Friday Feature: Server Hardware

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When starting the Empire in Flames project, the team examined hosting options. We have been reluctant to take donations until a server is properly established – “vaporware” is an ugly term, and even uglier when applied to a project that’s actively accepting financial aid.

We investigated virtual servers to begin. The staff has access to multiple resources, including Microsoft’s virtualization and Amazon’s hosting services. Unfortunately, most of the options are underwhelming from a performance standpoint. No doubt they would be enough to get the emulator core running, but when fans actively begin to play, the mediocre resources available would no doubt prove to be insufficient to provide a pleasant experience.

Instead, the Empire in Flames team has chosen to refurbish an older server. We selected a Dell PowerEdge 2950, based on reliability, performance, functionality, and price. The server has been upgraded to twin Xeon quad-cores, 16 GB of RAM, and currently sports a RAID-10 array of 15k RPM hard drives.

Further equipment is being refurbished and will be integrated before the play server launches, including multiple-redundant battery backups to ensure the server stays up during any local power failures.

The server is currently running ESXi, with the SWGemu Core running on a virtualized Debian operating system. If and when the times comes to upgrade the play server’s hardware, ESXi will allow us to make a smooth transition to new hardware.

While the hardware is not as new or powerful as SWGemu’s Basilisk play server, it is more than sufficient to launch a new server – and most importantly, affordable without asking players to donate before they can even play. For now, this allows the Empire in Flames team to concentrate on providing an awesome experience, rather than worrying about paying the bills each month.

 

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