Server for beginning game developing team.

[Xan]

Some info beforehand.

I have studied Windows Server for small to medium businesses and Ubuntu Servers for custom hardware and data.
But now I'm studying Game Development but as far as i know we will see pretty much nothing about servers and multiplayer for games.

I have an idea for a fast paced first person shooter with multiplayer.
I have told my idea to a good friend of mine who is a PR manager for an organisation that searches for sponsors for other people (for a fee ofcourse).

Now i have to pitch my idea and business plan to the organisation to get a sponsorship.
My estimated costs for  2 years of development with 4 part time workers will most probably end me up with a budget of €15 000 for a server and networking within my business, but I don't know much about requirements for my server to serve my needs. 

Now the situation

I would like to run a :

- 12TB (4*4TB with 4 extra empty slots) storage server with RAID 5 to store all files (photoshop, unity and/or unreal, 3D models and others).
- Up to 4 instances unity or unreal multiplayer servers with 16 concurrent players per server.

- A custom 10 Gigabit network throughout my working space for many devices.

 

I was thinking of :

- An 12 core xeon or i9 ( 2 cores per gaming server, 2 for networking and 2 for storage) 

- 32 GB of Non-ECC RAM (4 for each gaming server, 12 for storage, 4 for the rest)

- A 500 GB M.2 drive for OS in
- A large tower case with

- A low powered graphics card

- 1 ethernet card with 2 ports each with 10 gigabit

- A 12 port 1 gigabit switch with 10 gigabit connections to the main server.)

 

Older edit errors

(- 1 ethernet card with 4 ports each with 40 gigabit

- A couple of 10 gigabit swithes with 40 gigabit connections to the main server.)

 

*Edit: My calculation was wrong. I meant server  with 2*10 gigabit connections with a 12 port 1 gigabit switch with a 10 gigabit connection to the server

[leham]

if you are just starting out, do you actually need this expensive server to get development started?

How many people do you have currently in your team?

 

How does the PR manager come into play here? 

[Xan]

I accidently pressed tab and then enter and uploaded before i was finished typing.

 

[leadeater]

Do you actually need 10Gb networking? If you work with local assets during dev then upload to network storage that's a big outlay just to reduce that time. You can work directly off network storage but the added cost over a decent sized local SSD per workstation doesn't make it worth it until you have a lot of workstations. Four disks in RAID 5 isn't actually going to give you a great amount of performance either, around 200-350 MB/s.

 

Personally I would buy a QNAP NAS for the storage and then get a separate game hosting server or use a rented cloud hosted/VPS service when you actually need to have an instance running. Keep your costs down if you can, you'll likely have a lot of unforeseen expenses so it's good not to splash out on a bunch of hardware you ultimately don't actually need.

[leham]

1 minute ago, Xan said:

I accidently pressed tab and then enter and uploaded before i was finished typing.

 

ok, however my question(s) still stand.

Are you wanting to make a game or just need an excuse to build a nice server and network?

Invest in your game and team first, not a sever that might not actually get used. 

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, Xan said:

I was thinking of an 12 core xeon or i9 with 32 GB of Non-ECC RAM, a 500 GB M.2 drive for OS in a large tower pc with a low powered grapphics card, 1 ethernet card with 4 ports each with 40 gigabit and a couple of 10 gigabit swithes with 40 gigabit connections to the main server.

This is completely excessive, you won't need that kind of networking or the much CPU power to run a few game server instances.

 

Why do you think you need so much network throughput and CPU power?

[Xan]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

This is completely excessive, you won't need that kind of networking or the much CPU power to run a few game server instances.

 

Why do you think you need so much network throughput and CPU power?

Network: I'll need to transport huge files (gigabytes) through the network and don't want to saturate it if multiple people want to save something at the same time.

CPU: to be safe for future possible expansion. beter be safe than buying a new cpu in 1 year.

[Xan]

13 minutes ago, leham said:

ok, however my question(s) still stand.

Are you wanting to make a game or just need an excuse to build a nice server and network?

Invest in your game and team first, not a sever that might not actually get used. 

If my proposal gets accepted i can get a budget of over €100 000 (my estimated is €100 000, but the sponsors will most probably give more as failsafe according to my contact).
And I don't want to be bottlenecked by a bad networking environment.

[Xan]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Do you actually need 10Gb networking? If you work with local assets during dev then upload to network storage that's a big outlay just to reduce that time. You can work directly off network storage but the added cost over a decent sized local SSD per workstation doesn't make it worth it until you have a lot of workstations. Four disks in RAID 5 isn't actually going to give you a great amount of performance either, around 200-350 MB/s.

 

Personally I would buy a QNAP NAS for the storage and then get a separate game hosting server or use a rented cloud hosted/VPS service when you actually need to have an instance running. Keep your costs down if you can, you'll likely have a lot of unforeseen expenses so it's good not to splash out on a bunch of hardware you ultimately don't actually need.

I would much rather prefer to have everything centralized.

I would like to follow my worker's progress without having to nag for them to upload stuff.

I don't want my code to be interceptable by other people, so i would like to keep it in my own realms with my  own protection rather than let a third party handle it.

 

[Xan]

I know the networking is a bit OP, but the cores i'll definitely need for QA test from a decent sized group.

 

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Xan said:

Network: I'll need to transport huge files (gigabytes) through the network and don't want to saturate it if multiple people want to save something at the same time.

CPU: to be safe for future possible expansion. beter be safe than buying a new cpu in 1 year.

Well you won't need 40Gb for that and you'll need way more HDDs to get anywhere near 10Gb performance.

 

How are you going to utilize the network storage at the workstation end and with the software, do you even know if the software you will be using even supports working off a mapped network drive? If not you're blowing a whole bunch of money to speed up the end of day file transfer for completed work.

 

Better hardware is highly unlikely to give any real benefit towards improve productivity.

 

Plus the budget you just listed won'y cover what you're talking about, not even a tenth of it. Do you have any idea how expensive switches are with 40Gb interfaces let alone 10Gb?

[Xan]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well you won't need 40Gb for that and you'll need way more HDDs to get anywhere near 10Gb performance.

 

How are you going to utilize the network storage at the workstation end and with the software, do you even know if the software you will be using even supports working off a mapped network drive? If not you're blowing a whole bunch of money to speed up the end of day file transfer for completed work.

 

Better hardware is highly unlikely to give any real benefit towards improve productivity.

 

Plus the budget you just listed won'y cover what you're talking about, not even a tenth of it. Do you have any idea how expensive switches are with 40Gb interfaces let alone 10Gb?

Fair point.

Like I said: 'I don't know much about requirements for my server to serve my needs.'
It are just my thoughts as a normal hardware enthousiast.

I would certainly prefer if you would tell me what to use, but I would still prefer to have it in my own space and not just on a third party location.

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Xan said:

I would much rather prefer to have everything centralized.

I would like to follow my worker's progress without having to nag for them to upload stuff.

Automated backups to NAS. Manage your code through proper toolsets and repositories so it's hosted on the server but developers check out the code to their local workstations then checked back in and versioned properly, you'll honestly be sunk in months if you don't do this. There is a reason why Git, Jira, Jenkins etc exist

 

9 minutes ago, Xan said:

I don't want my code to be interceptable by other people, so i would like to keep it in my own realms with my  own protection rather than let a third party handle it.

You wouldn't be uploaded unprotected code and hosted servers don't have to have public access at all. You should be signing your code when you build it so it cannot be modified and you have proof of ownership.

 

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, Xan said:

I would certainly prefer if you would tell me what to use, but I would still prefer to have it in my own space and not just on a third party location.

It's too hard to say what you need without knowing how the workstations intend to be setup and what tools you will be using. I'd focus less on what hardware you need and more on your development workflow, find the tools/software that will fit those requirements i.e. Jenkins for automated code compiling and versioning and Git/BitBucket to store your actual code.

 

Once you know what you need software wise you'll be able to tie those to hardware requirements, don't drive decision making with hardware because that's actually the least important thing.

[Xan]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's too hard to say what you need without knowing how the workstations intend to be setup and what tools you will be using. I'd focus less on what hardware you need and more on your development workflow, find the tools/software that will fit those requirements i.e. Jenkins for automated code compiling and versioning and Git/BitBucket to store your actual code.

 

Once you know what you need software wise you'll be able to tie those to hardware requirements, don't drive decision making with hardware because that's actually the least important thing.

I'm intending to put 2 pc's for 2 gameplay programmers: an i5 and gtx 1050ti 

1 pc for game graphics designer: i3 with a 1060 6GB

2 all-rounders pc for myself and my friend who is also studying with me: an i5 with 1060 6GB.

Each with an 240 GB M.2 and 16 GB of RAM.

Also 1 PS4 pro and PS5 dev kit, 1 Xbox One X dev kit.

 

Not sure what software i'll be using to keep tabs on progression, but i know what software we'll use to develop the game.

 

[AbsoluteFool]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

Some info beforehand.

I have studied Windows Server for small to medium businesses and Ubuntu Servers for custom hardware and data.
But now I'm studying Game Development but as far as i know we will see pretty much nothing about servers and multiplayer for games.

I have an idea for a fast paced first person shooter with multiplayer.
I have told my idea to a good friend of mine who is a PR manager for an organisation that searches for sponsors for other people (for a fee ofcourse).

Now i have to pitch my idea and business plan to the organisation to get a sponsorship.
My estimated costs for  2 years of development with 4 part time workers will most probably end me up with a budget of €15 000 for a server and networking within my business, but I don't know much about requirements for my server to serve my needs. 

Now the situation

I would like to run a :

- 12TB (4*4TB with 4 extra empty slots) storage server with RAID 5 to store all files (photoshop, unity and/or unreal, 3D models and others).
- Up to 4 instances unity or unreal multiplayer servers with 16 concurrent players per server.

- A custom 10 Gigabit network throughout my working space for many devices.

 

I was thinking of :

- An 12 core xeon or i9 ( 2 cores per gaming server, 2 for networking and 2 for storage) 

- 32 GB of Non-ECC RAM (4 for each gaming server, 12 for storage, 4 for the rest)

- A 500 GB M.2 drive for OS in
- A large tower case with

- A low powered graphics card

- 1 ethernet card with 2 ports each with 10 gigabit

- A 12 port 1 gigabit switch with 10 gigabit connections to the main server.)

 

Older edit errors

(- 1 ethernet card with 4 ports each with 40 gigabit

- A couple of 10 gigabit swithes with 40 gigabit connections to the main server.)

 

*Edit: My calculation was wrong. I meant server  with 2*10 gigabit connections with a 12 port 1 gigabit switch with a 10 gigabit connection to the server

The most common choice for game developers is to load unreal engine to the server. Most work is normally done on each of the stand alone computers that is synced back to the server.

 

When working with game development you want to consider a few things for the server itself.

 

CPU Speed 3+ Ghz is what most game developers recommend. You also want fast drives like SAS drives or SSD drives, SATA is probably fine for storage. You internet connection doesen't need to be 10GB, 1GB will be more than enough. But you wont get this unless you can read/write 1GB to the server.

 

P.S to my knowledge unity cannot be loaded onto a server yet. You'll probably have to research if this has changed.

[Xan]

6 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

The most common choice for game developers is to load unreal engine to the server. Most work is normally done on each of the stand alone computers that is synced back to the server.

 

When working with game development you want to consider a few things for the server itself.

 

CPU Speed 3+ Ghz is what most game developers recommend. You also want fast drives like SAS drives or SSD drives, SATA is probably fine for storage. You internet connection doesen't need to be 10GB, 1GB will be more than enough. But you wont get this unless you can read/write 1GB to the server.

 

P.S to my knowledge unity cannot be loaded onto a server yet. You'll probably have to research if this has changed.

Ok good to know that. 
Then i'll go with the i9.

[leadeater]

45 minutes ago, Xan said:

I'm intending to put 2 pc's for 2 gameplay programmers: an i5 and gtx 1050ti 

1 pc for game graphics designer: i3 with a 1060 6GB

2 all-rounders pc for myself and my friend who is also studying with me: an i5 with 1060 6GB
Also 1 PS4 pro and PS5 dev kit, 1 Xbox One X dev kit.

 

Not sure what software i'll be using to keep tabs on progression, but i know what software we'll use to develop the game.

I would contact a local authorized Supermicro reseller and get them to part out a server and workstation build for you, they do both as well as gaming systems so if you do all of it with them you're more likely to get good pricing.

 

I would also get a smaller server rack, 12U to 24U, to put the equipment in and use a rackmount server not a tower, towers have limited HDD bays. Something like this is a good base platform as you won't need dual socket, will need to add a dual port SFP+ NIC to it but reseller can sort all that stuff out.

https://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/system/2U/5028/SSG-5028R-E1CR12L.cfm

 

Allied Telesis are very well priced so something like an x510-28GTX will do everything you need, HPE also have similar well priced switch options. I don't really like Netgear or D-Link myself so I avoid them and Cisco isn't exactly price competitive.

[Xan]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I would contact a local authorized Supermicro reseller and get them to part out a server and workstation build for you, they do both as well as gaming systems so if you do all of it with them you're more likely to get good pricing.

 

I would also get a smaller server rack, 12U to 24U, to put the equipment in and use a rackmount server not a tower, towers have limited HDD bays. Something like this is a good base platform as you won't need dual socket, will need to add a dual port SFP+ NIC to it but reseller can sort all that stuff out.

https://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/system/2U/5028/SSG-5028R-E1CR12L.cfm

 

Allied Telesis are very well priced so something like an x510-28GTX will do everything you need, HPE also have similar well priced switch options. I don't really like Netgear or D-Link myself so I avoid them and Cisco isn't exactly price competitive.

Thank you for the tip about Supermicro. 

I was not sure if it would be better to choose a server rack or a decent tower to start with.

And it appears that we have the same taste about networking manufacturers. 

[Wakes Inc]

If you are willing to buy some used equipment, 10g networking is definitely within your reach if you still want it.  Used dell switches with sfp+ ports are pretty cheap, at least in the states.  Not sure about europe.