Hosting Campaign Server on a CSPs
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Dear BMS team,
I would like to study how to configure dedicated server on a VM in order to host a Campaign sessions in a MP scenario.
In the forum i red post from 2015 and i am asking some pointer or hints to an up to date “How to…” if exist.
Thanks in advance for y suggestion.
Gundam
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@gundam I have looked into this as well. So far the main requirements is to ensure you have a sound card and a DirectX wrapper to emulate DX calls without a GFX card. General consensus for use with the latest version 4.36, is use Proxmox. I have not had time to actually try this yet, so I can’t give much other support.
Hope this helps.
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@JollyFE thanks a lot for your feedback i will investigate and share experience if any.
Gundam
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@gundam disclaimer up front: I have not hosted any MP sessions, but it’s been on my list of things to try out… so here are my notes, of what I would try. Folks please correct me if I suggest anything wrong, or if you know things that work better!
BMS Cloud Server
– Azure virt, AWS Lightsail, or VPS
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/#pricing
https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/Not sure smallest instance needed to host… probably want at least 4 cores and 8 GB ram? (Maybe 16 GB ram?)
This will cost about ~US$4/day… you don’t need to keep it up and running ofc. But also beware of ingress/egress bandwidth costs (~10c/GB).
EC2 is probably a bit cheaper than Lightsail, but unless you’re a seasoned AWS vet Lightsail makes it very quick and easy to get a Windows instance up and running.
There are probably cheaper hosting providers out there? https://www.vpsserver.com/plans/ looks pretty good for about $1/day comparatively… and no bandwidth cost – they throttle instead of charge overage, apparently. (I haven’t tried them out yet. Not sure what geographical regions they operate in.)
And check my math on the bandwidth… I think their 4TB/mo throttle limit is about 8Mbps bandwidth. Idk if they throttle both ingress and egress. Could make the initial setup, difficult.
– Linux vs Windows
Did we ever get Linux support figured out for BMS 4.36? Not sure. It might save a few bucks and offer better perf.
– Install and basic setup: S3 or Blob storage
Probably good idea to keep installer files (including GoG offline installer for F4) staged on a private S3 bucket, or similar, for super-fast (and low-cost) installation on your cloud virt.
Building a container (Docker) would probably be useful… but be careful not to run afoul of F4 licensing/redist restrictions.
– Firewall: open ports for both BMS and IVC
(I think the spiffy new single-file installer, does this… haven’t tested to verify.)
– Audio
may need to install a dummy/loopback audio driver
– Graphics
you can bypass all 3D rendering with with ‘bmsdedi’ library
https://github.com/UOAF/bmsdedi/releases/No setup necessary, just unzip and drop right in alongside BMS exe. 2D still works fine; 3D is blacked out. Simply brilliant.
– MP session
: setup a dummy Viper pilot on the server, to take first seat in a package flight.
I think typically either awacs, or a random plane kept on the ground.
All the other MP tutorials take it from here… Micro and Max both have good youtube videos:
(Setup BMS multiplayer in 15 minutes)
(BMS multiplayer settings tutorial)
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@airtex2019 many thanks. Very interesting. I am not sure i can manage all the step but for sure i will try, starting to check potential provider and price! It could be great pay per use. If i use the server just on week end for example could be cheapper…maybe
Gundam
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Any idea or suggestion on VM configuration in terms of CPU and Ram? To manage till 20 concurret pilots as assumption at max.
I see typical offered bandwidth is 1 gbps that should be enough.
Thanks
Gundam
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@gundam my guess: 8 cores and 16 GB, to be safe.
may work ok with 4 cores / 8 GB … may not … the CPU-based rendering on remote hosts will consume a lot more system RAM than may be accustomed, running on a physical box … even when bypassed with bmsdedi, it still loads all the textures and shaders etc.
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@airtex2019 OK. Many thanks!
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The FL server works with 4 cores and 8G ram on an old physical server so…
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@gundam
If your bandwidth is reasonable and you don’t have a ton of clients, its worth considering getting an old gen pc, and setting up the server locally on your network. You won’t even need a monitor if you RDP to it. Only downside is you probably won’t want to share control of it for security reasons, so you will be the one managing it.Here’s mine, Rough and ready, sits in my garage. Its a Q9650 dual core @3.0ghz, with 8gb ddr3. I have an upload of about 24mb. Its solid with up to 4/5 players.
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@Fish44 hi. Yes o currently manage 4/5 with my e5 intel processor and 32 gb ram. Ssd. On the same pc i fly at the same time. So no dedicated PC.
The problem to scale is the upload connectivity. I have 19 Mbps.
Up to five i suppose to have some issue. I will try anyway.
Gundam
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@airtex2019 said in Hosting Campaign Server on a CSPs:
@gundam disclaimer up front: I have not hosted any MP sessions, but it’s been on my list of things to try out… so here are my notes, of what I would try. Folks please correct me if I suggest anything wrong, or if you know things that work better!
BMS Cloud Server
– Azure virt, AWS Lightsail, or VPS
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/#pricing
https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/Not sure smallest instance needed to host… probably want at least 4 cores and 8 GB ram? (Maybe 16 GB ram?)
This will cost about ~US$4/day… you don’t need to keep it up and running ofc. But also beware of ingress/egress bandwidth costs (~10c/GB).
EC2 is probably a bit cheaper than Lightsail, but unless you’re a seasoned AWS vet Lightsail makes it very quick and easy to get a Windows instance up and running.
There are probably cheaper hosting providers out there? https://www.vpsserver.com/plans/ looks pretty good for about $1/day comparatively… and no bandwidth cost – they throttle instead of charge overage, apparently. (I haven’t tried them out yet. Not sure what geographical regions they operate in.)
$4 per day is quite pricey, to be sure… but $1 per day is suspiciously cheap, I guess it depends on what is offered and what that bandwidth cap is before throttling. Would try the $1/day one for a few months before considering any other options, just my 2 cents on that.
The non-BMS server at VG hosts more than a handful of Arma 3 servers, a frequently max-population/40 players FPS (COOP) wargame, our TS3 server, and more. Costs are just under $100/month USD, so just over $3 per day - and this includes a Windows Server (2019, as of now) license, 8t/16c AMD w/64GB ECC DDR4 and a NO bandwidth cap (edited: was mistaken, Hetzner has no caps on this level), on top of decent DDoS protection. It’s our own dedicated box, too - not a server split up, partitioned/provisioned. For anywhere near $4/month, would expect better stats than that.
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One thing they i understood is that VM with Windows cost! meanwhile with Linux no, but with Linux is not clear to me if BMS 4.36 works.
I found old post with some experience on Ubuntu.
The price (example on ovh) shift from 17 € per month 4 vCPU 8 GB, to 40 € with Windows…)
Gundam
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@gundam latest I saw is folks had some luck running on Linux with Proton (specialized WINE environment from Steam) but not sure anyone root-caused what the problem is with WINE.
https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/22261/falcon-bms-4-36-on-linux-wine-unsupported?_=1670097020774
also not sure what any of this means, for the use case of running a cloud server…