THN - a discussion on where we go from here.

[Wol]

probably others that I'll be embarrassed about forgetting to add in this list.

And ill sort of raise a point thats been mentioned before regarding the permissions. There have been a few times when I've needed to restart the minecraft server after doing an update, and not being able to as I'm not on the hl user. So the separation of the games servers out compared to other services would be an advantage I imagine.

 

[Dr Drae]

I think I'd enjoy newer social networking type features, and I'm fairly certain a few others would, and the other features sound great; it's definitely something to look forward to, but I'm not speaking for the entirety of THN; there may well be a majority of us that don't use things like facebook etc.

I do like the idea of being able to help recruitment and such by linking the two though. Maybe 'Attending a TF2 Night' now and then might prompt my more computer friendly acquaintances to join; especially people like my college class. Maybe a more active facebook presence is required? Seeing as that's where most new prospects can be dug up from nowadays? I don't know, I'm just spouting here. This could avoid the costs of having to spend out on the new VB stuff.

1. Event organisation
2. Technical administration

All those in the second category (at the moment) either have almost no time, or actually no time. Perversely, there's a fair correlation between those in the second category and those in the first.

I don't know how to get over that hurdle. Game server administration on Linux isn't hard, but it does rely on a basic understanding of *nix and that's not in ready supply. Add to that the side problem where most of our game servers are hosted under a single user account, which needs moderate privileges, a person fumbling around has the capacity to arse things up a fair amount.

Open to suggestions there.


Open question for people who would be interested in "doing stuff" for/with THN: what would help you do that?

See, I've got the time to take, to learn all the stuff, if somebody was willing to teach me; IE: I don't know how to administrate a game server, but, especially if I knew I was actually helping (I'm a giver), I'd happily take the time to figure out how to work with the game servers, so long as somebody could guide me (either themselves, or to a source of information) to mean that I don't 'arse up' the servers, as Ronin put. This same attitude applies for all aspects; if there is anyway that I can help, I'll make the effort to do so; this place has given me a lot, and I'd like to think I can try and 'give back'.

As for the "doing stuff" question; wierd idea. A couple of years back I used to game CS and TF2 with a clan which offered sorta.. mini admin privileges to people who were accepted into the clan, as a 'obviously you're not a dick, have a little bit of power'. I'm not saying that I, or anybody else needs this motivation, but something similiar (maybe a bit stricter considering) might not go amiss.

For instance, on their servers on CS I could give money, mute, kick, etc, as well as use a cross game chat to contact an actual admin incase of banhammering needed. On TF2, I had relatively the same powers, (with the bonus of a 1 second respawn; but that's a little unfair). Maybe a similiar system would not only increase activity, but also bring in some recruits? This would need to be moderated ofc.

 

[Ronin Storm]

On PayPal vs Community Bank Account...

PayPal are changing their fees to include a "cross borders" fee, that seems to be additional to their usual fees. This will mean that THN sees even less of your monies...

Guess we'll need to figure this one out fairly shortly.

 

[Traxata]

I think the reason it's been slow about changing to a community bank is because Haven has been moving which is resolving itself shortly!

 

[Ronin Storm]

On the subject of Server Hosting, we're now at the turning point where we need to make a decision. Ultimately, the driving factor behind this decision is to get the most power and reliability for the least money with one main constraint: the THN Admins, most notably Haven, must not be left out of pocket by the solution. So, this is going to come down to monies.

Here's the situation:

We've been collating options for Promethius' replacement on the wiki.

Our front runners boil down to:

• Partial hardware replacement for Promethius, courtesy of cheap-yet-decent parts from thatbloke
  
  • Build by Haven at/around i43
  • £150 for parts from thatbloke, plus ~£40 for new heatsink, plus ~£160 for new hard drives (optional, but recommended), plus travel costs for drop-off and retrieval at data centre
  • Total Upfront = £190 minimum, ~£350/400 done properly
  • Ongoing Costs = £65.95 per month
  • In summary: improves Promethius' capabilities but is basically just tiding us over 'til something gives up completely...
• Move to a virtual server solution (e.g. Hetzner VQ19)
  
  • Migration by Haven at some point in the next couple of months
  • Some costs for retrieving Promethius' hardware from the data centre as part of decommissioning
  • Total Upfront = £0, though reimbursing collection costs may be needed
  • Ongoing Costs = £17.49 per month
  • In summary: lower power server will provide basics (TeamSpeak, forum, web sites) but struggle with anything but the most simple game servers, and likely no more than one at once
• Move to a dedicated server solution (e.g. Hetzner EQ8)
  
  • Migration by Haven at some point in the next couple of months
  • Some costs for retrieving Promethius' hardware from the data centre as part of decommissioning
  • Total Upfront = £130.93, plus any collection costs
  • Ongoing Costs = £97.14 per month (£78.21 + £17.93 for 5 additional IPs)
  • In summary: over 3x more powerful than Promethius, with possibilities to run virtuals of both Windows and Linux allowing for much greater server range, and tough enough for some years to come

All Euros prices converted to GBP via xe.com today.

At this moment, we have around £200 in the kitty that we can use for Promethius server things.

So, all that said, the best (most powerful) option is C, the dedicated server solution. Problem is that we're short on monthly donations for that. Month on month, our donations bring in:

Mean = £85.63 (£95.00)
Median = £83.75 (£91.25)

First number is over last 4 months, second (in parenthesis) is over last 6 months. I believe the last 4 is a more accurate reflection of THN donations than the last 6 given the steady tendency for them to decline.

We could drop the extra IPs, but then we also need to drop the virtualisation, so no Windows server options.

We could go for the cheaper EQ6 package (£60.64pcm for a total, with IPs, of £78.57pcm) but at cost of half the RAM of the higher cost package; that also decreases our options, though I'll need Haven to really describe what is what for that.

Or we could go right the way down to the virtual server solution and accept that much gaming has really gone P2P anyhow...

Personally, I don't feel that option A is realistic; looking at likely available Admin time over the next 12-24 months with a realistic eye, I don't like the picture of staving off a problem that we could just solve right now by not running our own hardware. It might all work out, but that's not what we should be playing for. Instead, we need to understand that Promethius is old and the hiccups we get from time to time are, in fair part, a product of her age. She will fail, sooner or later, and then we'll have to fix her or accept indefinite downtime.

So, I'm all for putting ourselves onto a proper sized server, just not sure we can pay for it.

Now's the time to have your say on what you'd prefer and what you're prepared to ante up to get us there. To those who already donate: thank you, you're awesome, and we're totally not expecting anything more from you, but we really hope you'll continue to help THN out!

tl;dr

Need to choose what to do with Promethius now (within the next week). Various options, but the best one is too expensive unless more people donate consistently. Middling options may be available. Discuss and ante up, please.

 

[Wol]

whats the justification on a step up from and amd x2 / 4gb / 320gb to an i7 / 24gb / 1.5tb?

How many virtuals are you planning on running?!

Did we ever get anywhere with the "rather than cut back gosting, we should try and get more active members to join thn" thing?

 

[Haven]

whats the justification on a step up from and amd x2 / 4gb / 320gb to an i7 / 24gb / 1.5tb?

Three factors come into this:
* Reliability - what we have is end of life and needs replacing.
* Value for money - 24GB for £97/month vs currrently 4GB for £66
* Virtualisation - current hardware doesn't support it and we need it to keep costs down and run both windows and linux gaming environments.

How many virtuals are you planning on running?!

Three:
* Core virtual - web/dns/teamspeak/email. A small virutal that does all our core systems and is heavily locked down
* Windows Gaming Server - probably 4GB RAM minimum
* Linux Gaming Server - same as above 4GB RAM minimum
Additional RAM will be used for ram disks and/or distributed to the above systems as needed.

Did we ever get anywhere with the "rather than cut back gosting, we should try and get more active members to join thn" thing?

This response is only my opinion and hasn't been discussed with the other admins. We're not pushing this at the moment. As long as we've a trickle of folks who fit in joining then we're happy enough growing/shrinking organically. We want to keep this "for fun" and forcing growth feels a little too much like "for profit" unfortunately.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

We'd still need to upgrade the Hard drives we use so add another £160 onto this price.

Quoted from the wiki; What does this mean?

I have 1 250(WD) (4 yrs in a pc) and 1 500gb (Samsung) (1 yr in a pc) hdd sat idle.

 

[Haven]

The current drives in promethius cannot be re-used as they are way beyond end of life and have been running 24/7 for over five years now. If you have spare drives that you can donate to the cause then that gives us additional options as long as they are in good shape - reliability is the critical factor when dealing with servers. The four year drive you have is too old for safe use now, the one year can possibly be re-used if we go that route.

Quoted from the wiki; What does this mean?

I have 1 250(WD) (4 yrs in a pc) and 1 500gb (Samsung) (1 yr in a pc) hdd sat idle.

 

[Wol]

Three factors come into this:
* Reliability - what we have is end of life and needs replacing.
* Value for money - 24GB for £97/month vs currrently 4GB for £66
* Virtualisation - current hardware doesn't support it and we need it to keep costs down and run both windows and linux gaming environments.

I thought the current £66 was just rack space / power / network? So that £66 could be for 24gb if we put a 24gb machine in there?

Three:
* Core virtual - web/dns/teamspeak/email. A small virutal that does all our core systems and is heavily locked down
* Windows Gaming Server - probably 4GB RAM minimum
* Linux Gaming Server - same as above 4GB RAM minimum
Additional RAM will be used for ram disks and/or distributed to the above systems as needed.

It's currently my gut feeling that the specs we're thinking of are a bit OTT for what we need. Prom, pretty much, is working fine on 4gb of ram and I'd imagine that a fair chunk of that is just the MC ramdisk .tf2 runs fine from what we've seen, apart from the ping goes up very slightly when its at 24 players.

I'm not sure how many games we've got which need a windows server however so can't comment on that.

I just feel that going from a relatively low spec machine to something thats a a few factors better than my current desktop at home is just throwing resources and money at a system thats just not going to get used with the current size of THN considering we've been making do with prom for ages now.

An important factor in getting people to donate I'd say is to make sure that the money is spent wisely and efficiently. Trying to persuade people to pay up for a server with an i7 and 24gb of ram and a 1.5tb hard drive when we're unlikely to max out the processor, only actually using say 6gb of the ram for game servers, and 500gb of the hard drive space, might be a bit tricky. Thats just my feeling anyway.

 

[thatbloke]

My worry here is that with option C, while certainly nice to have, we're paying for things that we aren't going to be using.

Discarding option A, and comparing what we get from Option B and C, with option C, we're paying around £80/month extra for the capability to host our own game servers. Currently, the only game servers I'm aware of are:

Minecraft
TF2
L4D2

L4D2, I believe, is only turned on when it's going to be used, and is then disabled again afterwards.

TF2 is only ever used much on a Wednesday, and sometimes lapses behind on updates (it needs more love than it's currently getting, from what I can tell. Apologies if I'm wrong!)

That then leaves Minecraft, which is a resource hog but at the same time is also (as far as I can tell) the most used game server on Prom. Were we to go with option B, I believe we'd need to seek an alternative host elsewhere for the MC server, but I don't think that there would be *too* much of an issue were the other two servers to disappear.

So I put the question to you this way - is Minecraft really worth £80/month?

Conversely, with the capability to do so, we could easily encourage people to make more use of the new server, and get suggestions for other games to run on it (Trackmania 2 is coming soon, I think it would be fun to have a TM2 server, for instance), however with the way that most of the bigger games are going these days (P2P hosting or dedis but only from specific providers), I'm not sure that having such capability to host our own servers is going to be worth it in the long run.

So after all that, I think I'm in favour of Option B, then getting servers we want for games from elsewhere (Multiplay, for instance), possibly using THN monies to help fund them, assuming the same/similar level of donations is kept.

 

[Wol]

So I put the question to you this way - is Minecraft really worth £80/month?

No, no it isn't

My counter-question:

Does Minecraft need a £80/month server to run?

No, no it doesn't.

 

[Kasatka]

I also would like to query the needed specs for a dedicated server. The specs listed seem a bit OTT, especially if we only have 3 games regularly running on there.

 

[luc]

I can see the erring towards option C, and I also can see some concerns about it, so here's my two cents.

It appears that the dedicated server option presented is a bit over the top; or at least something we would have to grow into. That being said, is there an option to go for a dedicated server with a lesser spec. Going on the website Ronin used there are a couple of options open, for instance if it were to be knocked down to 12GB RAM that brings the price down to (again using xe.com) £78.90 (£60.97+£17.93) a month which is within average budget. This would still allow the breakdown of a linux/windows server + ts/dns etc. as proposed.

Similarly, if there is willing to go even lower there is an 8GB option with less HDD space meaning monthly costs would be £61.23 (£43.30+£17.93) a month. This is well within average budget - and although it's a tad restrictive than the other options presented means we don't have to be concerned with hardware maintenance.

I also note that for these options (EQ6 and EQ4 respectively) the setup cost is much less, at £43.26 (so upfront being this, plus collection costs).

 

[Kasatka]

Am i right in remembering that it has been stated somewhere that the current server we have is physically accessible, which was one of the reasons we held off on upgrading to another dedicated server?
If this is the case, and it is a huge perk, could we use the kitty to pay for postage if people want to donate parts to upgrade the current server?

 

[Haven]

I thought the current £66 was just rack space / power / network? So that £66 could be for 24gb if we put a 24gb machine in there?

Yes. £66 is indeed for the co-loc. If we can come up with the parts for a new machine of that spec then it would indeed be possible. The most cost effective option we have at the moment for upgrading promethus is to use the parts offered by thatbloke +new hard drives.

As an additional explanation there is a desire to move away from running out own hardware to allow easier migration in the future between services. This is only a desire and can be ignored if it seems this is the most appropriate option.

I need to add that any hardware co-located is owned by me and not TheHavenNet. Upgrading the current server would need to be done on that basis that THN continues to own no hardware (as life just gets too complicated when it does) so any upgrades would be owned by me. I appreciate some folks may be uncomfortable by this so it needs to be stated up front.

 

[Haven]

Am i right in remembering that it has been stated somewhere that the current server we have is physically accessible, which was one of the reasons we held off on upgrading to another dedicated server?
If this is the case, and it is a huge perk, could we use the kitty to pay for postage if people want to donate parts to upgrade the current server?

We could do this - one of the reasons for making this decision now is that i43 provides and opportunity to collect, and either retire, or perform upgrades on the current server. Thats the time frame we're working towards. I'd rather that any parts that were donatable be sent to someone going to i43 to keep things as simple as possible.

If you do have any spare parts then please add them to the wiki page as a seperate section alongside your name and a description (or start a seperate thread on the forums so this one doesn't de-rail) and we'll see what comes of this.

 

[Haven]

I can see the erring towards option C, and I also can see some concerns about it, so here's my two cents.

It appears that the dedicated server option presented is a bit over the top; or at least something we would have to grow into. That being said, is there an option to go for a dedicated server with a lesser spec. Going on the website Ronin used there are a couple of options open, for instance if it were to be knocked down to 12GB RAM that brings the price down to (again using xe.com) £78.90 (£60.97+£17.93) a month which is within average budget. This would still allow the breakdown of a linux/windows server + ts/dns etc. as proposed.

Similarly, if there is willing to go even lower there is an 8GB option with less HDD space meaning monthly costs would be £61.23 (£43.30+£17.93) a month. This is well within average budget - and although it's a tad restrictive than the other options presented means we don't have to be concerned with hardware maintenance.

I also note that for these options (EQ6 and EQ4 respectively) the setup cost is much less, at £43.26 (so upfront being this, plus collection costs).

12GB (EQ6) is the sweet spot for what we'd require in terms of Virtuals, at 8GB we'd struggle to run 3 virtuals (it is still do-able though). The choice to include the 24GB option is that we get far more bang per buck going 24GB rather than 12GB and this also keeps our options open for future growth. Option3 is very much the "we will want to run lots of games in the future" option.

 

[Traxata]

Having discussed this in IRC today. I think we settled on the idea of the EQ6 package instead of the EQ8, and then buying the extra IP x3 @ €1 each. putting the total at about £65 PCM with the £45ish setup fee.

There is no minimum contract on this either, so we can use it for as long as we need to, if we do decide that in the future we'll rebuild prom with a new ticker!

 

[Zooggy]

Hey,

I have to say, that sounds like a very sensible solution.

Cheers,
J.