all mentioned above: 
- Linux is good for ARK. No reason to pay M$ for Windows license 
- 4 cores/8 threads O.C. to 4.5ghz  processor  makes players happy with performance
-  32 GB pc-24000 (3000 MHz) RAM  performance is good, size is enough for 2 populated maps, need another 32 to handle 4 maps.
- 1 physical host, all maps in cluster running as different instances with thei'r own game copy. All cores are separated with affinity setting, divided equally 
- SSD is better only to increase server starting speed.  No advantage in user's gameplay, due to small map size on disk and little amount of data written.  Ordinary 7200k 6gbit SATA-III is OK (less sound and less power consumption doesn't matter for me)
- external backups recommended 

Please, let me know if something wrong. Plan to buy hardware this week :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, McBane said:

Regarding memory (RAM) usage.
It depends on how long your server exists without wipe. My record was about 15G for only one map/server Instance. And this 15G where reached with only 10 - 15 players online.

Currently my servers instances are using this:


 11806 Mb TheIsland 	2 Players online	(about 3 Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)
  7729 Mb Ragnarok 	0 Players online	(less than a Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)
  7066 Mb Aberration_P 	1 Player online		(less than a Years old, Never wiped, autodestroy/autodecay enabled)

Savefiles are this big:


380 MB	TheIsland
107 MB	Ragnarok
 43 MB	Aberration_P

 

(Server is running on Linux Debian)

380 MB on island is insane for a save file. Probably a lot of garbage in it, which you can't really clean out without a wipe.

Also your memory usage is very high. Don't know if it's that high because it's the linux version but almost 12GB is extrem. Currently my Ragnarok server takes 5226 MB with 3 players online and it runs since september of last year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 13.3.2018 at 9:37 PM, Thorium said:

380 MB on island is insane for a save file. Probably a lot of garbage in it, which you can't really clean out without a wipe.

You are right, but I don't want to wipe the server.

On 13.3.2018 at 9:37 PM, Thorium said:

Also your memory usage is very high. Don't know if it's that high because it's the linux version but almost 12GB is extrem

It's directly related to the savefile. As far as I know. The savefile is a compressed version of your game progress and on start all the information gets uncompressed and loaded into RAM. After the start is finished, you could even completely delete the savefile and ARK wouldn't care, because it's all inside RAM.

 

Additionally, I guess every Mod used, will also increase RAM usage.

 

EDIT:

Well this is kindof ironic. I just said I won't wipe the map, but now I was forced to. My Island instance wasn't repairable anymore. Everytime it got started it was leaking memory and ate all my memory until the system killed it to save itself from crashing. This was happening in the past with my Aberration instance also. And I first saw this memory leak since the release of Aberration. So I guess this bug was kindof introduced with Aberration release. 
I'm so tired of all those bugs in a game, which isn't early access anymore.....

So now, with an empty TheIsland.ark Savefile but still all old User Savefiles. It isn't using much less RAM. I'm now at 9,8 GB RAM.

 

EDIT2:
Just for information. Further investigation showed it's not a corrupted savefile, but cause by "AutoDestroyStructures":

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi! 
Have planned opening ARK server, relatively large, ~300 players cap for cluster 
After digging forums some hardware- and os-related questions are still not clear to understand, so asking for help :-) 

Hardware /software config
Spoiler I7-7700k (4C/8T@4,2) / 32 gb 3000 mem / sata 6gbs,   raid 1, 2x2tb drives
Hardware firewall , 100 mbs inet connection 
Ubuntu + LGSM scripts
S+ and 1-2 light mods for players ease of living

Questions 
- Hardware config 
  • Is 32GB is enough for Scorched, Center, Ragnarok and Aberration + mentioned quantity of players? (mem mb/player varies very wide in different posts, what's the current situation in real world?)
  • Is HDD config enough for peak disk IOPS performance? 
- Software
  1. is rumors about windows (comparing to linux) better memory usage for ARK server are still a rumors?
  2. 'Classic' setup is 4 Users (1 per map) for 4 maps leads to 4 copies of ARK and longer downtime in updates. Makes it easier, to be honest. 
    Is 1 user and 4 tasks (1 copy of ark , 4 different configs) have any  bright sides comparing to 4 copies? Is it have any problems running in LGSM envirorment?
  3. -useallawailablecore for all configs(maps) is safe? Or it's better to config 2 cores for each of config(map) and forget about load balancing? Is useallawailablecore still leads to stability issues?
  4. RawUDPSocket problem is still persist? 
  5. Any configuration tips for Ubuntu, except maximizing open files limits?
  6. What is HDD space consumption in 2-3 month playtime? Seen numbers 500gb-1Tb for similar workload. is it true? 
Thanks in advance for your help!

 
On linux use systemctl metod described in wiki, ubuntu 16.04 has steamcmd in repositories. On 14 i had to enable systemctl and install steamcmd.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...