Spare server in DataCenter, Lets have some fun

[McxCZE]

Hey guys, 

 

Currently running my 1U AS 1012 G SuperMicro. I have ESXi and some spare room. I will be building another, however my family are ISP, and we have a room in Datacenter in Prague. I am renting out a 3x W2012 with RDPs to few accounting companies, and I will be building 2nd server just for fun. I am trying to find a way to make some fun project for myself and maybe get a little buck along the way. 

 

I was wondering how to use the "spare power" renting out TeamSpeak, or hosting games ? I was wondering about hosting King of the Hill Arma, but the terms are quite hard. I have 1GBps, Up and Down.

 

Any Ideas ? I was just used to create some solution and rent it out to someone, but always got stuck on a horde of lawyers and stuff like that....

 

Thanks for ideas o/.

 

Sorry for the same post here over and over again, but just shuffled through some of them, and there are a lot of people trying to rent out their home solutions which is something i would never even try to get money for. Since my servers are in datacenter. 

[Sauron]

What are its specs? If it's beefy enough you could rent it as a render box.

[McxCZE]

Affraid not that beefy for Render Box, But I could build something beefy enough, This one has a AMD Opteron 6212, old girl for a Rendering, but for hosting games I think its enough. 

[AbsoluteFool]

On 11/24/2018 at 1:15 PM, McxCZE said:

Affraid not that beefy for Render Box, But I could build something beefy enough, This one has a AMD Opteron 6212, old girl for a Rendering, but for hosting games I think its enough. 

You won't be running alot of game servers from that.. Honestly i don't even think people would pay to borrow a server with such CPU anymore.

[McxCZE]

Hmmmm, Thats interresting, I was kinda living in the old age where I thought the server was more RAM and Space based thing than a CPU based, Could you give me some example of games which dedicated servers rely heavily upon CPU ? How does it work nowadays ? Only think I got together was some Illegal WoW Vanilla via Mangos which didnt ate a thing CPU-wise. And CS 1.6... Thats where my "game-server" knowledge ends. And yeah, Minecraft. Also DayZ, but that would even top off that kinda CPU. 

 

[AbsoluteFool]

15 hours ago, McxCZE said:

Hmmmm, Thats interresting, I was kinda living in the old age where I thought the server was more RAM and Space based thing than a CPU based, Could you give me some example of games which dedicated servers rely heavily upon CPU ? How does it work nowadays ? Only think I got together was some Illegal WoW Vanilla via Mangos which didnt ate a thing CPU-wise. And CS 1.6... Thats where my "game-server" knowledge ends. And yeah, Minecraft. Also DayZ, but that would even top off that kinda CPU. 

 

Game servers want high CPU Ghz and tons of RAM, doesen't mean the CPU is unaffected. You'll also want CPUs with hyperthreading. The more cores the better for serval game servers in one machine.

 

The general idea behind game servers is that you have said CPU said RAM for each client. While the client doesen't use much CPU with each client added the CPU usage goes up along with the RAM usage. (But you knew this already) Different games are made in different ways. Like Minecraft will hog on your CPU if you don't allocate enough RAM, so will other games. So from a hosting perspective "Maybe make a few bucks" if your server starts lagging because you don't allocate correctly.

You also have to remember that games evolve over time, every new update makes the game need something. 

 

While there are things you could host (Except teamspeak) unless you want to pay for a reseller license. you can check into DNAS or Icecastt, should work quite nice on a server like that.

 

The easier way is to rent it as a dedicated box. Or try making your own little community with a few game servers.

[KuJoe]

The server is good, but the location will be the problem. When it comes to game and VoIP servers the location is really important because of latency. You'd be better off using it as something like a web or file server where latency doesn't matter.

[McxCZE]

40 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

The server is good, but the location will be the problem. When it comes to game and VoIP servers the location is really important because of latency. You'd be better off using it as something like a web or file server where latency doesn't matter.

Why would the location be the problem ? I am sitting on network spine 1GBps, in datacenter. I mean in Europe, location is fine, maybe for someone in U.S. its a problem... 

 

44 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Game servers want high CPU Ghz and tons of RAM, doesen't mean the CPU is unaffected. You'll also want CPUs with hyperthreading. The more cores the better for serval game servers in one machine.

 

The general idea behind game servers is that you have said CPU said RAM for each client. While the client doesen't use much CPU with each client added the CPU usage goes up along with the RAM usage. (But you knew this already) Different games are made in different ways. Like Minecraft will hog on your CPU if you don't allocate enough RAM, so will other games. So from a hosting perspective "Maybe make a few bucks" if your server starts lagging because you don't allocate correctly.

You also have to remember that games evolve over time, every new update makes the game need something. 

 

While there are things you could host (Except teamspeak) unless you want to pay for a reseller license. you can check into DNAS or Icecastt, should work quite nice on a server like that.

 

The easier way is to rent it as a dedicated box. Or try making your own little community with a few game servers.

O.k. so basically use it as a playground for me and my buddys to do some basic servers and stuff like that and play on that just for fun. I am kinda outdated so I still believed that games like CoD and other major titles like CS:GO still uses dedicated servers but to me it seems that almost every triple A title is either hosted by its developers or its a P2P, where one of the guys makes a server and other people kinda leech onto them.  Thx for info :)). 

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, McxCZE said:

Why would the location be the problem ? I am sitting on network spine 1GBps

The location would be good for somebody in your country, but once you get outside of your country the latency will become a problem. Also please stop saying you have 1GBps, you have 1Gbps which is a huge difference. Also the throughput has nothing to do with latency. Latency is more important the speed when it comes to games and VoIP.

[McxCZE]

3 hours ago, KuJoe said:

The location would be good for somebody in your country, but once you get outside of your country the latency will become a problem. Also please stop saying you have 1GBps, you have 1Gbps which is a huge difference. Also the throughput has nothing to do with latency. Latency is more important the speed when it comes to games and VoIP.

whoops, sorry, somehow managed to get the big B stucked inside that sentence. 

 

Pings... This is inside VM through VM dataswitch that leads to other VM which is Router OS, and that act as a DMZ/FW for the whole insides. Network diagram right underneath

 

 

This is the main source of internet, where people from China and Russian and Pakistan and India are...

 

And this is the safe haven for those packets who win the battle through the rough battlefield of MikroTIK Firewall ends up here. 

 

 

[KuJoe]

6 hours ago, McxCZE said:

Pings...

Unfortunately that doesn't mean much. Having 1ms latency within your own network doesn't show us anything, and yes, those Anycast IPs you are pinging are within the data center. You're welcome to continue this venture, it'll be a good learning experience at least. But if somebody complains about lag don't say "the server has a 1Gbps port" because that's not what causes lag.

[mynameisjuan]

7 hours ago, McxCZE said:

 

Something is off. Unless you are down the road at best you would never see latency that low. That like internal latency. 

 

Fiber loss is .8ms per 100 miles without any equipment involved. Fuck I get 2ms to my edge router about 45 miles away. 

[KuJoe]

5 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Something is off. Unless you are down the road at best you would never see latency that low. That like internal latency. 

 

Fiber loss is .8ms per 100 miles without any equipment involved. Fuck I get 2ms to my edge router about 45 miles away. 

It's 100% internal. I looked up the data center he's in and both Google and CloudFlare are peering with the IX there (NIX-CZ).

[mynameisjuan]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

It's 100% internal. I looked up the data center he's in and both Google and CloudFlare are peering with the IX there (NIX-CZ).

That makes more sense. Makes the test more useless. 

[McxCZE]

No the test is not useless it was to show you that there is no delay in VM swtich managed by ESXi. Offcourse I am sitting next to google and couldflare, and also to show you that I am really sitting on IX. I mean, where can you get faster internet ? We already established, that pings are not going to be problem against someone from Europe. 

 

I was only asking nicely if you guys, want any thing set up to play with or do something with it. I am not asking for money and I only wanted to do some group community fun with an old hardware that is sitting from 40% idle at this time, until I shuffle all my stuff out of it to my new server.... 

[AbsoluteFool]

13 hours ago, McxCZE said:

No the test is not useless it was to show you that there is no delay in VM swtich managed by ESXi. Offcourse I am sitting next to google and couldflare, and also to show you that I am really sitting on IX. I mean, where can you get faster internet ? We already established, that pings are not going to be problem against someone from Europe. 

 

I was only asking nicely if you guys, want any thing set up to play with or do something with it. I am not asking for money and I only wanted to do some group community fun with an old hardware that is sitting from 40% idle at this time, until I shuffle all my stuff out of it to my new server.... 

You said you wanted to rent out. Which implies you wanted money for a service. However internal tests are useless. You can't stimulate a network test internally and think it's the same from across the globe. If i take the same test to my second computer i'll end up with the same results. If i however get a friend from the states to do a test to my second computer the ping will be shit.

[mynameisjuan]

On 12/1/2018 at 3:07 PM, McxCZE said:

Offcourse I am sitting next to google and couldflare, and also to show you that I am really sitting on IX. I mean, where can you get faster internet ? We already established, that pings are not going to be problem against someone from Europe. 

Thats not how any of this works. 

[McxCZE]

9 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Thats not how any of this works. 

Please, do tell me, how it works. I am really curious now.

[mynameisjuan]

7 hours ago, McxCZE said:

Please, do tell me, how it works. I am really curious now.

Just because you have a peered cached server in the same CO it doesnt mean that latency will be good for everyone nor that speeds are as fast as they get

[AbsoluteFool]

You have to remember connections goes two ways. The test you did is internal. of course you will have great connection, because you're on the same network or very close to it. The way you can think about this is with a meassuring tape. If you pull out 2 meters you can probably read everything on it from 1-200 CM. But if you pull out 100 meters you will have a hard time to see the first centimeters. The same thing is true for internet. The longer a client have to travel to get to the host the higer the ping will be, equals to worse connection and higer delay on everything happening.

 

Since you have access to a "data center" you should know this.

[Tomiz]

I mean, he has proven to us with the pings that he is sitting on the spine of the network in Europe, wouldn't it be completely reasonable to assume that he doesn't have lag to anywhere else reasonably close in Europe?

 

Yes, he is pinging the same network - he is pinging google DNS located in THE Network Internet Exchange of the Czech Republic. He doesn't just have a cached google server on his own small network in some bumfuck god knows where, that's not how the internet works in Europe. He is literally sitting on the spine, the central point, of the entire internet of the entire country, and has barely any latency to it. I think it's reasonable to assume that his connection to anywhere in Europe is going to be as good as it gets. I don't see how any of this information is useless. How does the fact that he is sitting right next to the ultimate access point of the internet mean anything other than his connection is going to be good? I am having a hard time following y'all's logic.

[mynameisjuan]

2 hours ago, Tomiz said:

I mean, he has proven to us with the pings that he is sitting on the spine of the network in Europe, wouldn't it be completely reasonable to assume that he doesn't have lag to anywhere else reasonably close in Europe?

There is no network spine. He just has a cached server on site that can speed up some processes.

 

2 hours ago, Tomiz said:

that's not how the internet works in Europe. He is literally sitting on the spine, the central point, of the entire internet of the entire country, and has barely any latency to it.

No...no....just no.

 

I could have cache server in my NOC, so could our peers and we could all get 1ms latency to the cache. Doesnt mean there is a spine. If you are on his server and use Google's DNS it will take a few ms to get the record but it still has to be routed out to the world. There is no central point, no spine, no main hub. Its a spider web of connectivity with no singular entity.  

 

2 hours ago, Tomiz said:

How does the fact that he is sitting right next to the ultimate access point of the internet mean anything other than his connection is going to be good? I am having a hard time following y'all's logic.

You have no fucking clue how networking works do you?

 

This comment pissed me off so I made a simple diagram:

 

So as you see having a cached server on site means nothing. Yes you can get common records faster for DNS request but that mean jack all when it comes to actually traversing the internet. So in my example, web pages would resolve faster because if the entry was not in my DNS cache, it would take less time to pull the record from its root. 

 

Someone who connects to his server from say Australia will have say 140ms of latency. It always will, you cannot break the law of physics. His connection is no faster than any server in any NOC across the globe. There is no single route nor a single destination for all internet traffic. 

 

There is no spine or central point either. Web servers are hosted all around the world. While a site 20 miles aways from him might be faster for him but how about across the world with a site located 20 miles from me? You cannot based your post on perspective. 

 

There is it easier to follow now.

[Tomiz]

Quote

There is no network spine. He just has a cached server on site that can speed up some processes.

Allow me to disagree. This is the website of NIX-CZ, the point he connects to. https://www.nix.cz/en

 

It calls itself the largest neutral internet exchange point in the country. I googled around and it's often called "internet backbone". He is right next to that backbone, therefore his connection is about the closes to everything else you can get in that geographical location - which is the centre of Europe..

 

Quote

I could have cache server in my NOC, so could our peers and we could all get 1ms latency to the cache. Doesnt mean there is a spine. If you are on his server and use Google's DNS it will take a few ms to get the record but it still has to be routed out to the world. There is no central point, no spine, no main hub. Its a spider web of connectivity with no singular entity. 

Nobody here is stupid enough to think the internet has a centre - but it does have a structure, doesn't it. I am European myself, no clue about you, but our networks are structured and I am familiar with the term that could be translated as a "spinal network", or as google more commonly uses network backbone, which is a big internet exchange point which more exist of that have a strong connection between them. I am certain such things exist everywhere.

 

You are constantly questioning everyone's knowledge when they disagree with you while refusing to listen to what they actually have to say. I have no way to respond to that without listing where I got my education, which just becomes a dickmeasuring content and derails the discussion massively. Not that we're extremely on point, this thread was initially about what to do with extra server power and now it's an investigation into McxCZE's ping just because "we don't trust him and need proof" for no reason.

 

Here is our point of contention. You say that anyone could have a google cache server on site and the ping doesn't have to mean anything. I agree with that, however this google cache server is on THE Internet Exchange point of the country, meaning McxCZE is sitting right next to it, meaning his connection to just about anywhere is as good as it gets.

 

You refuse to acknowledge this while also strawmanning me with an extreme statement that networks have a central point that all traffic goes through. Two can play that game, let me do the same thing to you.

 

So you think that networks are just a map of computers with equal connections between each other? You think there is no centralization at all? Clearly there is, you must not know anything about networks! This comment pissed me off but I made no diagram.

 

Him being right next to a massive connection point doesn't mean nothing. I have never stated that his connection to Australia will not have 140ms latency, I don't understand why you would even bring that up unless you just like strawmanning people. I will quote myself saying "his connection is as good as it gets" given the location he's in, therefore good enough to host content (as he already does for multiple firms) and I have yet to hear a good reason to think otherwise.

 

I hope this was easier to follow.

[mynameisjuan]

20 minutes ago, Tomiz said:

It calls itself the largest neutral internet exchange point in the country. I googled around and it's often called "internet backbone". He is right next to that backbone, therefore his connection is about the closes to everything else you can get in that geographical location - which is the centre of Europe.

Yes, tier 1s are considered a backbone but that concept is fading away as more ISPs emerge and can peer with each other. Almost every ISP is directly connected (peered) to a tier 1. Other ISPs will have similar results. Point being is this connection is not special. 

 

26 minutes ago, Tomiz said:

Nobody here is stupid enough to think the internet has a centre - but it does have a structure, doesn't it. I am European myself, no clue about you, but our networks are structured and I am familiar with the term that could be translated as a "spinal network", or as google more commonly uses network backbone, which is a big internet exchange point which more exist of that have a strong connection between them. I am certain such things exist everywhere.

They do but its not a single entity. With current traffic data is being load balanced in all directions and is becoming more common. The spine that once was in the days of the telco giants is withering away (except land-sea cables of course)

 

34 minutes ago, Tomiz said:

Here is our point of contention. You say that anyone could have a google cache server on site and the ping doesn't have to mean anything. I agree with that, however this google cache server is on THE Internet Exchange point of the country, meaning McxCZE is sitting right next to it, meaning his connection to just about anywhere is as good as it gets.

Yes the cache server is close by but not everything is going to be cached. Here below is the location of cache sites for google. They are scattered everywhere. Yes his sites will be contacting it directly to cache but will need to reach out to the data centers quite often as well. Since these lie in Paris, Ireland, its not the fastest at all times. 

 

Cachedata centers

 

44 minutes ago, Tomiz said:

I have never stated that his connection to Australia will not have 140ms latency, I don't understand why you would even bring that up unless you just like strawmanning people.

He brought it up. This whole thing side tracked with him saying that this is the fastest connection you could have even when in another country. 

 

But this is a big dick measuring competition with my point. Yeah even though these points I am bringing up are ms apart, real world speeds are unnoticeable. This is to make a point. 

 

This argument is a result of saying his server is the fastest you can get from anywhere because he has 1ms ping and 1Gb connection. We tried explaining that that is not dependent just on those factors. Its wasnt meant as an attack just getting frustrated. 

 

 

[AngryBeaver]

2 hours ago, Tomiz said:

Allow me to disagree. This is the website of NIX-CZ, the point he connects to. https://www.nix.cz/en

 

It calls itself the largest neutral internet exchange point in the country. I googled around and it's often called "internet backbone". He is right next to that backbone, therefore his connection is about the closes to everything else you can get in that geographical location - which is the centre of Europe..

 

Nobody here is stupid enough to think the internet has a centre - but it does have a structure, doesn't it. I am European myself, no clue about you, but our networks are structured and I am familiar with the term that could be translated as a "spinal network", or as google more commonly uses network backbone, which is a big internet exchange point which more exist of that have a strong connection between them. I am certain such things exist everywhere.

 

You are constantly questioning everyone's knowledge when they disagree with you while refusing to listen to what they actually have to say. I have no way to respond to that without listing where I got my education, which just becomes a dickmeasuring content and derails the discussion massively. Not that we're extremely on point, this thread was initially about what to do with extra server power and now it's an investigation into McxCZE's ping just because "we don't trust him and need proof" for no reason.

 

Here is our point of contention. You say that anyone could have a google cache server on site and the ping doesn't have to mean anything. I agree with that, however this google cache server is on THE Internet Exchange point of the country, meaning McxCZE is sitting right next to it, meaning his connection to just about anywhere is as good as it gets.

 

You refuse to acknowledge this while also strawmanning me with an extreme statement that networks have a central point that all traffic goes through. Two can play that game, let me do the same thing to you.

 

So you think that networks are just a map of computers with equal connections between each other? You think there is no centralization at all? Clearly there is, you must not know anything about networks! This comment pissed me off but I made no diagram.

 

Him being right next to a massive connection point doesn't mean nothing. I have never stated that his connection to Australia will not have 140ms latency, I don't understand why you would even bring that up unless you just like strawmanning people. I will quote myself saying "his connection is as good as it gets" given the location he's in, therefore good enough to host content (as he already does for multiple firms) and I have yet to hear a good reason to think otherwise.

 

I hope this was easier to follow.

I think we all understand that being closer to a L1 (backbone) connection does have advantages which is why most Data-Centers are connected to one. The thing is as consumer net connections increase they are forced to have better connections from these nodes and this has caused the major ISP to expand these backbones so they are closer to the nodes. So while a consumer connection will not have the response time of something in a data-center... they are getting much closer and in a lot of cases the difference is so minimal as to not matter. I have a Fiber connection at home for some servers and I also have a 1gb cable connection. I can compare these to a few older systems I use to Co-locate and the ms difference I see round trip might have gone up a 1-4 ms, but that isn't world ending for my needs.

 

So on to @mynameisjuan point. Being next to a backbone is less important than it use to be. It is still beneficial, but not the end all be all. So while he might have a slightly better response time than a consumer connection it isn't going to fix the problem of connections outside his country. It isn't even going to make his data-center located server any better than the next. Most data centers are connected to the backbone. So the biggest factor is going to be location which is once again Myname's point.

 

Now if the OP has a less than stellar ST cpu like he does, but plenty of ram... then minecraft servers could be a good options. It is a game that is still vastly popular, but this relies on him having little to no costs to keep these machines in the data-center. If he does have an associate cost with them then he won't be able to compete with the much larger companies already doing it. Voice servers are also a possibility, but the licensing cost would be a pretty big upfront investment he might not want to make and with no promise of being able to sell the servers to make that money back.