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What PC specs would i need to host a server cluster


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What PC specs would i need to host a server cluster

Hello, I am quite interested in hosting my own ARK cluster server for personal use, and after being dissuaded from using 3rd party hosts from my previous post, i want to try hosting the server myself

i wish to know the kind of specs that i would need to have to handle the servers, so that i can go out and buy the parts so i can cobble up a PC capable of handling it.

I should note that i would like to host 6 servers in this cluster with each server only having 20 spots. Im not what you would call a computer wiz, so please try to go easy on me with the computer terms :)

Thanks in advance to anyone whom replies to my post!

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Hello, 

you can easily run an ARK server on the pc you are playing ARK with no incidence on the game.  You can start a second server with no problem too.  If you are alone, you need 2 server up only for  the time you "transfert", you cant transfert to a non running server but you can close the non used after...

 

This is what i do, i have a cluster of all 8 officials maps with 1 server installation (and 1 config files).  

 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Th3Gr1zzlyK1ng said:

What PC specs would i need to host a server cluster

Hello, I am quite interested in hosting my own ARK cluster server for personal use, and after being dissuaded from using 3rd party hosts from my previous post, i want to try hosting the server myself

i wish to know the kind of specs that i would need to have to handle the servers, so that i can go out and buy the parts so i can cobble up a PC capable of handling it.

I should note that i would like to host 6 servers in this cluster with each server only having 20 spots. Im not what you would call a computer wiz, so please try to go easy on me with the computer terms :)

Thanks in advance to anyone whom replies to my post!

Im kinda in the same boat myself....a lil private server for me and a couple people I know.....some on xbox, others on pc with the Microsoft version, and Im digging around on what it would take. So far from what Iv seen and heard, lotsa ram. A fair CPU, and SSD is best.....will follow this post to see what pops up

 

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Ive ran a cluster for a few years, started off with an i5 with 16gb ram - the server had a few issues when 20+ ppl were on at the same time bc of the processor. 

So, I upgraded to a Ryzen 9 16x core processor, 64gb ram, 3TB storage - no issues at all in server performance.  (7 map cluster)

My plan is to upgrade to a threadripper sometime in the future to further reduce server computation times for player actions. The more powerful the processor you run the servers off of the better the server experience will be. It doesnt matter what GPU your server box has bc ARK servers are CPU intensive, they dont use GPU's. 

It is important to point out tho that running just 1 ARK server will cost you about 4.5GB ram so keep that in mind and think twice about being cheap on ram. Ideally you need a more powerful processor if u plan on running a full cluster. An i5 can barely run 4 servers and even then you have computation issues with server lag due to player stress on them. 

That's my 2 cents, hope it helps. You obviously have entire control over your own cluster and can use ARK API on it as opposed to the Nitrado kind of server hosting where u cant really do that (not to my knowledge at least). More options for running a dedicated machine for ARK servers. And no, you really cant run a 7 map cluster off of the same machine you play the game on, not even a threadripper would be able to handle your game client and running 7 map servers at the same time so dont even try it, trust me on this. 

EDIT: Run TeamViewer on the computer you run the servers off of. And ofc use ASM to run the servers from/update etc. Linux is a big headache but it is more stable. The GUI route is less work to do admin wise and there is a good deal of work involved in keeping a cluster up. Never forget to do backups every now and then, things will break eventually and you really will need them. Just remote into the computer, disable the win10 updater bc if the machine restarts and the servers are still running, closing them down like that has a high potential to cause corrupted files and break things - same goes for power loss as in your power goes out or flickers and the machine goes down. You may spend the next reboot starting off a backup worldsave file. Good luck, i'd point you to a guide on how to do this stuff but there really isnt one. 

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Running a server doesn't require a very powerful PC, for an ideal setup you will want 2 cores, and 6gb RAM per map you are wanting to run. Faster processors will help but your can run a successful server on a 2.2Ghz Xeon processor but may start to run into performance issues if you have several players online simultaneously or a few moving large amounts of resources around. SSD's will improve your startup times significantly and may help if you have many players on at the same time but generally the disk usage is pretty low once the server is up. I highly recommend Ark Server Manager especially if you aren't very computer savvy it simplifies the configuration, deploying, setting up backups and auto updates. Depending on where you live you can find inexpensive enterprise servers for cheap I found the server below for $200 and I'm currently hosting 7 maps with no issues and have had up to 10 players on simultaneously on a single map. I should be able to expand to around 14 maps before I start running into limitations.

This is my hardware configuration:
Server Hardware: Dell Poweredge R720 rack mount server: Dual Xeon E5-2689 2.6Ghz processors, 144gb RAM, 7- 600gb SAS 15k Hard drives in RAID 10 (1- hot spare) I'm using Proxmox bare metal hypervisor to host a Windows 10 Virtual machine for the Ark servers with 16 processor cores and 48gb of RAM dedicated to the virtual machine. 

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