Linux Cpu affinity on dedicated servers

On Linux you typically want to avoid setting affinity. Is there a reason that you would want to limit the cores the client has access to?
 
On Linux the game will use all of the CPU cores that are available to it. It's only on Windows that you get limited to only using 4-6 cores.

The game is primarily tied to a single core. It will use multithreading to run child tasks on the other cores of your system. The primary bottleneck is still going to be the capability of one single core, and the I/O bandwidth of RAM and storage.

If you want to describe your setup, and provide a log from when you are having the performance issues, we can take a look and give you some tips to improve it.
 
On Linux the game will use all of the CPU cores that are available to it. It's only on Windows that you get limited to only using 4-6 cores.

The game is primarily tied to a single core. It will use multithreading to run child tasks on the other cores of your system. The primary bottleneck is still going to be the capability of one single core, and the I/O bandwidth of RAM and storage.

If you want to describe your setup, and provide a log from when you are having the performance issues, we can take a look and give you some tips to improve it.
It is an HP Proliant DL360p Gen8, 16gigs of memory, dual 300gig SAS drives running a mirrored setup in a hardware raid configuration. It has a single Xeon E5-2600 v2.

I have it sitting on my kitchen table until I can get better temperature and airflow control in my wiring center as it has had a history of getting warm just with the home router I am running causing sporadic network issues due to what I believe was excessive heat. I am first working to add a ducted air vent that vents to the crawl space in summer, and will pipe in colder air in the winter. I was also looking at a ducted AC unit as well but hope just exhausting hot air would help.
 
It is an HP Proliant DL360p Gen8, 16gigs of memory, dual 300gig SAS drives running a mirrored setup in a hardware raid configuration. It has a single Xeon E5-2600 v2.

I have it sitting on my kitchen table until I can get better temperature and airflow control in my wiring center as it has had a history of getting warm just with the home router I am running causing sporadic network issues due to what I believe was excessive heat. I am first working to add a ducted air vent that vents to the crawl space in summer, and will pipe in colder air in the winter. I was also looking at a ducted AC unit as well but hope just exhausting hot air would help.
I'm curious exactly what CPU, because "Xeon E5-2600 v2" covers a range of 26 CPU models, and only five of those even meet the minimum required hardware spec.

I will state that most of that hardware is pretty much obsolete in terms of managing the client. The server is not capable of processing data fast enough. I retired my Dell PowerEdge R710's a couple of years ago because they were starting to have issues.

For reference and comparison, here is what my setup with those was.

  • 2x - X5680 CPU's 12-cores at 3.48GHz each for a total of 24 cores.
  • 96GB DDR3 ECC RAM at 2100MHz in Tri-channel mode for maximum bandwidth.
  • Evo 870 SSD's in a variety of RAID-0 arrays. I did this to get the absolute top bandwidth available without bottlenecking a single drive pipe.
    • OS - Two 250GB drives
    • Game Servers - Two 250GB Drives
    • Server Saves - Four 250GB Drives

And I retired that because I could see that it was no longer able to keep up with the processing demands or data bandwidth of the server client.
 
I'm curious exactly what CPU, because "Xeon E5-2600 v2" covers a range of 26 CPU models, and only five of those even meet the minimum required hardware spec.

I will state that most of that hardware is pretty much obsolete in terms of managing the client. The server is not capable of processing data fast enough. I retired my Dell PowerEdge R710's a couple of years ago because they were starting to have issues.

For reference and comparison, here is what my setup with those was.

  • 2x - X5680 CPU's 12-cores at 3.48GHz each for a total of 24 cores.
  • 96GB DDR3 ECC RAM at 2100MHz in Tri-channel mode for maximum bandwidth.
  • Evo 870 SSD's in a variety of RAID-0 arrays. I did this to get the absolute top bandwidth available without bottlenecking a single drive pipe.
    • OS - Two 250GB drives
    • Game Servers - Two 250GB Drives
    • Server Saves - Four 250GB Drives

And I retired that because I could see that it was no longer able to keep up with the processing demands or data bandwidth of the server client.
lscpu yields this:

lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 12
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-11
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
CPU family: 6
Model: 45
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 6
Socket(s): 1
Stepping: 7
CPU(s) scaling MHz: 55%
CPU max MHz: 2500.0000
CPU min MHz: 1200.0000
BogoMIPS: 3990.39
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx f
xsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_
good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx e
st tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave
avx lahf_lm epb pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid xsaveopt dtherm ida
arat pln pts vnmi md_clear flush_l1d
Virtualization features:
Virtualization: VT-x
Caches (sum of all):
L1d: 192 KiB (6 instances)
L1i: 192 KiB (6 instances)
L2: 1.5 MiB (6 instances)
L3: 15 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:
NUMA node(s): 1
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-11
Vulnerabilities:
Gather data sampling: Not affected
Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX disabled
L1tf: Mitigation; PTE Inversion; VMX conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Mds: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Meltdown: Mitigation; PTI
Mmio stale data: Unknown: No mitigations
Reg file data sampling: Not affected
Retbleed: Not affected
Spec rstack overflow: Not affected
Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Spectre v2: Mitigation; Retpolines; IBPB conditional; IBRS_FW; STIBP conditional; RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS
Not affected; BHI Not affected
Srbds: Not affected
Tsx async abort: Not affected
 
Bear in mind this unit was one that was getting trashed and I managed to get one. My intention was to refurbish unit with best specification parts to get it up to snuff. The current setup is to test things and verify the hardware at least functions before I commit to more hardware purchases in case I need to buy an entirely new server. I do a lot of hardware build outs on cosplay and a lot of my setups are lots of trial and error until I get the best possible hardware and suit setup for the desired effect.

Would this processor work better or fall under supported specs?:


General Information:
  • Product Type : Server Processor
  • Product Manufacturer : Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • Manufacturer Part Number : 715224-B21
  • Product Model : E5-2697 V2

    Technical Information:
  • Processor Core : 12-core
  • Clock Speed : 2.7 Ghz
  • Max Turbo Frequency : 3.5 Ghz
  • Quickpath Interconnect(qpi) Speed : 8 Gt/s
  • Instruction Set : 64-bit
  • Instruction Set Extensions : Avx

    Cache Memory Detail:
  • Smart Cache : 30 Mb

  • Lithography: 22 Nm
  • Max Thermal Design Power (tdp): 130 W
  • Compatible Processor Socket: Fclga-2011
 
Ok, according to funpimps:
Recommended Requirements (for optimal performance and larger player counts):

    • CPU: Quad-core processor, 3.0 GHz or higher.
    • RAM: 16 GB or more.
    • Storage: 50 GB of free space on an SSD.
    • Operating System: Windows Server 2022 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS are recommended.
    • Network: A stable internet connection with a high upload speed.
 
Ok, according to funpimps:
Recommended Requirements (for optimal performance and larger player counts):

    • CPU: Quad-core processor, 3.0 GHz or higher.
    • RAM: 16 GB or more.
    • Storage: 50 GB of free space on an SSD.
    • Operating System: Windows Server 2022 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS are recommended.
    • Network: A stable internet connection with a high upload speed.
So based on this, this would be a better fit:

General Information:
  • Product Type: Server Processor
  • Product Manufacturer: INTEL Corporation
  • Manufacturer Part Number: CM8063501374802
  • Product Model: E5-2690v2

    Technical Information:
  • Processor Core: 10-core
  • Clock Speed: 3.0ghz
  • Quick Path Interconnect (qpi) Speed: 8 Gt/s
  • Instruction Set: 64-bit

    cache Memory Detail:
  • L3 Cache: 25mb
  • Lithography: 22nm
  • Max Thermal Design Power (tdp): 130w
  • Compatible Processor Socket: Fclga-2011
I have ordered 2 processors, and an extra heatsink for the empty socket for the model series.

The next step is faster memory, and a local friend may have some for me for free on that front.
 
And just for reference this is what google AI pulled up:

The HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 server supports two families of Intel Xeon processors: the E5-2600 family and the E5-2600 v2 family. The DL360p Gen8 server can accommodate up to two processors, with the highest core count being 12 cores per processor.
Supported processors (examples)
  • Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series:
    • E5-2697 v2: 12 cores, 2.7 GHz clock speed, 30MB cache.
    • E5-2695 v2: 12 cores, 2.4 GHz clock speed, 30MB cache.
    • E5-2690 v2: 10 cores, 3.0 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2680 v2: 10 cores, 2.8 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2670 v2: 10 cores, 2.5 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2667 v2: 8 cores, 3.3 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2660 v2: 10 cores, 2.2 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2650 v2: 8 cores, 2.6 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2650L v2: 10 cores, 1.7 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache (low power).
    • E5-2643 v2: 6 cores, 3.5 GHz clock speed, 25MB cache.
    • E5-2637 v2: 4 cores, 3.5 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2640 v2: 8 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2630 v2: 6 cores, 2.6 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2620 v2: 6 cores, 2.1 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2630L v2: 6 cores, 2.4 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache (low power).
    • E5-2609 v2: 4 cores, 2.5 GHz clock speed, 10MB cache.
    • E5-2603 v2: 4 cores, 1.8 GHz clock speed, 10MB cache.
  • Intel Xeon E5-2600 series:
    • E5-2690: 8 cores, 2.9 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2680: 8 cores, 2.7 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2670: 8 cores, 2.6 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2667: 6 cores, 2.9 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2665: 8 cores, 2.4 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2660: 8 cores, 2.2 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2650: 8 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache.
    • E5-2650L: 8 cores, 1.8 GHz clock speed, 20MB cache (low power).
    • E5-2643: 4 cores, 3.3 GHz clock speed, 10MB cache.
    • E5-2637: 2 cores, 3.0 GHz clock speed, 5MB cache.
    • E5-2640: 6 cores, 2.5 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2630: 6 cores, 2.3 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2620: 6 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache.
    • E5-2630L: 6 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed, 15MB cache (low power).
    • E5-2609: 4 cores, 2.4 GHz clock speed, 10MB cache.
    • E5-2603: 4 cores, 1.8 GHz clock speed, 10MB cache.
Note: The specific processor kits for the DL360p Gen8 include the CPU and a heatsink. When upgrading from an Intel Xeon E5-2600 to an Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 processor, it is necessary to update the server's firmware and potentially replace the heatsink with a screw-down heatsink before installing the new processor. Mixing different processor models within a single server is not supported.
 
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