what do i need to host multiple clusters?

[woodsguide]

first off please dont start in on the "you wont have that many people.."etc... thats not the topic.


out of curiosity's sake....

what sort of setup would we need to host multple ARK server clusters?
...lets say 8 clusters.
how much ram/cpu/ssd etc..
what kind of specs are we looking at?

================
-one cluster would include-

the island
the center
scorched earth
ragnarok
aberration

50 player slots per map..so 250 slots total for the cluster

a handful of mods such as-
Structures plus
4 or 5 of ecos extras
dino patrol system
advanced rafts
super spyglass
rare sightings
and a few more as required...

===================

any thoughts and insights will be appreciated

[Yaka]

Depending on how many players there will be, you need quite a beefy CPU (or even two or more) and a lot of ram.
I dont know most of your extra MODs but they sound like they increase the CPU usage quite a bit.
I also suggest to put the dedicated server onto an SSD-RAID for safety (which doesn't replace backups btw)
My 5-cluster setup runs on a single Xeon X5650 (6 cores, 12 threads, 2.66GHZ if I remember) and 32GB RAM with no hickups, along with two VMs and other services on two SSDs and a RAID-5e of 4 HDDs.
Cheap old Fujitsu Celsius server, but its super stable.

[Liralen]

I'm not sure what you're asking - 8 clusters? Each composed of several maps? That seems a bit much. So I'm not sure what you mean by a "cluster".

So I'll just reply with what we're running.

We are running 1 cluster, with 3 maps - The Island, The Center, and Ragnarok, with S+ and Castles, Keeps, and Forts mods.

The server is an i7, 6700K, with 32 GB of RAM. It's pretty much idling at the moment, and is using 16 GB of RAM, running all 3 maps. It's also used to play a client, which adds about 7-9 GB of RAM at max settings.

So my guess is that it would take quite a bit of RAM to run 8 maps.

Another factor to consider is your Internet bandwidth. There are 3 of us in our household who play Ark regularly, and a fourth player, not in our household has reported a drop in performance when all 3 of us are on. We are also running a Teamspeak server on a different machine, and have been having issues with it lately, but I don't know why. We're paying for 60 MB/s, and the times I've tested it, it seemed fine, but who knows.

[woodsguide]

yes you read that right..

i am looking to create a server hub...8-10 clusters.

all 5 maps in a cluster, running a handful of mods with enough power to hold roughly 250 players across all 5 maps...

a bit overkill i know.. but i want to figure out how much power ill need to make this happen, with little to no lag and snags..

[Yaka]

a 100/100 internet connection line with very low latency.
two Xeon E5 46XX V4 or better
128GB RAM
A powerful NVME SSD setup for the server data

[123]

I wouldn t go below 3 Gb RAM per map ( that s allready super-minimum.. better 5-6 Gb+ ).
With that many Servers (Maps) you might wanna check HDs/SSDs twice before buying.

To be honest i wouldn t even run separate clusters of that size on a single dedicated Server.
( If really 250 players use them at same time )

[JimmyRiddle]

Nasa.

[johnim]

2 series xeon 8 core and at least 4-6GB of Ram per server with an ssd 1 server per core

[Leslie]

1. Either a second or a bigger service drop from your electric company.
2. A larger air conditioner.
3. Four or five employees to cover the 21 eight hour shifts per week.
4. Fiber directly into the computer room, not just to the box out back.
5. Enough players willing to stick with your new servers to make it worth while, othwerwise you're just clutering up your man cave and draining your checkbook with a bunch of unused wires and boxes.

Why don't you just rent some server space for 3 to 6 months and see if you and your group still play Ark after that? Economy of scale... dedicated operation... efficiency and all that. You don't become an ISP just because you want to hook into the internet do you?

[woodsguide]

Why don't you just rent some server space for 3 to 6 months and see if you and your group still play Ark after that?


..i am looking to become the other end of that... just poking around for specs on what i would need to get that set up ;o)

[🂡WC_Zane🂡]

-For each map, with the fairly beefy mods that you mentioned, you would need at least 2 dedicated CPU Cores per map instance.
-For clustered servers, you need to have all maps on a cluster running off of the same machine.
-For each map, you need a minimum of 4GB of RAM but 8-12GB is safe
-Hard drive space for each map being run should be 20GB with about 100GB for the server and mod files

So that sets you with general specs of:

10 CPU cores that are solid/capable
64GB of RAM
500GB of SSD's


Those would be the ideal specs of each machine you need for a cluster. If you goals are to actually have 8 clusters with a 50 player limit that is generally busy, then you can definitely expect to need significant DDoS protection also (on top of high end server machines)

This is definitely an endeavor that is possible, but not one I would condone "jumping into" as the investment is quite significant. Good luck to you though!

[Baradine Allawa]

Originally posted by 🂡WC_Zane🂡:

-For clustered servers, you need to have all maps on a cluster running off of the same machine.

I'm going to point out that this is incorrect. It makes it easier yes, but it's not required.

[woodsguide]

thanks for the insights ;o)

[BunnyDad]

Here’s some new insights. I7-7700k. 64GB Of Ram, and 2 NVE drives. Runs a 8 map cluster, 22 mods, over 50 players at once, never had an instance of lag.

[ShaZZa]

To give you a rough idea a 7 map cluster with 8 mods (total of ~450Mb so nothing too massive to load) and it uses ~25Gb RAM

[zerassar]

Over a year ago ya'll. Stop flogging the dead horse.