Virtualization puts this fundamental service within the reach of any pocket
A few days ago we enjoyed the open beta of the promising Hell Let Loose. Perhaps the most differentiating thing about this game is that it requires a minimum of “seriousness” to be fun. Coordinated platoons, with a lot of “team play”, well communicated, without “noobs” or “trolls” that ruin a game that can take hours … hence, it is not surprising that in the game configuration menu the first option was the of “Rent Dedicated Server”.
One of the advantages of the PC as a gaming platform is precisely the possibility of using dedicated servers. Basically it is about installing the game on a PC that is the server on which the rest of the users will play. This allows us to have full control over the game. We will be able to choose who plays and who does not, which maps, under what conditions, for how long, in addition to achieving very low latency because that server is supposed to be in our environment.
This absolute control over the game will allow us to organize competitions between clans, or “ladders”, in a very simple way, allowing us to configure and start the game when and how we want. In “shooters” having a dedicated server has allowed communities of CounterStrike, Quake, Battlefield … have squeezed the titles beyond their natural useful life as there are private servers where there were always people, generally from the same country and language where the server was. , playing the game in conditions according to their tastes, avoiding unpopular maps, configuring parameters such as friendly fire, the number of players per game, the times … and exquisite control of cheats, because a ban from a private server is final .
Outside of the “shooters” there are dozens of games that take advantage of private servers because their very nature invites to maintain a more controlled and stable community, with universes configured to their liking. Among those that come to mind, Minecraft or titles such as Day-Z, Ark or ArmA stand out.
As veteran PC gamers, the possibility of creating a private server seems essential to us in certain titles, but we have had to give up over time and accept that possibility as something increasingly exotic. The prevalence of consoles as a gaming platform for years, multiplatform ports and, in short, a majority percentage of players who have become accustomed to “matchmaking” and see it as normal not being able to decide under what conditions they will play. On the other hand, titles are becoming more volatile and it is difficult for players to remain faithful to them, so the developer prefers to have the ability to manage those players so that they can be grouped and maintained on busy servers.
But, above all, maintaining a private server has become too expensive and complex for the times. Let’s see why.
The first option to have your own server is literally that … have a PC that you use as a server in your own home. The advantage is that you are the administrator who configures each game and the latency, when playing on the same PC, is nil. On the other side of the scale, the disadvantages are many, starting with the fact that the machine that acts as a server has to have enough power to provide a decent service to all the players, enough data throughput so that the “lag” is tolerable, the Obligation to be constantly on and working properly and lifting the server every time it goes down, keeping it updated with the different versions of the game and free of cheats and hackers … All this implies commitment, money, time and advanced computer skills; something that is increasingly rare today.
The second option is to hire someone to do all of that. There are specialized companies in which you rent the use of a PC and the personal service that keeps it in optimal conditions for the game. They take care of maintaining a machine with enough power to give the best service, they take care of lifting it if it falls, they offer a good flow of data and our function, as clients, is simply to access the game configuration console from our PC and configure it as if it were your own PC.
The offer of this type of services varies greatly from one country to another, although we will always be conditioned to have that server as close as possible to the community, to reduce latencies and to have the same language when configuring and contacting with the technical service.
If we talk about Spain, a good dedicated server service starts from € 100 per month, increasing in rate as we need more storage space or data flow. In South America, the conditions are significantly worse, as prices remain (of the order of $ 150) but with fewer and more dispersed servers, many of them in the USA, with the consequent increase in latency or “lag”.
It is about contained prices, taking into account what it would mean for us to maintain the service and, above all, the speed at which the hardware is obsolete, but it is still good money a month and you have to have a community committed to pay your part on time.
In short, a complicated picture. Or so it was until the arrival of the VPS.
VPS: Virtual Private Server
To say that Virtual Private Servers are current is wrong. IBM already offered them in the 1960s, but the normalization of the Internet in the 1990s ended them, establishing the client / server relationship that we are used to today. And it is that same massification of the Internet that returns us to that configuration, since we are more and more potential customers interested in the advantages of a private server, both professionally and in a recreational way.
On the other hand, the potential growth of hardware and, above all, the normalization of high-speed networks, added to the imminent arrival of 5G and the consequent entry into the Internet of sectors hitherto unrelated to it, become a terrain subscribed for this type of service. Not to mention the incipient “cloud gaming” that promises to definitively change our conception of gaming platforms.
As its name says, the difference compared to a classic Dedicated Server is that it is Virtual. We do not have an exclusive “rented” machine, but rather we pay for the service that machine would offer, without knowing or deciding on how that service reaches us.
Virtualization basically consists of a better use of the “data center” where the servers are hosted. In other words, instead of having our private server, a physical machine that only we can access, we will share several. These virtual servers are integrated in the same VLANs as the physical servers, with which the only difference refers to the use of the hardware. Thus, when we do not use our server or consume few of its resources, these will be used by other users, maintaining the guarantees of having the server in the chosen data center (in order not to increase lag), and of all the resources of processor, ram and storage that we have contracted.
This type of configuration also has another advantage, which is that it is fully scalable. We can hire exactly what we need, tailor-made, without being conditioned by “real” hardware configurations. It will be the virtual server that manages its resources to give us the service that we demand.
On paper, a virtual server offers the same performance and service as a real one, but the reality is that they can be affected by spikes in demand. Of course, it depends on the provider that provides the service, but that risk exists and performance may be punctually affected if customer demand for these servers exceeds expectations. This circumstance, which should not occur but which is still possible, is completely annulled if we have a real dedicated server, which works exclusively for us.
That is the true difference between one service and another and the reason why certain clients continue to bet on “bare metal” servers, physical servers with exclusive use. They pay more for having the guarantee that the service will always be 100%.
And here comes the fundamental question. The price. The VPS are much cheaper than the real ones and we, the clients, must estimate if we can and want to pay for a real one or we can risk that supposed loss of punctual performance in exchange for paying 80% less. Because that is the price difference. For us there is no doubt about the answer …
To specify with real situations, we will use what is perhaps the best option for dedicated gaming servers in Spain, given that it has its appropriate settings for gamers, servers in the country and the corresponding low latency and special attention to combat DDoS attacks . The company OVHcloud maintains dedicated servers aimed at players (in fact it calls its Game service) hovering around € 100 per month. Includes an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 32GB DDR4, 1TB of SSD storage, and unlimited data traffic at 1Gb / sg.
This is a good service at its usual price, with features that we will hardly use as private users. Hence the interesting thing about the arrival of these Virtual Dedicated Servers for players. In the same company we can hire a VPS where we can install Minecraft, for example, for just over € 5 a month, with a minimum service of 1 vCore, 2GB of RAM, 20GB of storage and unlimited traffic at a speed of 100Mbit / sg . More than enough for Minecraft and with 95% savings.
Another of the windows of the VPS is that we can hire them totally to measure. Based on the game that we want to host, we can change the contract and add more processor, RAM, storage or data speed.
Continuing with the example we have given you, the one that exceeded € 100 as a “classic” dedicated server service, with the VPS system the same company offers 8vCore, 8GB of RAM, 160 GB SSD and unlimited traffic at 2Gb / sg for one price slightly higher than € 20. At that price we can continue adding services that may interest us, such as a fixed IP or automatic server backup.
At these prices, there is no longer an excuse to return to the benefits of dedicated servers. Companies like the one we have mentioned are already targeting their VPS services at gamers, aware of the potential that this service has for us. Those irreducible who have maintained their CounterStrike or ArmA servers can now enjoy the same service for far less.
The rest of the players, we are now able to demand that the developers return that service to us. Successful titles such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, have not been the same since it is not possible to manage them. Anyone who has enjoyed these titles in a custom configured environment, must assume that the current matchmaking and “totum revolutum” policy that the current online game has become will be very comfortable for developers, but it is a real crap for the player.
The excuse to remove those possibilities from the games is that the players did not use them. With this new VPS option, the price is hardly a problem and the hardware and configuration complexity are no longer. It is time to regain control over our game that we should never have lost on PCs. We want to choose who, how and when to play because that is natural. So we encourage you to value in the next multiplayer title that you are going to buy if it allows a dedicated server or not. Because, ultimately, recovering that way of playing only depends on us, as buyers, demanding it.
