Dedicated server hosting

[Scheneighnay]

The group I play with is looking at hosting our own dedicated server for Ark and a couple other games. I was curious about the requirements for it and saw the last thread on it died in 2023, and didn't have all the information I need, so I won't necro it.

4 questions from anyone that might be hosting their own dedicated server

1. What hardware are you using for it?
2. How many people are playing on it at a time?
3. Are you running any other applications on the same machine?
4. Obviously, is that running well?

We're looking at slapping together a Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 64 gigs of RAM and trying to run 3 servers on it at once if that's viable.
Not likely to exceed 10 people at a time across all servers.

[ChaosCluster]

I host all ASE servers and ASA servers to date....i have server hardware at home.....slapping that rig will do what you want but for a guide ....each ASA server is average 10 gb ram usage...and about 4gb per player..... i host each server with about 25 players to keep the lag down.

[Scheneighnay]

Originally posted by ChaosCluster:

each ASA server is average 10 gb ram usage...and about 4gb per player.....

so you're saying a base of 10 + 4 per player so 10 players would be 50 gigs total?
Logged in or not?

[Veeshan]

I've had four people on a sever I ran on a walmart laptop (literally) with a 2.3ghz cpu and like 16gb ram. We were caving and base building at the same time, no issues whatsoever.

But more than that likely requires more ram, and clustering servers may actually impact cpu usage.

[ChaosCluster]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

Originally posted by ChaosCluster:

each ASA server is average 10 gb ram usage...and about 4gb per player.....

so you're saying a base of 10 + 4 per player so 10 players would be 50 gigs total?
Logged in or not?

That is based on my experience, if everyone is logged on at the same time....it also depends what mods, if players have many dinos out, fires burning.....etc. Thats all ram usage, so i may be exaggerating a bit but it keeps my servers running based on those stats. Hope that helps a bit.

[Automatic12pro]

Originally posted by ChaosCluster:

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

so you're saying a base of 10 + 4 per player so 10 players would be 50 gigs total?
Logged in or not?

That is based on my experience, if everyone is logged on at the same time....it also depends what mods, if players have many dinos out, fires burning.....etc. Thats all ram usage, so i may be exaggerating a bit but it keeps my servers running based on those stats. Hope that helps a bit.

WOW! this has been nowhere near my experience. The system you proposed will run 5-8 ASA servers and easily host 10+ concurrent players. I've been using a VPS with a 12 core 2.59ghz CPU and 90GB Ram and haven't had many issues. The OS is server 2019 but win 10/11 should be fine.
The trick is to launch your start.bat scripts via task scheduler after system reboot with high privileges. The reason is that doing so uses %10-%25 of the normal CPU/RAM usage vs opening manually from the desktop. When started this way they open as background processes and so far after many months of doing this I've seen no downsides. Message me and I can provide example scripts as well as powershell scripts to Auto recover any servers that may crash

[Automatic12pro]

As a side note when I was testing my server configs I was hosting 6 or 7 maps, with 15 players joined, and playing ASA, all on the same machine and everything was fine. AMD 7900x 12 core, 64gb DDR5 6000

[dagger]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

The group I play with is looking at hosting our own dedicated server for Ark and a couple other games. I was curious about the requirements for it and saw the last thread on it died in 2023, and didn't have all the information I need, so I won't necro it.

4 questions from anyone that might be hosting their own dedicated server

1. What hardware are you using for it?
2. How many people are playing on it at a time?
3. Are you running any other applications on the same machine?
4. Obviously, is that running well?

We're looking at slapping together a Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 64 gigs of RAM and trying to run 3 servers on it at once if that's viable.
Not likely to exceed 10 people at a time across all servers.

I am hosting on a bit higher spec than most private people with the following system (cost ~$29,000 to build this year)
-Dual AMD Epyc 9474F (zen4 48 core / 96 thread 4GHZ enterprise CPUs) - total 96 cores and 192 threads
-1536 GB of DDR5 ECC server ram
-8x 3.84TB enterprise nvme drives in RAID10 for a total ~14TB of fast storage with 15,000 MB/s read and writes for games to run from

Running around 21 game servers with only about 15-20% CPU load peak times.

[LadyVyrus]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

1. What hardware are you using for it?
2. How many people are playing on it at a time?
3. Are you running any other applications on the same machine?
4. Obviously, is that running well?

1. A Ryzen 7 2700X 8 Core processor, NVidia 1080 w/8Gb RAM, 16Gb RAM
2. Two people
3. I run my client and server on the same machine with Steam, Discord, Web Browsers (Youtube), or Media player.
4. We haven't had a problem. I can play it on almost maxed settings.

System Requirements:
Surprisingly, not any outrageous requirements. Many people have run a server on spare/obsolete PCs. Keep in mind that the server doesn't use the GPU so feel free to dust off that old tower you have sitting in the closet as long as it meets these bare bones specs:
Storage Space:
As of 10 December 2024, One server installation is approximately 10 GB. Try to have about 200 GB worth of storage available to account for mod installations, multiple maps, and future updates. Use an SSD for faster speeds.
CPU:
Have 4 logical cores available on your processor for each server instance you plan to run. Some people have had success running with 2 cores per map, which might work for smaller setups.
GPU:
The server does not rely on the GPU, so you can use an older or integrated graphics card. All the heavy lifting is done by the CPU and RAM.
RAM:
Each map uses approximately 10 GB of RAM. 32 GB seems to be the preferred number but you can get away with 16 GB if you only need to run one server.
Network Requirements:
Make sure your internet connection is stable and fast enough for hosting. You’ll also need to set up port forwarding for others to connect to your server.

[strikerfox12]

Originally posted by Automatic12pro:

As a side note when I was testing my server configs I was hosting 6 or 7 maps, with 15 players joined, and playing ASA, all on the same machine and everything was fine. AMD 7900x 12 core, 64gb DDR5 6000

im looking at building my own ark cluster using the i7 14700 20 core cpu and 128 gigs of ram.. DDo you know hat amount of servers I could expect to be able to host of this. Not gaming on it as this config is purely for hosting arkascended

[strikerfox12]

Originally posted by strikerfox12:

Originally posted by Automatic12pro:

As a side note when I was testing my server configs I was hosting 6 or 7 maps, with 15 players joined, and playing ASA, all on the same machine and everything was fine. AMD 7900x 12 core, 64gb DDR5 6000

im looking at building my own ark cluster using the i7 14700 20 core cpu and 128 gigs of ram.. DDo you know hat amount of servers I could expect to be able to host of this. Not gaming on it as this config is purely for hosting arkascended

also server would mainly just be me with the odd friend on every now and then

[Scheneighnay]

Originally posted by strikerfox12:

Originally posted by Automatic12pro:

As a side note when I was testing my server configs I was hosting 6 or 7 maps, with 15 players joined, and playing ASA, all on the same machine and everything was fine. AMD 7900x 12 core, 64gb DDR5 6000

im looking at building my own ark cluster using the i7 14700 20 core cpu and 128 gigs of ram.. DDo you know hat amount of servers I could expect to be able to host of this. Not gaming on it as this config is purely for hosting arkascended

Good to note that's not really a 20 core CPU
It has 8 traditional cores and 12 weak ones that are only delegated to minor processes.

[TheSlayerNL]

Originally posted by ChaosCluster:

I host all ASE servers and ASA servers to date....i have server hardware at home.....slapping that rig will do what you want but for a guide ....each ASA server is average 10 gb ram usage...and about 4gb per player..... i host each server with about 25 players to keep the lag down.

Honestly, 4gb per player is a bit high, I run 2 ASA Servers on my Gaming PC, while also gaming at the same time.
I have 64gb ram, and I noticed that windows does a lot of its memory management tricks that eventually reduce ram, initial bootup from my biggest server hits about 12gb.
Once people start playing it drops below 6GB, and I have had like 6 people on at once, and it may have reached 8-9gb at most during that time.

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

The group I play with is looking at hosting our own dedicated server for Ark and a couple other games. I was curious about the requirements for it and saw the last thread on it died in 2023, and didn't have all the information I need, so I won't necro it.

4 questions from anyone that might be hosting their own dedicated server

1. What hardware are you using for it?
2. How many people are playing on it at a time?
3. Are you running any other applications on the same machine?
4. Obviously, is that running well?

We're looking at slapping together a Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 64 gigs of RAM and trying to run 3 servers on it at once if that's viable.
Not likely to exceed 10 people at a time across all servers.

Honestly, if only used for 3 Servers, 64GB should be more than sufficient, with 10 players.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

The group I play with is looking at hosting our own dedicated server for Ark and a couple other games. I was curious about the requirements for it and saw the last thread on it died in 2023, and didn't have all the information I need, so I won't necro it.

4 questions from anyone that might be hosting their own dedicated server

1. What hardware are you using for it?
2. How many people are playing on it at a time?
3. Are you running any other applications on the same machine?
4. Obviously, is that running well?

We're looking at slapping together a Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 64 gigs of RAM and trying to run 3 servers on it at once if that's viable.
Not likely to exceed 10 people at a time across all servers.

Your biggest issue in the US is going to be whether or not your ISP will allow you to route incoming traffic to your PC in the manner this game prescribes. That's literally the only thing holding me back from hosting a rack of my own.

To answer the questions:

* 64GB is not more than sufficient, even for just 10 players, due to several factors directly related to Wildcard's remastering of the game. 128 GB is recommended.

* That's just for a few people. Even with all of the optimization rounds this game has had, it's still horrendous to run and keep running. I strongly encourage daily resets.

* Nope, that's just straight-up Ark with barebones running around it, appwise. The OS and the game. That's it.

* Test run was better than Nitrado, but that's not a high benchmark. I was dissatisfied either way.