ARK Server Specifications

[dtcostelloe]

I've set up a dedicated private server in my data center. I've got a 100Mbps Up, 100Mbps Down fiber line that feeds the data center. (Internet access.)

One of the servers in my data center is a Cisco UCS-C220-M3 server. It has dual Xeon E5-2609 CPUs (4 cores per CPU) and 192GB of RAM. The server's core OS is currently Windows Server 2008 R2. I've got a virtual server setup in Hyper-V on this server running CentOS 7 with 32GB of RAM dedicated to it. The virtual server has a 128GB HDD which is located on a RAID5 set consisting of 6 300GB SAS 10,000RPM Enterprise-grade HDDs. (Basically - stupid fast ... as fast as it will get without going SSD.)

I've noticed that I seem to have a slight bit of lag sometimes running on this server, and I'm wondering if I need to dedicate more RAM to the virtual server, or if the CPU might be the bottleneck.

The lag isn't bad ... in fact, the only real place it's noticeable is when doing things in the inventory system. (Like, for example, transferring large amounts of an item from a player to a tamed dino.)

I wanted to see what other people's thoughts / ideas on this setup were, and where I might be able to improve performance for this server.

NOTE: I don't have more than about 5 people connecting to this server at the same time. It's a private server after all.

[Cataclisto]

Unfortinatly ark requires "single" core speed when it runs the game, uses one core to its max then very little of the others (which probibly causes the bottleneck your getting)

My guess is the 2.4 ghz server you have cant quite handle it, I dont think it would be the hdd, that would only effect loading speed and ark autosaves with some stutters, thats a higher end hdd so not much to worry about. Ram your probibly good on, good numbers are always better for servers, ark has some memory leaks so a good number would be 32 gigs dedicated for the ark server which it seems you have, so yea.. cpu is only thing I can think of right now. (unless its a virtual server thing, ocasionally hear random reports of that being a issue too, shouldnt matter though)

Here is a link of the ark dev talking about the dedicated servers (3rd reply in), The servers he mentions that they use are i7s and 3.5ghz+ and overclocked.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/133258092238706042/

[margalus]

It's not a ram issue. The server doesn't use all that much ram. It's all up to pure cpu speed and storage speed. The save files are huge, so when it saves it can cause "lag" for want of a better term.

[dtcostelloe]

Ya, I did notice that the lag seemed to be less when I was running on an old workstation I had set up as a server previously. (AMD 1090T CPU) I switched to the "big" server because it had more RAM (32 dedicated VS 16 total for the workstation) and the HDD was faster.

Like I said, the lag isn't bad ... it's weird in that the actual gameplay is fine - no lag at all running across the world or anything like that. It's only when doing bulk inventory exchanges (like holding 'T' to move multiple stacks of an item to a remote dino's inventory, or holding 'E' to force-feed a dino.)

NOTE: I know they implemented a delay in the force-feeding mechanism .. but the delay I'm talking about is the the health bar itself will "jump". Kind of hard to explain. It's like, you'll feed it 3 stacks of meat, and then a few seconds later you see the health bar jump up. In a single player world, the health bar steadily rises with each meat you feed.

Thanks for the input. I don't know if this particular server can receive CPU upgrades or not. I'll have to jump on Cisco's website and see what options are available. I might also revive the workstation for a server again. I think I've got a couple of SSDs laying around I could throw in RAID0.

And yes, the memory leaks are really bad for this game right now. That's why I've set this server up in the first place, I was running a single-player world and my 16GB desktop kept throwing "Low Memory" errors after about 2 hours of gameplay. I figured offloading the server part to a remote machine would help alleviate that issue (which it has.)