Arma 2 Linux server performance

[-EC- Maciek 10]

Hi, does everyone has that the one of ceres work over 100% and the rest of cores do little job. Server is on Debian. Bis please make 64 bit server version.

[killswitch 19]

Maciek;1515516']Hi' date=' does everyone has that the one of ceres work over 100% and the rest of cores do little job.[/quote']Yes, that's what it does - the Windows dedicated server does the same. It will usually top out 1 core and load a few of the others with ~1-20% or so, in my experience. (Core affinities set or not).

You can see that your Linux server does the same - there's one CPU-heavy thread and three other threads (7.8, 3.2 and 1.9% respectively) using a wee bit of CPU.

Oh, by the way - don't run your ArmA II server as root. Create a user account for that purpose.

Edited December 15, 2009 by Killswitch

[whisper 0]

Negative, my windows installation has equal cpu repartition.

Try tweaking affinities

[xeno 234]

Contrary to what whisper says :) the same happens on Windows too.

Often enough one core is maxed out while the other is running at 20-30 %.

ArmaA 2 server uses about 1 1/2 cores, not more.

It is enough to give one arma 2 server 2 cores, it really doesn't need more.

Xeno

[whisper 0]

Well, this what I get :

This is 1 server running Domination on cores 2 & 4. I never get "one core is maxed out while the other is running at 20-30 %" but this rather equal repartition, all the time.

And this is using the very start script you gave me, Xeno ;)

[-EC- Maciek 10]

Please run warfare with 30 x AI on 4 cores. and then paste pic.

[whisper 0]

Warfare ACE was running on Cores 1 & 3 yesterday (second server), with the exact same result. As I don't overload any core, and I've never seen any improvement in using more cores, I keep 1 server for 2 cores. It's quite ok. And as you can see, the load is shared.

(If you're asking for 30 players, well, I don't have them :( )

What CPU are you using?

EDIT : about affinity : I launch each server with specific affinity mask to force each process on 2 cores (thanks Xeno for the start script!). It has made a world of difference for me in terms of stability and FPS compared to running both servers on all 4 cores indistinctively. This is a Windows 2003 Server, I absolutely don't know if this is important on a Linux based server (being a Nux addict, I'd say that Linux is scheduling properly and doesn't need this kind of tweak compared to Win, but Sickboy would come here to correct me :p ).

Info on Linux affinity settings : http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/setting-processor-affinity-certain-task-or-process.html

Edited December 15, 2009 by whisper

[xeno 234]

This is 1 server running Domination on cores 2 & 4. I never get "one core is maxed out while the other is running at 20-30 %" but this rather equal repartition, all the time.

:)

Well, then it seems to depend on the CPU type. Not sure about that, but an i7 as server maxes out one core often enough (that is arma 2 server running on real cores not the HT cores).

I've tested various configurations, 2, 4 and 6 cores with 50-60 players in coop missions. Using more than 2 cores is not necessary for a server as the second core doesn't max out.

Nevertheless, the behaviour of the linux server seems to be the same as the windows server. It also depends on the misson and player number.

PvP missons with a lot of players > 60 are possible without a problem, as the DAO server shows us.

Coop missions with more than 50 players are also possible, but you need strong server hardware for that and missions optimized for it. ArmA 2 AI eats up a lot of server processing power, a lot more than ArmA 1 did.

Maybe OA will bring us better CPU utilization than vanilla ArmA 2 has on the server side, means, maybe it is able to utilize more than 2 cores :)

Xeno

[whisper 0]

If I remember well, the only time I've seen 1 core maxed out is when the server reached smtg like 35-40 people connected.

Maybe the MP packet handling is only supported on 1 core, which could explain the strain on 1 core only when having many players connected

[[kh]jman 49]

Ours looks quite different to yours Whisper. We messed around with affinity when ArmA2 first came out and we found no difference in performance in real terms. We leave ours on default (no affinity) and it spreads load across all 4 cores quite effectively.

For info:

[whisper 0]

Is this a picture with many players on? Mine is not, I've no one online atm

And your Core #3 is more loaded then your 2 for example, I'd say more than double (though you have quite some horsepower left :) )

For ref, CPU is E5405 @ 2GHz, rather slow but high L2 cache which makes a rather strong CPU in fact

My issue (stability) is more about having a 32bits OS not taking advantage of my whole 4G RAM, and I've servers ending with crashing on RAM issues

[[kh]jman 49]

There were 30'ish players on at the time on co@54 ACE W Nightstrike 1.09. Yeah the #2 core is more loaded but most of the time 0-3 cores are evenly spread.

[-EC- Maciek 10]

:)

Well, then it seems to depend on the CPU type. Not sure about that, but an i7 as server maxes out one core often enough (that is arma 2 server running on real cores not the HT cores).

I have Phenom II X4 940 Quad Core 3,0GHz

[whisper 0]

Strange that I look like an exception. I'll go take a shot at CPU usage when players are connected

[-EC- Maciek 10]

Does anyone use taskset command (linux) for better balance arma server between cores ? If yes what's the resoults ?