Gaming server

[Hemanth1047]

I am planning to build a gaming server using high end system like configuration of 32 gb Ram, 12 Gpu, AMD processor, 10 TB HDD,  and installing Citrix and creting 3 VM's installing Windows in each VM after installing games each user playing at same time is it possible. If not please suggest me to built.... 

[openthatchest]

5 minutes ago, Hemanth1047 said:

I am planning to build a gaming server using high end system like configuration of 32 gb Ram, 12 Gpu, AMD processor, 10 TB HDD,  and installing Citrix and creting 3 VM's installing Windows in each VM after installing games each user playing at same time is it possible. If not please suggest me to built.... 

how do you even accomplish this?

[factorialandha]

Ive never tried it this way, playing games over an RDP style connection probably isnt that great though, Although probably better than it used to be.

My recommendation would be to set up a VM or multiple VMs which haveaccess to the relevent Graphics cards, and then set up steam, so the games can be streamed via steam. 

 

However, i havent tried that yet myself to know how good it is.

 

Citrix might not be the best way for it though. 

[Hemanth1047]

1 minute ago, openthatchest said:

how do you even accomplish this?

I will implement this on suggestion. Will it be possible to built or not will it work or not.

 

[whoisjaya]

Sorry, posted in my wrong chrome tab... Oops

[Hemanth1047]

1 minute ago, factorialandha said:

Ive never tried it this way, playing games over an RDP style connection probably isnt that great though, Although probably better than it used to be.

My recommendation would be to set up a VM or multiple VMs which haveaccess to the relevent Graphics cards, and then set up steam, so the games can be streamed via steam. 

 

However, i havent tried that yet myself to know how good it is.

 

Citrix might not be the best way for it though. 

Ok thanks for the suggestion.

[openthatchest]

1 minute ago, Hemanth1047 said:

I will implement this on suggestion. Will it be possible to built or not will it work or not.

 

I suggest you check this out. this can be built in a server chassis right?

 

[Hemanth1047]

7 minutes ago, openthatchest said:

I suggest you check this out. this can be built in a server chassis right?

 

 

sure, thank you.

[Electronics Wizardy]

In order to do this correctly your spending a lot of money of software for citrix(free version isn't supported) and tesla gpu's that can be split up.

 

Id use intel cpu's as they generally more supported.

 

You want more ram that this.

 

To do it correctly your thinking 20K+ USD

[Hemanth1047]

20 k USD. that's a big wow surprise 

I will try this Tesla GPU's thanks for the suggestion.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Hemanth1047 said:

20 k USD. that's a big wow surprise 

I will try this Tesla GPU's thanks for the suggestion.

Its this for a personall project or what are you doing with it? Is this for a internet cafe?

 

Normally a few lowerend desktops is cheaper and will work well here.

[Hemanth1047]

I have a concept of creating online steam gaming.

soon I will share my document.

[AngryBeaver]

I could do this for FAR less than 20k.

 

Looking at your need for only 3 vm's.. you could really limit what you need to make this work and be more cost efficient.

 

I would grab up either intel I9 or a threadripper.

 

For 3 vms you could dedicate 4 cpu cores to each machine with the rest being use a shared processing power. Pick up 64 gb of ram to make sure you have enough to cover all the vm's. I would personally allocate 16gb to each VM and then leave the rest as a shared resource. You will want to get a motherboard with either 2 lan ports or pick up a nic to add another lan port... I would personally try to run 3 lan ports or upgrade to a 10gbe switch and buy a 10gbe nic. For what you will be doing network speed will matter. 3 x 1080's or 1080ti's

 

Now you will need to work out a storage solution. You could purchase a few disks and give them to their respect vm or you could run a shared raid which would also provide some redundancy in the event of a disk failure. You will want to make sure you are using ssd's here. Also you could make a local shared drive before the vm's.. this way large games only need to be installed once and not once per client.

 

Now you will need to decide on an OS. Server or regular. You will need to decide on the VM software you want to use.

 

So now once you have it all put together you will want to get your vms setup.. each should have 16gb ram, 1 gpu, access to probably 120gb of personal space and then access to the main game storage share. It should also have 4 cpu cores assigned. You will want to install steam on each VM and then user can just stream from the server. RDP doesn't work for gaming, and all of the other alternatives perform poorly. You should also take advantage of nvidia streaming too if you wanted.

 

This would give enough resources and power to insure a good experience for all using this to stream their game. It would also have enough shared resources in the way of cpu and ram to cover any spikes in usage from clients. The downside is everyone would need a station to play on still. These could be extremely cheap (you can use raspberry pi to stream if needed). You can also pick up retired dells for 150 ish which would probably be the best option. Then you just need your mouse,keyboard, headset, and monitor.

 

If I had to guess at cost... 6500 ish would be more than enough to cover server and hardware. That is going off of inflated GPU costs and ram costs.

[Hemanth1047]

thank you, i will follow you on this.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

snip

Problem is while this does work, its not supported and scaleable.

 

Nvidia geforce cards aren't supported in vms, there are workarounds for this, but then may cancel that in a later drive.

 

gpupassthough doesn't work well with threadripper, and can still have issues with x299.

 

The correct way is using the supported teslas, having vmware horizon or citrix. This is garanteed to work, has support, and wont be bricked due to update down the line or cause random crashes.

 

 

[AngryBeaver]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Problem is while this does work, its not supported and scaleable.

 

Nvidia geforce cards aren't supported in vms, there are workarounds for this, but then may cancel that in a later drive.

 

gpupassthough doesn't work well with threadripper, and can still have issues with x299.

 

The correct way is using the supported teslas, having vmware horizon or citrix. This is garanteed to work, has support, and wont be bricked due to update down the line or cause random crashes.

 

 

First it depends which VM you use. You could use server 2016 for example and launch vms from its builtin software. On top of that there are plenty of VMs that work with amd as it is used for servers too.

 

Lastly you are correct on issues with the GPU's, but that only applies when you are trying to split a gpu up between multiple vms. If you are just using them to view data locally on each vm you are fine... same for gaming, but if you want to split say gpu 1 for graphical calculations on vm 1 and 3 then that would not be supported and would cause issues, however he CAN assigned a gpu to each vm without issue.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

First it depends which VM you use. You could use server 2016 for example and launch vms from its builtin software. On top of that there are plenty of VMs that work with amd as it is used for servers too.

Normally with gaming vm's with desktop hardware you use gpu passthrough through vt-d and running a geoforce card in there isn't supported and has some issues, there are work arounds, but hypervisor doesn't matter here.

 

Remote fx in hyper-v has bad performance and using it for games is a bad idea. Server 2016 supports gpu passthrough but its much less supported and documented compared to kvm on linux.

 

4 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

however he CAN assigned a gpu to each vm without issue.

But there are issues when using geoforce gpu's, there not offically supported and the driver will give errors when installing.

[AngryBeaver]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Normally with gaming vm's with desktop hardware you use gpu passthrough through vt-d and running a geoforce card in there isn't supported and has some issues, there are work arounds, but hypervisor doesn't matter here.

 

Remote fx in hyper-v has bad performance and using it for games is a bad idea. Server 2016 supports gpu passthrough but its much less supported and documented compared to kvm on linux.

 

But there are issues when using geoforce gpu's, there not offically supported and the driver will give errors when installing.

2016 might be less supported and documented, but he is doing this from an enthusiast level project. Neither of those issues should be of much concern because he isn't trying to do anything mainstream with it.

 

I have messed around with a similar setup albeit using intel products, but I have not ran into issues installing drivers. I was however using VMware and not a full blown hypervisor. I have used server 2016 and it works well enough.. just doesn't feel as full featured as say vmware, but it works well enough and support for it will only get better moving forward.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, AngryBeaver said:

I have used server 2016 and it works well enough

Did you use gpu-passthrough in 2016? 

 

Im assuming you mean hyper-v

 

If your doing this as a fun project, you can do it much cheaper. Id use proxmox or ovirt or just use a favoirt linux distro with kvm for the hypervisor, Then make vm's and give them gpu's. Id stay away from threadripper due to iommu issues still.

 

If you want to do it correctly, your spending much more, but the cheaper option is probably fine until op starts making money from this.

 

 

[AngryBeaver]

I didn't see him as wanting to make money for it. 3 vm's justs looks like a home project. That being said the i9's are definitely a more powerful option, but i was going for most cost effective. 

[Hemanth1047]

Initially, this is a home project for now. if it works I will make it as a commercial,

My budget is 1500 USD for now, not more than that.because I am living in India that means 1,00,000 Rs that's a lot for me.but still I want to take a risk and try.. please help me.

 

I am an IT guy working in a small company, I am having this idea of creating an online stream for High-end gaming,

the user will be accessing the system from a long or short distance using high-speed internet with normal configuration system or laptop with VPN access or any other remote servers.  (is it worth trying ????)

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Hemanth1047 said:

Initially, this is a home project for now. if it works I will make it as a commercial,

My budget is 1500 USD for now, not more than that.because I am living in India that means 1,00,000 Rs that's a lot for me.but still I want to take a risk and try.. please help me.

 

I am an IT guy working in a small company, I am having this idea of creating an online stream for High-end gaming,

the user will be accessing the system from a long or short distance using high-speed internet with normal configuration system or laptop with VPN access or any other remote servers.  (is it worth trying ????)

If your goal is to make a business I wouldn't even try personally. There are already many companies doing this(google, microsoft, amazon, nvidia). They have huge datacenters and trust from their users.

 

If you want make a good front end for a user, its often cheaper to render a aws server and give it to a user than to host your own. Look at aws pricing. 

 

Anouther thing you have to think about if you want to make a business is licensing. You can't just give someone access to a server filled with games. You need contracts for those games, and normally you need to work with the publisher for this.

 

If you just have to have your buddies over and play games, id just get a few cheaper or used systems.