What do I need to make a PC hosted dedicated server run better?

[HulkyThicc]

What do I need to make a PC hosted dedicated server run better?

I know this might seem like a "a better PC" type of question (which technically, yea), but what is it exactly that I need to have to make my dedicated server run smoother? As in, no stutters, lag spikes, etc.

I'm playing with 3 people including me right now on my PC, and it's running good, but there are some times that it does get a tiny bit laggy. Mainly when we go into different areas of the map.

My first thought was RAM (memory) as when I open task manager when hosting the server, my ram is normally around 80%, CPU 10%, GPU 8%, but when I actually play the game, I sit at around 20% RAM, 90% GPU, CPU 30%. 

I'd just like to know if it makes a difference on what to upgrade. Thanks!

[Larkfields]

It's not recommended to play the game on the same PC that is acting as the server.
You should have one core (two threads) available for each map that your server is hosting.
Memory - somewhere between 6 and 8GB on the server, per map.

Lag can happen as you move from one area to another.  The maps are split into areas that get loaded into RAM as they are required - and removed when not required.  That's how Ark works (and lots of other games with large maps) and you can't do much about it because the whole map would be simply too big to sit in memory.

Lag spikes can happen when you go near large bases, or go into a boss fight, or when people login to a map.  Again, not much you can do about this, and lag will get worse as bases grow and the number of tamed dinos grows.

Using an SSD will help a lot if you don't already have one.

 

[HulkyThicc]

4 hours ago, Larkfields said:

It's not recommended to play the game on the same PC that is acting as the server.
You should have one core (two threads) available for each map that your server is hosting.
Memory - somewhere between 6 and 8GB on the server, per map.

Lag can happen as you move from one area to another.  The maps are split into areas that get loaded into RAM as they are required - and removed when not required.  That's how Ark works (and lots of other games with large maps) and you can't do much about it because the whole map would be simply too big to sit in memory.

Lag spikes can happen when you go near large bases, or go into a boss fight, or when people login to a map.  Again, not much you can do about this, and lag will get worse as bases grow and the number of tamed dinos grows.

Using an SSD will help a lot if you don't already have one.

 

Thank you for the reply! And, I'm not playing on the same PC. As far as I know, you can only have 1 instance of a game running without doing extra stuff to get 2 instances open.

I have more than enough memory now (had 8GB for the last week of hosting, but just got 32GB today).

I know lag can happen when trying to load in new chunks of the map, but I wanted to know if anything from my PC can lower the amount of lag it gave the game if I say, upgraded it.

Funnily enough, going near my base my game is fine, but if I'm riding my bird, then jump off of him inside of the base, I get a 2-4 second lag spike where my screen freezes.

Other than that, the only lag spikes I get are movement spikes, where when you go to sprint with certain dinos, the game keeps giving you little sprint boosts, and it looks very weird.

And I would move this game to my SSD, but I currently only have 130GB on it left, and this game is 90GB+. So I'd rather not fill the rest of my drive with this game ?

[invincibleqc]

54 minutes ago, HulkyThicc said:

Thank you for the reply! And, I'm not playing on the same PC. As far as I know, you can only have 1 instance of a game running without doing extra stuff to get 2 instances open.

I have more than enough memory now (had 8GB for the last week of hosting, but just got 32GB today).

I know lag can happen when trying to load in new chunks of the map, but I wanted to know if anything from my PC can lower the amount of lag it gave the game if I say, upgraded it.

Funnily enough, going near my base my game is fine, but if I'm riding my bird, then jump off of him inside of the base, I get a 2-4 second lag spike where my screen freezes.

Other than that, the only lag spikes I get are movement spikes, where when you go to sprint with certain dinos, the game keeps giving you little sprint boosts, and it looks very weird.

And I would move this game to my SSD, but I currently only have 130GB on it left, and this game is 90GB+. So I'd rather not fill the rest of my drive with this game ?

What is your internet speed? Is your local network configured to prioritize the machine hosting the server?

[HulkyThicc]

2 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

What is your internet speed? Is your local network configured to prioritize the machine hosting the server?

Speeds are 300-450Mbps down, and 15-25Mbps up.

I'm wired to a NETGEAR router next to my setup for more ports, and that router is wired to the main router downstairs.

My router is set in extender mode so it acts like a hotspot so I can connect more devices close by to the main network.

All-in-all, it shouldn't be the internet.

-------

How would I go about prioritizing my PC for the network? And would it do me that much better than I am now?

[IanHighlander]

Disk read/write speed is one of the biggest issues for running Ark servers providing you have the CPU power and RAM in place.

As someone has already said you need two cores per server on the CPU and it's better to dedicate them to that Ark server. If you have Hyperthreading enabled and a CPU that support HT then this can be one physical core (2 vcores). Just add /affinity followed by the affinity code for the cores you want to assign to that instance into your start up command.

For example, the below is part of my start up command for our Ragnarok server which uses vcores 2 and 3 on the processor. The /normal means normal processor priority and the /affinity 0C tells it which cores to use.

start "HighlandFox Private ARK Server 15" /normal /affinity 0C "N:\Ark Server Manager\Profiles\Servers\HighlandFox Private ARK Server 15\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\ShooterGameServer.exe"

I run five dedicated servers on a hexacore Xeon X5690, one physical core per server with a physical core left to run the host system. 24GB RAM is more than enough in my case as our server cluster is quite quiet.

The only thing slowing my servers down is disk speed. I run mine on a RAID 6 array of Western Digital Black hard drives, but even though they are one of the fastest standard hard drives available, they are the bottle neck on the system. One day if I can be bothered/can afford it, I'll migrate them onto SSDs.

Four servers idling on my server with two players online (fifth is offline temporarily).

[HulkyThicc]

8 hours ago, IanHighlander said:

Disk read/write speed is one of the biggest issues for running Ark servers providing you have the CPU power and RAM in place.

As someone has already said you need two cores per server on the CPU and it's better to dedicate them to that Ark server. If you have Hyperthreading enabled and a CPU that support HT then this can be one physical core (2 vcores). Just add /affinity followed by the affinity code for the cores you want to assign to that instance into your start up command.

For example, the below is part of my start up command for our Ragnarok server which uses vcores 2 and 3 on the processor. The /normal means normal processor priority and the /affinity 0C tells it which cores to use.

start "HighlandFox Private ARK Server 15" /normal /affinity 0C "N:\Ark Server Manager\Profiles\Servers\HighlandFox Private ARK Server 15\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\ShooterGameServer.exe"

I run five dedicated servers on a hexacore Xeon X5690, one physical core per server with a physical core left to run the host system. 24GB RAM is more than enough in my case as our server cluster is quite quiet.

The only thing slowing my servers down is disk speed. I run mine on a RAID 6 array of Western Digital Black hard drives, but even though they are one of the fastest standard hard drives available, they are the bottle neck on the system. One day if I can be bothered/can afford it, I'll migrate them onto SSDs.

Four servers idling on my server with two players online (fifth is offline temporarily).

You seem know a lot about this.

I don't start my server like that. I just go into the game, and host it from the "Dedicated Server" option right in the menu. I assume the reason you have to do the launch command is because you're using an actual server to run the game and not a PC?

I can't tell you what my HDD is, but I know it's a Western Digital... and that it's an HDD, not an SSD.

As of right now, here are the main specs of my PC;

GPU - 1080Ti,
CPU - i7 8700K,
RAM - 32GB (4x8GB), DDR4, 3600MHz, C18

I know these specs are decent enough to run a server as I don't have many issues except for the occasional lag spike here / there.

One more question, I here people talking about "Cluster Servers". What are they exactly? I know it's different maps and what not, but what's the difference between a cluster server, and just making a server for each map individually? 

Anyway, thanks for the reply (and your time)!

[Larkfields]

Cluster servers run several maps that are linked and allow players to transfer their character and dinos between the maps.  Both Ian and I run clusters.

I use a windows PC (with Windows 10 Pro) to run 7 maps (Island, Rag, Ab, SE, etc) that are clustered.  It's specced like a good gaming PC but with the cheapest graphics card I could get because the server doesn't display anything other than text.

 

[IanHighlander]

The server installation is also much smaller as it doesn't contain all the graphical resources. I wasn't even aware the game did a "dedicated server" option from the menu, learn something every day, I knew it did a non-dedicated option but not a dedicated.

If you're running your dedi server on a seperate machine (you don't need that stonking graphics card in it though), you don't need the game installed as a normal steam game at all, you run the server install of the software which just runs a command prompt. My server running four Ark servers below:

You could do worse than to look at Ark Server Manager which makes deploying them a lot easier if you don't know what you're doing, in fact to be perfectly honest even if you do. I use it to host my entire cluster and some test servers and whilst I do a lot more complex scheduling and backups etc outside of ASM it makes general setup a LOT easier.

[HulkyThicc]

1 hour ago, IanHighlander said:

The server installation is also much smaller as it doesn't contain all the graphical resources. I wasn't even aware the game did a "dedicated server" option from the menu, learn something every day, I knew it did a non-dedicated option but not a dedicated.

If you're running your dedi server on a seperate machine (you don't need that stonking graphics card in it though), you don't need the game installed as a normal steam game at all, you run the server install of the software which just runs a command prompt. My server running four Ark servers below:

You could do worse than to look at Ark Server Manager which makes deploying them a lot easier if you don't know what you're doing, in fact to be perfectly honest even if you do. I use it to host my entire cluster and some test servers and whilst I do a lot more complex scheduling and backups etc outside of ASM it makes general setup a LOT easier.

Question. Since I host my server on the Microsoft store version of Windows which requires me to be logged into an account through the Console Companion App, is there anyway I can host the server on my PC, then still play the game on my PC?

As right now, this is what I have to do;

- I made a dummy account to host the server with,
- Sign all instances of my main Xbox account out,
- Logged in with the dummy account, 
- Launch the game, and host the server.

Now, here's the issue. If I say, wanted to still play on my PC, and I go to launch ARK I'll receive an error message stating "You're already running this game on another account. Do you want to switch accounts?" or something along the lines of that. So I'm therefor forced to host the dedicated on my PC, and play the game on my Xbox in all that 30 FPS goodness ?

I haven't thought of a workaround to this yet, as I don't know how I could be signed into 2 Xbox accounts at once on the same PC. If you have any ideas or suggestions (that won't have a side affect of maybe deleting / corrupting my world as it's already happened), I'm all ears.

-------

 

 

5 hours ago, Larkfields said:

Cluster servers run several maps that are linked and allow players to transfer their character and dinos between the maps.  Both Ian and I run clusters.

I use a windows PC (with Windows 10 Pro) to run 7 maps (Island, Rag, Ab, SE, etc) that are clustered.  It's specced like a good gaming PC but with the cheapest graphics card I could get because the server doesn't display anything other than text.

 

Thank you for the information. So, is it worth doing it? Can you just load into the map and then have your dinos spawn right next to you? Or do you need to run to an Obelisk to retrieve them?

[IanHighlander]

I know nothing about the Microsoft Store version I'm afraid other than you have to use that one if you want to crossplay with Xbox. Mine are all Steam Ark servers.

[HulkyThicc]

10 minutes ago, IanHighlander said:

I know nothing about the Microsoft Store version I'm afraid other than you have to use that one if you want to crossplay with Xbox. Mine are all Steam Ark servers.

Ah, alright. Thank you anyway, man! I appreciate the information. Have a good day!

[HulkyThicc]

@IanHighlander Whilst I have you here, though. With server commands on the Windows 10 version (maybe it happens on the Steam version hence why I'm asking), when a user in the server enters a command like "cheat gamma 3" or "cheat stat fps", etc, I see the changes happening on my PC which is hosting the server. None of them actually go to the users.

But if a user does a command like "cheat settargetdinocolor 0 1" or "cheat settimeofday 1:00:00" they work. Now this confuses me because I thought maybe commands that modify the server don't work with users, but the timeofday one changes the global time in-game. So I don't think it's that.

If you have any ideas, please let me know!

[Larkfields]

some commands don't need "cheat" in front of them.  Try   gamma 3   without "cheat".