Question about load balancer
Posted by then00b, 09-05-2007, 06:37 AM Hello I'm new to the forums and had a question. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer. My question is this, I have two servers that I run in Los Angeles (used to host gaming servers for a small community I run) for personal use that seem to be a little jumpy with server performance. Would a load balancer help with this situation? And for the n00b question, what exactly is a load balancer. Very new to hosting servers, so I appreciate a gentle response
Posted by david510, 09-05-2007, 07:41 AM If there is only one web server responding to all the incoming HTTP requests for your website, the capacity of the web server may not be able to handle high volumes of incoming traffic once the website becomes popular. The website's pages will load slowly as some of the users will have to wait until the web server is free to process their requests. The increase in traffic and connections to your website can lead to a point where upgrading the server hardware will no longer be cost effective. In order to achieve web server scalability, more servers need to be added to distribute the load among the group of servers, which is also known as a server cluster. The load distribution among these servers is known as load balancing. Load balancing applies to all types of servers, web server, database server etc.
Posted by RBBOT, 09-05-2007, 08:16 AM If by 'gamming servers' you are talking about servers for desktop games such as Counterstrike/BF 1492 etc. rather than websites with online games on them, load balancing is not a solution as you can't distribute players over multiple servers and have them participate in the same game.
Posted by then00b, 09-05-2007, 11:55 AM Yes that is what I was talking about, so I guess that was way off. What is an effective way to be able to manage both servers so that they do not get overstacked, I would like to add more game servers on both, but I'm afraid of overloading the boxes.
Posted by cygnusd, 09-05-2007, 03:30 PM First, understand your game server software and its requirements. Understand how much memory and cpu it demands. Also check your bandwidth and it's response time. Game lags are mostly due to hiccups on not-so-good bandwidth latency. You might want to observe your server during peak hours to get a feel of whether or not you're overloading your machine (check memory, cpu, swap usage, etc) After that, provide limits, if your game server program allows you to. Preferably add limits to the number of players, spectators, and have a decent policy of dropping high-latency connections. Let your machine capacity determine the limits. Cheers!
Posted by then00b, 09-12-2007, 03:24 AM I have decided that I will probably be starting my own GSP (Game Server Provider) however I will be spending the next 4-6 months doing research before I decide for sure. I have just received my degree in Business Administration and have a steady job at a mortgage company for startup prices. Though the business side of things comes easy for me, technical aspects are not quite as easy. That being said here is my question referring to what was preciously discuessed Basically you have four game servers, or whatever amount. Every night in very low usage hours, say 5 a.m. You transfer game servers from one server to another based on that servers daily cpu average. This would ensure the four servers are fairly evenly balanced at all times. When a new order comes in, the system would need to check for the current lowest usage server and setup the server on that box, this would also mean ip's would need to be transfered over, if the servers were clustered, I'm pretty sure this would be possible. Anyone care to offer some insight? Load balancing is going to be my number one concern if I start a GSP, as many providers overstack their boxes in this field.
Posted by then00b, 09-14-2007, 01:48 AM Any input on how I could possibly make this happen?