Server hardware

Speaking in money, 3 and 4 are your best choices. And to be honest, i don't like dual-core cpu's, they're pretty fast, but have some incompatibilities with some software, same way as 64bit cpu's, but since 64bit cpu's are on the scene for more time than dual-core, most of the inconpatibilities has been fixed.

So really, from my point of view (there are ppl here that have an larger knowlodge about hardware than i do, that's for shure) you rly should get option 4.

but beeing cheaper is an temptating option....

Before i say "i like this choice listed here ..." i think more information need to be concidered. As example do you have access to hardware settings or on high server load what is the cpu usage or ram usage, hdd load and so on. Screenshots or statistics are welcome

Just a thought: is it impractical to upgrade current hardware to faster P4 and 4Mb DDR-RAM? At least current processor issues are known, vs. a change in processor architecture, with its own idiosyncracies...

Well I also think 4 is the best choice, its my opinion and I also trust your knowledge OP...about other things: the downtime, well its not a thing that someone here would like, but if we think about the advantages, its not a problem...the setup money, we are all playing here for free, how many are we? What would one player have to pay to get 100 together? Not much, and Im ready to do my part on that.

personally, i say option 5... best... BUT, thinking smarter i say option 4, same money better parts. onoy reason i say 5 is because its a dual core amd and they are one hell of a processor. i do think that they are screwing you for having to pay the setup fee again. but i think that for 1-2 days of downtime and the same price it would be benefitial to switch to the new hardware.

i think there are more than plenty of us who are willing to help with the cost... i know i am.

i say number 4, it seems practical...but then again u will have to mod the into movie/webpage....
still, a slightly new processor may help us a bit

To complete my first post - i asked for load info cause i personally had cases when systems is acting really really slow nearly as not responding but CPU usage is 5-10% and the problem was the heavy HDD usage.

i vote 4 or 5
what is the current total incomming per month? arent there 9 clans at 20e... im not sure if maybe this hints that we could afford #5. Im possibly willing to fork out a little extra for the setup if we do #5, and if we are short a little monthly, maybe 22e per sys or something, im open to it...

i say we get #5 and get so many ppl that 100 max leave some out
that would be alot of fun.

ehrm... is it just me or did teh server rape itself a little while ago?

its been like rebooting for some time

at least for me im not able to get in

Oh yeah, if the bottleneck is the hd, due to heavy hd usage, it would also be nice to study the avaible hd's, and RAM options.

In the meanwhile, i think that most of us would agree. You should get an opteron.

Option 4.

I will email you Op.

would the bandwidth (downstream) be any faster or would it stay at what it is now?

thx Blaster

EDIT: i say option 3, money efficiant(spelling probably wrong) and its fast aswell

Endurance and realibity are also one of the best points for the Opteron. AMD has exceed expetations with this 64 bits chips.

From my extensive reading on both cpu and chips architecture, Opteron will be the best choice overall. But some specific purpose (short time reliability) P4 is better in some small specific aspects. The question would be how long would I stick with one choice from the other one?

Option 4 seems the best so far keeping same expenses.
But Option 5 is best for cost/productivity ratio if we have the money So for 5, is everyone willing to help would be another good question

RG...out

are you surprised!?

P4's should never be an rentable server option.. You see, most recent AMD precessors are better than the P4, the only flaw, is that to upgrade for a better AMD processor, you have to buy a new mobo as well. Since you're renting an complete server, there's no reason to go with P4, unless you wanna save money.

I see it as my duty as serveradmin to warn you for some bad things that might happen when you choose a server given in the optionlist. If you cannot test the setup with FL and CF running for a few days, then I would say: Stay. Maybe get a memory extention (performance logs would give an indication for it), but if you cannot test don't switch because of 2 reasons: 64 bits and dual core.

64 bits.

The server will probably run Windows 2003 x64, making the environment even more complicated. But even if you would be running Windows 2003 32 bits you will still have a different environment than you have on your current server. FL is mainly 32 bits and there are even some 16 bits in it (believe it or not, i have seen it running in 16 bit environment), and running this on a 64 bits environment (or 32 bit OS on a 64 bit kernel) can give some strange behaviour.

Dual core

The main advantage of running something on a multi proc environment is that you can spread the tasks over the procs. When you would be thinking of a OS to run on a multi proc environment, then don't think about Windows. Even Windows 2003 is not able to get the best out of a dual proc environment. A lot of dual proc users use the dual proc setup to run the OS on one proc, and run their games on the second proc. This way they have a bit advantage, but percentage-wise it is very, very little compared to a similair single-proc core. A good comparison is the AMD 3800+ and the AMD X2 3800+. With the same hardware, a Q4 time-demo only ran 2% faster when Q4 was running on one core and everything else was running on the other. Main reason for this: they have to share the same memory.
Another problem is also strange behaviour when running on 2 cores. A lot of programs have the tendency (when running over both cores) to temp hang or slow down.

Given the fact that Microsoft doesn't develop Freelancer anymore, they will not respond to bugreports. I cannot predict what happen, if FL server will even run as good as it is running now, if you will have problems with the CF mod due to some strange differences.......

Therefor I think that it would be a good idea to go to your fellow FL server admins, and ask what they are running. If they are running on a socket 939 (or 940) environemt (what all the 4 suggested setups are), without any strange problems, then go ahead and choose. But if they are having strange problems, or no one is running on socket 939/940 and you cannot test before migrating, then stay where you are.

Without looking into the hardware it is a bit fishy for me to predict what a bottleneck on this hardware might be. Easy perdictions are memory, the processor and the harddisk. But also a possible bottleneck can be the NIC and the bus it is connected to. Given the hardware choices and prices, I think it is all running on motherboards for home use. This would mean that the NIC is connected to the 32 bits PCI bus, and sharing bandwith. A better solution would be using a PCI-X motherboard and NIC (giving you more bandwith), but that would mean that you would have to use a server-oriented motherboard, and that would mean higher prices.

If you have the time, I can assist you with analyzing some performance monitors, to determine what might be the bottleneck on the current hardware you are running on.

My motto is: Don't upgrade unless you are 100% positive that it will improve your current situation by at least 25%.

A bit background: I have spend the last 2 months in a servermigration project. In total 30 servers needed to be migrated to new hardware. Some servers were that old that they were running on 32 bits P3 Xeon processors. The new servers were either 64 bits state-of-the-art Xeon's, socket 939 Opterons or Itanium procs. The project itself was already running for 4 months before I entered the projectteam, running into all kinds ofhardware-related problems. To simplify a problem: on the old server you could ask the processor to calculate 3*3, and it would give the answer 9, every time. But on the new server the answer would be anything, 1, 4, 2, 11, 38, 2047, 3, 8, 9. The answer would be random and not correct. Of course the processes given to the processor are a bit more complicated than 3*3, but it's an example of what we ran into. The current status of the project is that we aren't migrating 10 servers, we are keeping them in their current state, let them there until the programs they are running are no longer used, and then moving them away. Three servers are migrated without a lot of changes. The other 17 servers are the pain in the ass: a lot of new software has been orderer for a total of around 250.000 euro. And we aren't finished yet, that total will increase for sure.