Cyber Server Solution

[paulvan]

Me and a friend made a small cyber in spain and right now we are looking into a united way to have all pc with the same games fully updated and we were thinking of a server based game disk unit, meaning that the games will be on the server while the client just looks to the server.

I found some nass solution on this forum but i asume (or atleast it doesnt seem to indicate anywhere) that those solutions are for one computer use only and now i was wondering if anybody already tried this and can maybe give us some tips of this solution and if it is feasable.

 

Sorry for mine english and thank for all possible suggestions and tips we appreciate it allot.

[brwainer]

What is a "cyber"? do you mean a cyber cafe, where people come in and rent computer time? If so, then I think you want to look into a Cache server, that sits in between the computers and the internet. When properly set up, when the first computer downloads a game update, the cache server will store it locally, and then the next computers that try to download that update will download it from the cache server instead.

[GDRRiley]

doccer has something to cache steam if I am not mistaken. 

[paulvan]

The problem is that the computers dont have any disk space anymore, but we have a 10tb server, the solution we want to try before buying more hdd was to try to load the games from the server, i have seen a implemantation in another gaming center where the computers have 120gb ssd and all games are loaded via a network disk and seems to load pretty quickly but ofcourse the staff wouldnt share any info about their setup (understandably) but im really curious how they managed to load 100pcs onto one server.

 

The cache server though is something ill look into as far as i have read it can be setup on docker and our server already uses docker for out game servers.

[brwainer]

If all games were downloaded via Steam, you could in theory share the same install directory for all the steam clients, but I’m sure this is really not a good idea in practice since you don’t know how each individual game handles temporary files and saves. Ditto for the other game managers (GoG Galaxy, Ubisoft’s, Blizzard’s, etc)

[Jarsky]

You should look at a Squid implementation. 

Not only can you do a local steam cache setup with it, you can also monitor and control access for your customers for the security of your business (e.g black market sites, porn, known phishing sites, etc....)

 

Edit: Misunderstood on the OP, see you want to centralize it. 

[Cool Guy]

I'm not an IT pro, but you could use a centralized storage, or perhaps use a SAN, and run high speed data from the SAN to the PCs, perhaps even having diskless computers, which might be best for the security (provided you had a network that could support the speed requirements).  

 

In additional you could also virtualise using GPU passthrough, Linus did this I believe when he setup one computer to provide gaming to several people.  This would actually give you the best control, because you could refresh the image every time a new user logged on, meaning the users have privacy, you would also have centralized control over the installed games and software installed on the images, it would give you and the users the most flexbility, because you have less worry about malware, about having to reinstall ALL the systems after a Windows release, stuff along those lines. 

 

And you could also still use the SAN, and you'd have the ability to make regular backups, and still have a centralized game cache.  I also hope you plan on running a domain, or having some other system so you can control resources and assign logins to regular or one-off users of the cyber cafe.