Home Server Build Advice Requested

[hkintheuk]

Greetings folks,

I believe the time has come to consider building a home server for 7DTD and this will be a standalone machine used for nothing else.

My current Gaming Rig is an i7-7700K, 4.5 GHz Stable, 16GB RAM, 2080 Super, but this is not up for seriously high-performance 2 person LAN multiplayer. 

Don't get me wrong, when I first started playing 7DTD 2 years ago, it was perfect. I was a noob then. I didn't expect or demand much from the game. No mods, no nothing. Basic game.

Now, I use 8K Worlds in Nitrogen, several mods (Bdub's is a favourite), my cities are tight, large and compact, I play on Insane Difficulty, 12 Z's per player, Z's all set to Nightmare movement, Feral's turned on, Max Spawned 40, Z detection ranges increased by 30%. My bandwidthith is fibre speed (200MB / 20 MB)

My machine is struggling.

So I tried a dedi-host, 8GB ram in a data centre. It "kind of" handles the above for 6 players but their servers are struggling. The cost of more RAM is pretty high.

So I thought...why not run my own dedi-server at home ?

My objective is to ratchet things up a bit too. Max Spawned 50-100, Horde from 12-16 PP, more mods, more everything. More more more ! If I drop a building, I expect it to drop. Instantly. Not fall in slow mo. And I'm happy to build a machine to make that happen.

Yes, I'm probably a little bit crazy. I just like the game. 2,100 hours to date. It's the only game I play. It's my go to for R&R. Wife plays too. Hence the need for a dedi-server, and to take the strain off our gaming rigs.

I've been looking in to Xeon servers, and scouring various forums and posts on the web for ideas on spec, but beyond odd snippets here and there, nothing seems really concrete.

Eg, multiple folks says "Allow 2GB per player". But what about throwing an 8K map on that  ? With several mods ? And what level performance is that ? Average / Above-Average / Outstanding ?

At least I know I don't need to worry about a GPU with a dedi-server build. Probably be Win 10, as I don't know Linux nor have time for it.

Any hardware suggestions / pointers would be much appreciated, thank you.

Roll on A20 and thank you Fun Pimps for such an engrossing game. 

 

[meganoth]

I'm speaking here theoretically, I have no practical experience with setting up such a system. Also I tend to pick and know more about AMD CPUs.

One thing is that the game needs to move a lot of data around, so memory bandwith and caches for example are important. And also needs a high CPU clock. The former suggests a server CPU, the latter a desktop CPU since most affordable server cpus have relatively low CPU clock. Naturally only if price is a criterium for you

So my bet would be on AMD Threadripper CPUs. They have CPU clocks like desktop CPUs, but L3 caches and data throughput (to RAM for example) similar to server CPUs. I would select for high base clock and at least 4 chiplets and 4 memory channels, TR3960X seems the best choice (as you probably can't get some of the OEM-only CPUs). A similar server CPU (Epyc 7F32) has 8 memory channels and 0.1Ghz slower base clock, but costs nearly twice as much.

On intels side server CPUs with a high base clock are  Xeon Gold 6244 and 8256, 6244 is because of higher IPC probably not too far from the two AMD CPUs in CPU speed, but also more expensive, the 8256's price is a factor of 8 higher. I didn't find the number of memory channels, but their L3 cache of only 25MB and 17MB seems like a disadvantage compared to 128M on the threadripper and epyc.

Such simple numbers comparisons can lead to misjudgements though, there may be other factors making a smaller cache irrelevant, or the game itself might not use a bigger cache.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Building a server has multiple aspects.

First of all, you said your system is struggling, your datacenter server is struggling. But have you taken a look on the systemload?

Do you know where the bottleneck is? Is it REALLY the CPU?

From your datacenter you seem to assume, that only 8GB RAM are the problem? Many datacenter servers have "weak" CPUs, they may have more cores, but often are running on low clocks, what makes their per-thread-performance underwhelming.

As meganoth said, 7d2d takes advantage of high single-core-performance. So a CPU with many cores but with low base clocks is not the best.

Also you don't need Xeons, just because it is a server. Especially for 7d2d a desktop-cpu mostly should perform better for lower price because of it's higher clocks.

Imho a Threadripper is also massive overkill. Imho a Ryzen 3600 or 3700 (or the 6 to 8 core equivalent of the upcoming ryzen 5000s) is way enough.

What i've seen ingame, the "2GB per player" is also not up to date anymore. It's more dependant on mapsize plus number of players. An 8K nitrogen map for me uses 5,1GB with no player online, pregen01 (iirc 6K) uses only 3,3GB. From my last experiments number of players has almost no effect. Calculate with 500MB per player you should be absolutely safe. 

It seems to hold the whole map in memory, so i couldn't even tell a difference between running it from an hdd or nvme. Server startup takes longer from hdd of course, but there was no noticeable speed differenze at runtime.

I don't know if power consumption/price is relevant for you. If it is, you should look for systems that have low power usage when idle. "Real" server hardware usually is NOT. Serverhardware is designed for max power output and not made to idle. They often don't have good/advanced power saving mechanisms. In the opposite a gameserver most times is just idle. I personally wouldn't run a server that draws 200W even if it's doing nothing.

I hardly recommend you to take a closer look on systems you already have. Especally on how your mods affect the load. E.g. for testing pruposes set up a server on your i7-7700 and take look how it runs with all your mods and several players. Take look on how the cpu is utilized and how many ram the server really needs.

Imho it's a complete waste of money to buy a 16-core with 64GB of ram just to see that 7d2d doesn't even use more than 8 threads and only needs 12GB of RAM.

From just a little experiment i can tell: Even if i run a dedicated server AND the client on my ryzen 2700x and spawn in 64 Zs at once the cpu is still not nearly fully utilized. But that's not a real case szenario, as there is still only 1 player and i didn't had mods in there. But the "base" requirements to a server are not as high as someone might expect.

Side note: If you want to run a server in your home, loudness might also be an issue. Hardware that is designed for servers (especially 19" stuff) often is EXTREMELY loud. You can often buy older (19") server systems on ebay which are still very powerfull and with a @%$#load or RAM, but most of them sound like a jet engine.

 

[SylenThunder]

Side note: If you want to run a server in your home, loudness might also be an issue. Hardware that is designed for servers (especially 19" stuff) often is EXTREMELY loud. You can often buy older (19") server systems on ebay which are still very powerfull and with a @%$#load or RAM, but most of them sound like a jet engine.

Yes, this is a concern. 

Our old Sunfire V20z was super loud when it spun up the fans. Haven't used it in a few years though as the CPU's lacked support and processing power.

Currently we're using Dell PowerEdge R710's, and they're relatively quiet most of the time. If I get the server to an extreme load it will get loud, but it's quite rare that we hit that.

Our current system specs for the Linux server running 7 Days is using a pair of Intel X5675's at 3.07GHz, 80GB DDR3 ECC RAM, and an H700 RAID controller. We've run up to 10 active servers on this machine. The OS is running on 15000rpm SAS drives in RAID, the servers are on a pair of SSD's in RAID, and all save data is on another pair of SSD's in RAID. We then have two 1TB SSHD's in RAID for backups. Drive throughput is a must when you've got several people running around.

This keeps up currently, but I get the feeling the CPU's are going to need an upgrade soon. Will definitely be looking at a new system with threadrippers.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Our current system specs for the Linux server running 7 Days is using a pair of Intel X5675's at 3.07GHz, 80GB DDR3 ECC RAM, and an H700 RAID controller. We've run up to 10 active servers on this machine. The OS is running on 15000rpm SAS drives in RAID, the servers are on a pair of SSD's in RAID, and all save data is on another pair of SSD's in RAID.

Nice setup, but i guess running TEN servers at once on just a single machine is not the use case, most peoples are looking for, and that also wasn't the question here. And sadly it's not at all comparable to what is required for a single server.

Of course running multiple servers in parallel will take advantage of multiple cores and even multiple CPUs, but running a single server not necessarily won't. But such systems are usually also balanced to not every dedicated uses full power at once. It doesn't really help here. OP doesn't seem to want to raise a server center.

 

[SylenThunder]

Yeah, I kind of provided an extreme case.  The setup costs less than most desktop PC's that aren't even capable of playing the game at 60FPS though. 

IMHO, minimum desktop CPU would be 6-8 cores at 3.4GHz. If you're just running one server for 10 people something like an i7-3930k or i7-3770k would be around the bottom end. You'll have to pair it with a good motherboard though. Something designed for overclocking is a good choice. Bargain boards just don't cut the mustard here.

RAM is going to be a minimum of 8GB, but 16GB is honestly where I would call minimum. Sure you can run a server with just a couple of people on less, but the extra overhead makes a big difference. Especially if you decide to use mods or run larger maps. 

And as stated earlier, hard drive access speed is critical. This is the nature of a voxel game. If you have large builds, region files can get as heavy as 12GB in size. That's just a single region. If you have 4 people spread across the map, you'll have 4 regions being read from, and written to as they move around. A minimum standard is one SSD, though a pair in RAID or a NVMe is preferred. (Note that not all m.2 drives are NVMe.)

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Yeah, I kind of provided an extreme case.  The setup costs less than most desktop PC's that aren't even capable of playing the game at 60FPS though. 

Yeah, as i said, you can buy monster-server from ebay for little money... if you are likely to have a jet engine darwing 200-300W of power even if they do nothing in your living room.

IMHO, minimum desktop CPU would be 6-8 cores at 3.4GHz. If you're just running one server for 10 people something like an i7-3930k or i7-3770k would be around the bottom end.

For 10 players, yes. If less players, not even that is needed.

And as stated earlier, hard drive access speed is critical. This is the nature of a voxel game. If you have large builds, region files can get as heavy as 12GB in size.

And as i stated before, hard disk speed is almost irrelevant, because everything is cached in RAM anyway and it basically doesn't matter how fast it can be written to disk. Even a old HDD makes 100mb/s (maybe only 70mb/s if it's a really old HDD with just 5400rpm). Dunno what you expect people to do, but if you can host a server on a 50mbit/s connection there CAN NOT BE more changes to the world than 50mbit/s allow anyway. How could an HDD that makes 100mb/s (800Mbit/s!!!!) not be capable to save it? Voxel game doesn't mean anything in this case, because you are simply not able to alter 5000 blocks at once and even then it is not required to write them to disk asap, because it is still in memory.

Yeah it might be different if you run TEN servers from the same system, but honestly, stay realistic. "Nobody" here except you is running a system that serves 10 servers in parallel and that is not a usecase that even nearly was asked here for.

Do you have any point that shows why this should be required? Or do you just assume it is required, because you have it, but never tried in a different way?

 

[meganoth]

Yeah, as i said, you can buy monster-server from ebay for little money... if you are likely to have a jet engine darwing 200-300W of power even if they do nothing in your living room.

For 10 players, yes. If less players, not even that is needed.

Don't forget that mods can increase the load just like more players.

And as i stated before, hard disk speed is almost irrelevant, because everything is cached in RAM anyway and it basically doesn't matter how fast it can be written to disk. Even a old HDD makes 100mb/s (maybe only 70mb/s if it's a really old HDD with just 5400rpm). Dunno what you expect people to do, but if you can host a server on a 50mbit/s connection there CAN NOT BE more changes to the world than 50mbit/s allow anyway. How could an HDD that makes 100mb/s (800Mbit/s!!!!) not be capable to save it? Voxel game doesn't mean anything in this case, because you are simply not able to alter 5000 blocks at once and even then it is not required to write them to disk asap, because it is still in memory.

Part of that argument doesn't work. The client sends the info to destroy block A. Block A is the only block that holds SI for the apartment building that now falls down on the server (at least I assume SI to be handled by the server).

Yeah it might be different if you run TEN servers from the same system, but honestly, stay realistic. "Nobody" here except you is running a system that serves 10 servers in parallel and that is not a usecase that even nearly was asked here for.

Do you have any point that shows why this should be required? Or do you just assume it is required, because you have it, but never tried in a different way?

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Don't forget that mods can increase the load just like more players.

I already stated, that i can not assume how mods affect load.

Part of that argument doesn't work. The client sends the info to destroy block A. Block A is the only block that holds SI for the apartment building that now falls down on the server (at least I assume SI to be handled by the server).

That affects processing power of the server, but not RAM or HDD use... That's exactly what i'm talking about. Just because some lags occur assuming to require a faster CPU ist not helpfull. That also applies to HDD or RAM. You can always throw in just more, but probably it won't help anything. And from my experience the hard disk drive doesn't really help anything, no matter what (exepct you are running TEN servers from the same storage maybe).

 

[meganoth]

I already stated, that i can not assume how mods affect load.

That affects processing power of the server, but not RAM or HDD use... That's exactly what i'm talking about. Just because some lags occur assuming to require a faster CPU ist not helpfull. That also applies to HDD or RAM. You can always throw in just more, but probably it won't help anything. And from my experience the hard disk drive doesn't really help anything, no matter what (exepct you are running TEN servers from the same storage maybe).

I didn't say you were wrong, but part of your logic was wrong. A small packet from the client can lead to much bigger changes on the server.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I didn't say you were wrong, but part of your logic was wrong. A small packet from the client can lead to much bigger changes on the server.

Sure it can. But it won't exceed what you can transmit by your internet connection by numbers. And the internet connection is most likely the bottleneck anyway. Even by a factor of 10. And EVERY HDD does this easily until you don't host a server for 100 players, what is not supported offically anyway.

It just simply doesn't matter. Basically every hard storage is fast enough, even running the server from an SD-Card would still be fast enough.

You are just asuming it is "required" but have no prove about it really is. and my experience is the complete opposite. It doesn't matter at all, since you are not running the server from a floppy disc.