Hosted Server - Gameservers

[t4nk83 10]

Me and a bud are thinkning about getting our own hosted dedicated server for Arma III through gameservers.com.

I would like to know if anyone has done this him/her - self and what their experience is with this company

I had them COD4 and BF:BC2, it was an overall good experience with minimal issues.

[gimpymoo 10]

Where are you located?

[Zlin 10]

I had a gameserver server for about a week. The things I didn't like about it was that the initial default install of Arma 3 was quite old. The only way I could figure out how to update it was to FTP files from my own pc up to the gameserver server. My upload speed is only 1 Mbps so uploading 3 gigs or more is quite a bit of time.

Even after that I could not get my mission to start and had no idea why because there's no console you can connect to, no error log, no useful interface.

I emailed tech support and it took them over six hours to respond. The tech said he updated my server files to the latest dev build as I had asked him to do but the mission still would not load.

There is practically no support for Arma 3 servers in their forums, just a few other people asking for help.

I could get a plain empty map to load but noting with addons would run.

I'm sure a more experienced person could get it to work but I am fairly new to trying to run a dedicated server.

I cancelled my account and then tried NFO servers. I was advised by one of their tech support people that a 2 core VDS would work for my needs ( ded server with 6 - 10 players). The NFO VDS was up and running within minutes and I had full access to the server through Remote Desktop. I ran in to some performance issues and contacted tech support again. I received responses from tech support almost immediately every time.

After several discussions about the VDS server and my performance issues I was advised that a 3 or 4 core server would better suit my needs.

I ended up looking at my Internet provider upgrade options and decided it would be more cost effective for me to just bump up my own Internet service to faster speeds and run my own server.

NFO servers was great to deal with though and if you need a dedicated server I would look at their website.

Z

[t4nk83 10]

Where are you located?

Los Angeles, but I have buddies in Louisiana, Canada (Toronto), Seattle, New York, Arizona, Texas, etc...

---------- Post added at 20:55 ---------- Previous post was at 20:53 ----------

I had a gameserver server for about a week. The things I didn't like about it was that the initial default install of Arma 3 was quite old. The only way I could figure out how to update it was to FTP files from my own pc up to the gameserver server. My upload speed is only 1 Mbps so uploading 3 gigs or more is quite a bit of time.

Even after that I could not get my mission to start and had no idea why because there's no console you can connect to, no error log, no useful interface.

I emailed tech support and it took them over six hours to respond. The tech said he updated my server files to the latest dev build as I had asked him to do but the mission still would not load.

There is practically no support for Arma 3 servers in their forums, just a few other people asking for help.

I could get a plain empty map to load but noting with addons would run.

I'm sure a more experienced person could get it to work but I am fairly new to trying to run a dedicated server.

I cancelled my account and then tried NFO servers. I was advised by one of their tech support people that a 2 core VDS would work for my needs ( ded server with 6 - 10 players). The NFO VDS was up and running within minutes and I had full access to the server through Remote Desktop. I ran in to some performance issues and contacted tech support again. I received responses from tech support almost immediately every time.

After several discussions about the VDS server and my performance issues I was advised that a 3 or 4 core server would better suit my needs.

I ended up looking at my Internet provider upgrade options and decided it would be more cost effective for me to just bump up my own Internet service to faster speeds and run my own server.

NFO servers was great to deal with though and if you need a dedicated server I would look at their website.

Z

Awesome, thanks for th einput, I'll take a look at NFO.

I do have some old dual Xeons in the shop, with some 10k SCSI hard disks, just would need to buy my own copy of Arma3 for it , Im guessing? Or could I copy and paste some files from my Arma3 just for the server?

[pawelkpl 29]

Los Angeles, but I have buddies in Louisiana, Canada (Toronto), Seattle, New York, Arizona, Texas, etc...

---------- Post added at 20:55 ---------- Previous post was at 20:53 ----------

Awesome, thanks for th einput, I'll take a look at NFO.

I do have some old dual Xeons in the shop, with some 10k SCSI hard disks, just would need to buy my own copy of Arma3 for it , Im guessing? Or could I copy and paste some files from my Arma3 just for the server?

I have just installed steam and arma 3 on server box , for arma 3 server you don't need working steam.

[t4nk83 10]

I have just installed steam and arma 3 on server box , for arma 3 server you don't need working steam.

So did you sign in with your account? Then download it, then sign out of your account and put steam in offline mode?

[Zlin 10]

The way I run my server pc is that I load steam, log in with my account info, download arma as normal, then log out of steam. I use Tophes TADST to configure my server settings and then it launches Arma3server.exe. You do not need to be logged in to steam to run Arma3server.exe.

[galzohar 31]

Yes, Steam in offline mode.

But if you don't have access to the server desktop, it can make your life very difficult when it comes to finding issues, running/updating mods (especially if you want to properly keep them up to date using Play withSIX or if the mods are simply large and you don't have access to download them straight form the web/six to the server), finding problems (access to RPT file), or even getting missions up there (depending on what kind of access you do have). You may also have problems configuring stuff like server name and admin password, as those are defined in the same file as the player number limit, which is usually controlled by the server provider in such limited-access servers.

Also, since ArmA is a performance-intensive game, not knowing exactly how much CPU power and bandwidth you are getting is like buying a cat in a sack... Your server may or may not work properly when it runs your missions with the number of players you are paying for. In the end, nobody really knows the exact CPU and bandwidth requirement per player in ArmA, and definitely not anyone working at those server providers.

Edited September 23, 2013 by galzohar

[t4nk83 10]

Yes, Steam in offline mode.

But if you don't have access to the server desktop, it can make your life very difficult when it comes to finding issues, running/updating mods (especially if you want to properly keep them up to date using Play withSIX or if the mods are simply large and you don't have access to download them straight form the web/six to the server), finding problems (access to RPT file), or even getting missions up there (depending on what kind of access you do have). You may also have problems configuring stuff like server name and admin password, as those are defined in the same file as the player number limit, which is usually controlled by the server provider in such limited-access servers.

Also, since ArmA is a performance-intensive game, not knowing exactly how much CPU power and bandwidth you are getting is like buying a cat in a sack... Your server may or may not work properly when it runs your missions with the number of players you are paying for. In the end, nobody really knows the exact CPU and bandwidth requirement per player in ArmA, and definitely not anyone working at those server providers.

Great info man thanks.

I do have an old core 2 duo system (e8400 @ 3.00Ghz, with an ssd, and 4gb of ddr 1066mhz in my garage, maybe I can give that a try?) I also have an older Xeon server box using ddr2 and I think 2 36gb scsi 10k rpm hdd somewhere.. this might be able to run a headless systems, don't want anything to big, maybe tops 8-12 man. Mainly being doing missions/scenarios with friends.

---------- Post added at 19:55 ---------- Previous post was at 19:52 ----------

The way I run my server pc is that I load steam, log in with my account info, download arma as normal, then log out of steam. I use Tophes TADST to configure my server settings and then it launches Arma3server.exe. You do not need to be logged in to steam to run Arma3server.exe.

thanks

[galzohar 31]

The problem with a home hosted server is that even though you can probably get a much better machine for much cheaper, usually your internet will not be good enough and insufficient for a large multiplayer mission.

e8400 should be good enough for an ArmA server if you're not planning to push it to its limits, but if you're going to run something heavy (lots of players and/or AI), I'm not sure whether or not it will suffice.

If you're just going for missions/scenarios with friends, while your own machine can run with sufficient FPS and your connection can handle the bandwidth requirement of the number of players you intend to play with, then you can just host a server from the multiplayer lobby. No real need for a dedicated machine to be honest. You can even just run a dedicated server at the same time as you run your game if you really want to make server.cfg, battleeye and/or verifySignatures work (the last one being important if your friends are dumb with installing mods and you want to know when they are running mods they aren't supposed to).

Even my crappy Israeli ADSL internet can handle 12 players with ease, so unless you're living in a 3rd world country you should be good just hosting on your own machine. In fact with an i7 you're probably better off running both the server and your own client on the same machine rather than running the server on your e8400.

[t4nk83 10]

The problem with a home hosted server is that even though you can probably get a much better machine for much cheaper, usually your internet will not be good enough and insufficient for a large multiplayer mission.

e8400 should be good enough for an ArmA server if you're not planning to push it to its limits, but if you're going to run something heavy (lots of players and/or AI), I'm not sure whether or not it will suffice.

If you're just going for missions/scenarios with friends, while your own machine can run with sufficient FPS and your connection can handle the bandwidth requirement of the number of players you intend to play with, then you can just host a server from the multiplayer lobby. No real need for a dedicated machine to be honest. You can even just run a dedicated server at the same time as you run your game if you really want to make server.cfg, battleeye and/or verifySignatures work (the last one being important if your friends are dumb with installing mods and you want to know when they are running mods they aren't supposed to).

Even my crappy Israeli ADSL internet can handle 12 players with ease, so unless you're living in a 3rd world country you should be good just hosting on your own machine. In fact with an i7 you're probably better off running both the server and your own client on the same machine rather than running the server on your e8400.

Yeah thanks for the info. I am trying to setup using Tophe's tool, but can't seem to get the missions to show up in game. I just might have to run it through the lobby.