[Release] A means by which the server can run with less than 96gb of ram

[superk]

So, for the last month I have been testing to see if it was possible to run the game world on less than 96gb of ram. Short answer, hell no. But can we 'trick' the server into being happy, with less? Yes.


I have opened the full game world, plus half the instances, on only 12gb of ram, on a quad core xeon server.


BUT HOW???


Short answer? Swap file. Read On

Ok so everyone knows swap is slow, and unreliable at best. So why even consider it? Well, its still not going to be ram, BUT, lets say the following is true:

• Your system drive holds the operating system
• Your serverfiles and database is installed to a second hard drive (D:\Runewaker)
• Ensure you have a fast quad core (no less), Xeon Preferred
• You have at least 12gb of ram, ECC preferred
• You have dual NVRe SSDs in RAID 0. -- (E:\)
• To view the content, you need to sign in or register
• You have setup your swap partition according to the Quote below. Its the most important.
• When starting the server, follow the Quoted Start Server Timetable
• Understand that this will allow the server to limp, most likely with an absolute max of a few hundred users, and you run the risk of database corruption if any drive fails, or if the system loses power.
• Understand that half of the client crashes in RoM are due to overloaded servers. Any server configured like this will be beyond overloaded. Clients may experience more crashes than normal during busy periods, if the server cant keep up. Its up to you to know when to stop.
• I take zero responsibility for you using this guide, its designed for technical demonstration and proof of concept, as well as experimentation purposes only.
• Its been working for 6 weeks stable on my server, without SSDs.
• When you can, do what I did, order a new server, with 96gb of ram lol.

SWAP CONFIGURATION

• Reduce System C: drive swap to 1gb (cant go any lower)
• Ensure there is no swap on DATABASE AND SERVER DRIVE D:\
• Set swap file to use a pretermined size
• Use the ENTIRE DISK SIZE of E:\

This will create the following effect on your system:

• Windows has its own space and IO (bottleneck reduction)
• The server has its own space and IO (bottleneck reduction)
• The game server will load information to ram, and page it down to the SSD-RAID
• Paging, while still slow, wont be brutal, as the pagefile will never be resized, this adds stability and speed to the mix. Especially when dealing with NVRe SSD Speed.
• The SSD-RAID, as well as the paging of the drive will consume extra cpu resources.
• Clients will receive an error regarding 'Low System Memory', it is actually the server which is starting to freak out. Under the circumstances, this is normal.
• Your systems performace will likely be limited by the number of IOPS of your motherboard or chipset. Do your homework when building your server.

Server Start Timetable

• Start Common as group
• Expand Service
• Start Service items, one per item, with 1 minute in between. Do NOT start next item until previous has finished, and is online.
• Start Zone_M - one item per time, wait until zone has finished loading and is online.
• Pause 5-10 Minutes between Zone Loading (To Allow System to Page Down)
• Repeat until desired Zone_M areas are started, or REALM begins to become unstable.
• If REALM begins to become unstable, you must unload your last 2 or 3 zones to make ram for Zone_D, and Zone_SD items, if desired.
• Start areas from Zone_D, and Zone_SD using the same above guidelines. More time pause is better, but do no less than what is stated above.

All done. Enjoy. Like it if it works. Like it if it doesnt. Just freakin like it already

 

[mollo]

so, in fact, you recommend the community to use vram, which is also used by gameforeg/runewaker. They never fully used ram, they always added vram via SSD's to their system. This is also more efficient when you use several servers (server cluster) to run your end product (which is a runes of magic server in this case).
The only problem is that its 1. a bit slower 2. the SSD's are not made for such work, so they will die way sooner

 

[superk]

I know lots of people who want to make a server for a group of friends, 20 people or so. Truly private servers. I know people who want to explore the possibilities, but dont have money for a great server. This is for them. I recommend that people buy a server powerful enough to run the server app, without using virtual ram.

As I write this, I just reloaded my server using 2 of the SSDs I linked above, and its loading zones much faster. I am about to test with a client. This might actually offer better performance than I initially thought.

Again, this is not a recommendation to fix the issue, its a solution for those who want to run a server on the cheap for an ultra small community, WITHOUT having to constantly start and stop zones.

It was not meant for enterprise implementation, although, it WOULD provide a benefit to any enterprise iteration if it were.

 

[mollo]

bro, nothing to say against your guide/recommendation, I just wanted to clarify that your guide is leading to vram. You loading the ssd's to help the ram, which is vram and fact is that an ssd cant reaches the same hz rate a good ecc ram stick can offer and fact is that ssd's which are loading 24/7 are more likely to die way faster than ssd's which are used normally in a proper system. As I said, gameforge is doing the same thing but they are changing they ssd's every month I guess.

This was not an offended post bro^^ just wanted to share some WARNINGS you know? xD

 

[superk]

You are absolutely correct in the entirety of your statement. I cant speak for gameforge, but honestly, if they were to actually implement something like this in the enterprise setting, they should cancel all of this, and just make 1 big drive using 5x146gb 15k SAS drives in raid 5 on a hardware raid card with boosted cache. Those drives last forever, have huge IOPS, ecc onboard, and deliver data at a stupid rate.

No offence taken. I just want to give everyone equally the opportunity to enjoy this game. I just tested my SSDs versus conventional discs and the server zones appear twice as fast to the user, and my client is much more stable. The SSDs (or other super fast drives) made a difference.

One thing to consider, I dont know if gameforge is using these in the same way... I still suggest a mechanical drive for the OS and Database. The SSDs are just for vram. The bulk of the write operations are done to the database, and to whats active in memory. The operating system would try to load static content into the pagefile; stuff that would be largely read only and deliver to client. Writing is done to ram before to disk if possible. The SSDs will be constantly in use, and they will certainly experience a shortened lifespan due to this, but as a stopgap measure, its working!

If I have 4000 users on my server though.. this isnt the solution. Not even close.

 

[mollo]

well, no one of us can really say how exactly gamefore is running all their servers, but I know they are using more drives instead of ram to handle all their shit and ofc on many clusters for each server.

 

[Mageoski]

Interessting thing. My little 6.0.7 Server is running on a virtual windows 7 machine, so i guess its nothing for me. xD

One thing makes me wonder. You say that Gameforge uses vram instead of real ram ? I can't believe this, since ECC Ram isn't THAT expensive. Maybe for private users it's kinda expensive, but a company like gameforge should be able to invest in a server with 256 or 512Gb Ram.

I know that VM-Ware Servers with 2 x Xeons 2695/512GB with a intel 7220 G2/G3 Case costs approx 16000 €. That shouldn't be a thing for a company like Gameforge (at least i THINK that it shouldn't).