2020 Servers Upgrade

[adminless]

ok, so as I mentioned lately on the forum and as various of you already know, luckily thanks to all the money the people sent for the servers, not only but mostly during the corona outbreak, it has been possible to upgrade them to brand new 2020 hardware this past month July of 2020. this is not the thread about financial matters so I won't get into figures here, I'll deal with all that at its time, likely by the end of the year, and at its appropriate thread. I typically don't disclose this kind of information but as this have been effectively purchased with your actual money I understand that you deserve and must know what has been actually done with your money, how was spend and what it was worth for.

then luckily past month has been possible to purchase a brand new 2020 top quality server (from the very same hosting company and at the very same location). btw just one little clarification here, by purchasing a new server, I don't mean effectively purchasing all the hardware that will be posted down bellow, I just mean effectively acquiring exclusive use and access to such hardware at such location during the contract term though such hardware keeps being still a property of the hosting company. is also important to note that such server upgrade carried a fee of 77.69 Euros in addition to the increased (in absolute terms, in relative terms is about the same if not even lower) costs of the servers now. these 77.69 Euros of extra cost aren't a fee I took from you (despite having setup and workout more than 9 custom servers on this task alone something worth easily at least 300 Euros), they directly correspond with the 30.5 Euros cost of the former server for the July month as well as the 47.19 Euros of setup fee the hosting company bills for brand new deployments. may not be a lot but is definitely something worth and important to note when discussing migrations.

ok, so once clarified that this is what has been got:

• Motherboard: ASRock B450M Pro4 (UEFI H3.90F 05/19/2020)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor (AM4 Zen 6x2x3600 MHz 1.1 V 384 kB L1 3 mB L2 32 mB L3)
• GPU: ZOTAC GeForce GT 710 PCIe x1 (192:16:8 954 MHz 1GB DDR3 64-bit 1600 MHz)
• RAM: 2x32 GB Samsung M378A4G43MB1-CTD (DDR4 2667 MT/s 1.2 V)
• LAN: Realtek RTL8111H (PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN)
• NVMe: 2xSAMSUNG MZVLB512HBJQ-00000 (M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4)
• other: 2800 rpm oem cpu fan and 1600 rpm oem system fan
• condition: brand new hardware
• location: Nuernberg (Germany) AS24940
• cost: 53.29 euros/month

so, that's mostly it with this new server hardware. now I'm not gonna get in much detail with the previous server but essentially you can know that it was a used +3 years old E3-1246V3 with 32 GB of DDR3-1600 ram and two enterprise 7200 rpm 2 TB (regular magnetic) hard drives that costed 30.5 Euros/Month. as you can see the upgraded server nearly more than doubles on almost every single metric the previous server at a equivalent, in relative terms, cost (7.63 Euros/Month per core of cost before against 7.61 now). clearly a major upgrade that now easily set these servers into the performance range of 2020 commercial grade games (if it's not that it even exceeds them). but although performance is a very important factor alone, in reality the single reason and why such upgrade was needed the most, was security and reliability instead. matter of fact, continuing to run this on +3 years old 24/7 used hardware would be just looking for the ram to start throwing errors here and there, the motherboard to randomly hang out or just the hard drives to lose all your data and render this down for weeks if not permanently despite any backup plans. knowingly giving such events a plausible chance would be extraordinarily incompetent and irresponsible so in one way or another a server upgrade was needed.

coming to the server setup itself that is also as important, I'm not gonna get into so much detail (or this will never end), but you can know that the bare metal is just a kvm and a layer-2 transparent virtual bridge serving 6 instances (one per physical core, one also including direct and exclusive gpu access) running on 30 GB of storage space and 4 GB of memory. four of these instances are unshaped low latency virtual servers (the final game servers you all game at), one is a 100/100 mbit shaped virtual server (for the web services) and one is a 500/500 mbit shaped virtual server packing also direct and exclusive access to the gpu intended for re-sell/extra usage. each virtual server comes with 10 GB of ram (one reserved for video memory in the case of the workstation) and 2x80 GB of storage, all of them using software raid level 1 at the kvm level but the workstation that instead runs a dual operative system setup. for reference you can read the full technical description of the workstation intended for re-sell here, the rest of the servers are pretty much simplified copies of that running on level 1 software raid units.

overall I think that the result has been very good, final cpu thread usage per server has never exceeded 50% on average and the servers pretty much demolished every single frame you threw at them. cpu temps when stress testing for a hour peaked at low seventies same as gpu temps and nvme temps at high fifties. regular operative temps are typically in the 40 range for the motherboard and 50 for the cpu/gpu. all excellent super stable values that should ensure that there should be no failures in the next coming years at least. storage performance boosted massively into the gigabyte per second range (i.e. top, as good as it gets) and jitter is also lowered considerably now compared to the previous setup (in the order of microseconds now, i.e. 0.1-0.2 ms) though probably that doesn't make that much of a difference as the quality of the game servers was very high already. probably the biggest improvement here comes on the web services (this site for example) that now run on a entirely dedicated and separated server. the web services are now at least between two and four times faster than before and rank among the highest standards as well as they are much more secure since they run on a separate server. in addition as small extras on this new deployment, the secondary server (FreeFUn) has also been moved into a separate dedicated server and received a new alternative dedicated IP, the standard ctf server that was started by some of the users has now been integrated into the whole project for the long run, the entire alternative route/.eu domain has caught up with the main route/domain (in terms of connectivity obviously not in terms of quality) and finally a load balancer has been deployed at fpsclasico.eu (2a03:4000:3f:1f4:5:181:48:249 / 5.181.48.249) as well as a dns/web wildcard resolution for extended coverage. all "secondary" things but that definitively still add up great value and quality to the project.

anyways with all this I'm not trying to tell you that the previous servers were absolute garbage and that it was insulting to run such a piece of useless junk on 2020. let's make this clear, the previous setup was kind of a definitive setup and there was no problems whatsoever with it (other than +3 years old 24/7 used hardware can realistically be expected to fail at any given time). with this I'm just trying to tell you that this is kind of a ultimate level of setup reasonably guaranteed to work reliably at least for the next coming years and that it largely exceeds in almost any possible metric the previous setup. well, once break the main thing down, in addition as you're also going to be using (and hopefully paying) for the alternative nbg2/.eu route, here are the details for it too so you can also know how that goes:

• System: Fully Virtualized 2018 KVM BIOS Machine with Paravirtualized Drivers
• CPU: E5-2680 v4 (2 Dedicated 2400 MHz Threads, 64 KiB L1d, 64 KiB L1i, 8 MiB L2, 16 MiB L3)
• Ram: 4 GB DDR4 ECC
• NET: unknown (shared 1 gbit best-effort policy estimated)
• SSD: 30 GB HW Raid 10
• location: Nuernberg (Germany) AS197540 - AS47147
• cost: 8.13 Euros/Month

essentially this is the machine that handles the nbg2/.eu traffic as well as run the lesser training servers on the spare cpu (also mirrored now through this nbg1/.de main web services server). as you can see is obviously nowhere near as good as the main state of the art kind of server so it falls sort behind it (jitter is more in the order of milliseconds here instead of the microseconds response of the main server) but nevertheless it's still a very solid and reliable solution (when it was purchased past Christmas it was just sub-par behind the former main server). definitively no much room to improvement here at the budget currently and provided that it runs on a enterprise infrastructure and on top of a hardware level 10 raid it should also be expected to reliably work at least for the next coming years.

so pretty much that's it with what has been done with the money you sent during this time, I hope this meet the expectations and standards of anyone who ever gave. to finish the thread off I'll also drop the (minor) costs of the current domains so you can finally get the total costs of everything:

• fpsclasico.de: 4.83 Euros/Year
• fpsclasico.eu: 6.04 Euros/Year
• unfreeze.xyz: 8.94 Euros/Year
• oclockservers.uk: 4.83 Euros/Year
• combined: 24.64 Euros/Year

so the bad news here is that as can be seen this sums up up-to a total cost of 761.68 Euros a year or expressed on rounded values 63.47 Euros/Month which unfortunately largely exceeds the typical 35/45 Euros/Month budget. anyways the good news is that thanks to the extra resources it's possible, be it in the form of the current remote workstation for sell here or in another way that it may come out, to re-sell some of the unneeded resources to cut down the costs more into the usual/manageable range. probably now it's not the best moment to do some re-selling but I'm confident that on the next coming months some of that stuff end up working out.

so, anyways, sales aside probably the most fair figure you should look forward for the monthly cost of the upgraded servers you all are using now is 48.25 Euros/Month. like I said, this upgrade has been possible thanks to the money the people sent for the servers mostly during the corona outbreak but also because even if on less intensity people has continued to support the servers afterwards too. I hope that with this thread you don't get the wrong idea that, ok, the servers are upgraded, it's done then, screw it, there's no more need to fund this anymore cause if now people stop to send money for them, the money will run out and very quickly now at this rate btw. I know how important are and how much you guys appreciate these servers (specially on these times) and I'm very grateful of that and that people went their way to support them to run each month. matter of fact, that's exactly why this server upgrade has been delivered just now when it was really needed/claimed the most. that being said, understand that at the same time there's really no way I can spend 50 plus Euros each month alone on these servers so I can announce right here and right now that these current servers will run at least until next year (January 2021) and then by the Christmas I'll come up with the usual update at the financial thread and if the numbers are off by a large margin (i.e. +20 Euros/Month) then I'll be obliged to cut costs in one way or another (i.e. meaning less services, less quality etc). if on the other hand the support reaches an adequate level the servers will be renewed and just delivered as usual for the years to come.

well and I think that I'm finally done with the post, it definitely took me more time than what I had expected to sort everything out but well finally you have here your well deserved server upgrade and task report. I believe this should cover just enough to get started, as usual if anyone has any further question, problem, suggestion, request or just anything else simply feel free to drop it here.

note: btw for ways of funding check the links tab (see at the bottom)

[PacMan]

I want you for five mins on the server so I can freeze you proper

[Dr.GreenThumb]

Thank you adminless for the professional summary, and for the countless hours you've spent on getting the upgrade done. I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us that we really appreciate it ...there is no comparable unfreeze server out there that is as much fun and works as well, and that is all thanks for your skills and dedication

Speaking for myself, you can continue to count on my support, and I will also remind other players from time to time that there is no such thing as a free soup

All of you who play here and read the forums - don't be cheap. Show that you love to play here, and help to keep the lights on! ..give whatever you can. You can be sure that every single euro counts no matter how little, and as you can see all funds are super responsibly spent. Nobody is getting a Lambo here...

...and yes, to certain degree I agree that it would be awesome if you'd join us from time to time for a few rounds ...even though I understand the ethical reasons why you don't.

[PacMan]

Thank you adminless for the professional summary, and for the countless hours you've spent on getting the upgrade done. I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us that we really appreciate it ...there is no comparable unfreeze server out there that is as much fun and works as well, and that is all thanks for your skills and dedication

Speaking for myself, you can continue to count on my support, and I will also remind other players from time to time that there is no such thing as a free soup

All of you who play here and read the forums - don't be cheap. Show that you love to play here, and help to keep the lights on! ..give whatever you can. You can be sure that every single euro counts no matter how little, and as you can see all funds are super responsibly spent. Nobody is getting a Lambo here...

...and yes, to certain degree I agree that it would be awesome if you'd join us from time to time for a few rounds ...even though I understand the ethical reasons why you don't.

I will freeze your asss soon to

[adminless]

btw I have good news here, unfortunately I haven't made it yet to re-sell the unneeded mini-workstation advertised here, but luckily at least this month I re-sold one managed urbanterror game server here, initially, for a couple of months. these are great news as this means that after adjusting the server for this (i.e. essentially just relocated the own fpsclasico urbanterror and quakelive servers on the web services machine for bulk quality) the cost of the services you're using now went down to 40.63 Euros/Month or, in whole numbers, simply 41 euros per month. this is awesome as this finally make the costs of the used servers here into the recommended 35/45 euro/month target budget range. despite that keep in mind that nevertheless I still have to pay for the whole 63.4 Euros/Month bill (either myself or, if I get it right, through re-selling) to be able to keep offering these services at this level of quality (sure I could run all this myself alone on a 20 euros crappy instance that would likely lag/crash every other day but I guess none of us want that) so it's still very important that you guys keep up with the notable servers financial support you've been doing.

also I announce here that if someone is interested I still have another managed gameserver available for re-sell. the game servers are all 3.6 GHz zen2/2.667 Mhz ddr4 dedicated thread pinned (so they're guaranteed 24/7, no bullshit, just like any of the other top servers here) and they come with ftp access plus any support/advice you may need on my end (doesn't include custom mods here). the price is of 10 Euros/Month for "unlimited" slots (as much as the thread/game can deal with which highly depends on the game, settings etc themselves but for a "standard" idtech3 game that's typically +24 slots easy) so feel free to contact me about it if you're interested. as usual there's no contract obligation term (can cancel any time, just don't pay for it) and there's even a week trial period available so you can be 100% sure the server actually meet your needs before committing to any payment.

[PacMan]

We waiting for you admin, LG is locked loaded and ready to fry you.....

[adminless]

ok, it's been several months already since the migration to this server and quite frankly, I believe there have been no issues whatsoever, so I think that we can finally say this server lived up to its expectations. then, now, in a effort to maintaining the quality as well as to meet the standard for this new 2021 year I announce here that finally past week I successfully implement and rolled out dnssec on all the domains (most notably on fpsclasico.de and fpsclasico.eu) as can be seen on the attached capture of the DNSQuality score as accredited by the official eu domain registry service. while the dns services may seem like a not so important thing here and it may be easy to overlook them for some in reality, they sit at the very core of the network communications and, in fact, they are indeed a critical part of any network services. in light of that, a dns quality score of 98.66 (according to the eu domain registry) as of now looks like a sensible value to move this forward for this new 2021 year. overall this addition should greatly help with this site mail delivery as well as help improve domain (and therefor these services) reputation in addition to ensure (to a sensible standard) that the next time you visit this site you obviously end up on the right site and not anywhere else. all in all it definitively looks like something I must probably have done something like by the beginning of this year (2020) or so but unfortunately I hadn't put the resources needed to do it so far but hopefully now it's finally done in part thanks to the generous support received during this year.

in tune with that also in a effort to guarantee the continuity of service as well as the quality to the highest sensible standard for this new 2021 year I announce that I also rolled out this week new up-to 27 of December of 2020 23:59:59 CET full server images for superior stability and performance. I also tested and verified every single service here (even those that are only rarely used) during these days and found no issues whatsoever then I think that the server software update for this new 2021 year should also be done. all in all, I feel like they may not be the "best" services and as usual, some things could always be done better, but at least they are fully functional (everything) and have no known bugs and these efforts should definitively guarantee to a sensible standard that these services keep going at least for another year more.

[imprecise]

thank you very much Adminless for all this work, for these improvements, for your involvement and your personal investment in order to offer us the best here and on the servers

I am sincerely grateful to you, yes you fully deserve it

long live fpsclasico and you

cheers

[Dr.GreenThumb]

Agreed! ...adminless, please accept our utmost gratitude for your excellent work over the years! Well done!