ArmA 2 Redundant Servers?

[Neer 10]

Hey all, I was wondering If the concept of a ArmA 2 redundant server is possible, and if so how could it be done if the server is hosted on Linux?

[rundll.exe 12]

Not sure what you mean with redundant server or what you want with it, but there is no such feature built-in.

If you want more uptime, there are numerous user scripts that restart the server as soon as its crashed or shut down.

[Noraf 0]

well, you do have the option to run it persistent though, not sure if that helps

[Neer 10]

By redundant I mean linking 2 identical computers with a Arma 2 server installed together so that If 1 computer crashes the other one can pick up where it left off with only a couple moments of lag to show for it. Ive seen it alot on VOIP severs and Im just wondering if the same concept could be integrated in an ArmA 2 server. (lol, I know its a long shot)

[kevaskous 10]

Nope, sorry.

[Neer 10]

ok thank you for your answers

[Freeborne 10]

I'm sure it could be done, but it has little to do with ArmA, and to have only a few moments of lag would be difficult to set up and require some expensive hardware.

You can set up a redundant web server, but it's not controlled by Apache or IIS. Same concept with what you're asking here. ArmA doesn't fit into the equation. Ask how to setup 0-downtime redundant servers, THEN run ArmA in that environment.

We could go into all the technical considerations and how unfeasible it would be for you to set up this for a single game server, but what you probably want to do is look up some big name gaming service providers that will host your server in a virtual environment, and pay through the nose for the type of millisecond downtime you're after.

Having a backup server really only solves a minor part of your downtime causes. The actual server (be it the hardware, or operating system) is unlikely to fail on you often. The most likely cause of downtime is going to be if ArmA itself crashes, or server FPS drops to unplayable levels because of bad mission scripting, mod conflicts, massive player dsync, etc. Having a backup server in these scenarios isn't really going to help you much.

Just setup ArmA to auto-restart if it crashes, and some daemon that also monitors ArmA if it hangs and needs to be killed and restarted, etc. Anything outside of this scope seems like unnecessary theoretical debate.

[Neer 10]

Alright thanks Freeborne. that answers my question perfectly

[walker 0]

Hi all

What you appear to be talking about is making one primary server act as a host for a secondary client/server, then falling over to the secondary client/server when the primary server fails.

Thus is holds a backup of the currently played mission data that the secondary then takes over when crash occurs. But there is a fundamental problem whatever causer the primary to fail will cause the secondary to fail too.

For this a better solution would be to use the secondary to save game state every say 5 to 10 minutes, thus allowing a recovery from before the error occurred.

The other uses of such a server to client/server architecture is to offload activities such as game state synchronisation for JIP clients. Though if you have multiple cores and enough bandwidth on your primary this not so much of an issue and BIS did some improvements to net-code to reduce the yellow and even red chain when large numbers of JIP clients enter a mission with major game state changes from initial state in them. Common problems are demolished cities and mass destruction of trees and other land clutter.

Kind Regards walker

[Neer 10]

Hmmm... interesting I never thought of that...