Are Compute optimized VMs worth it for game server hosting?

Question

Are Compute optimized VMs worth it for game server hosting?

ROODAY 6

I'm looking to host a personal game server for myself + friends, not expecting more than ~25 players at any given time, for games like GMod, CS:GO, Minecraft, etc. I saw on the Azure VM series page that the F series says gaming is one of its uses. But are compute optimized servers really worth it over the general purpose D series for game server hosting? Do game servers in general need more CPU power than RAM?

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Answer 1

Hi @ROODAY ,

Good question. I use an Azure Burstable VM (B Series) myself to host a backend game server myself that isn't very active. Sounds like for your use case especially considering the games you mentioned a D Series general purpose VM would be fine. Of course the huge benefit of Azure is the ability to scale up and scale down. If I were you I'd start with a D Series and see how that works, if your using 80% or more of the CPU Capacity I'd consider moving up within the same series. Using a F Series VM for 25 or so users seems like overkill, an F Series would be more if you were to play the game on the remote VM instead of it acting as the dedicated server. My B Series supports 3 on average and bursts up to 5 on a busy day and that works great. Hope this is the kind of answer your looking for :). Have a good one!

Answer 2

TravisCragg-MSFT 5,696 Microsoft Employee Moderator

You can use any Azure VM size for gaming, the question is what series to use for the best performance / best value.

I would gather the recommended server settings for the game you are trying to host, and use the closest VM size to those specifications. I typically use the D series for my servers, but have branched out to other sizes depending upon need.

Also, Azure VMs can be resized at any time (although resizing will typically trigger a reboot in the VM), so you can try out different sizes to see what works best.

for performance, there will be 3 main factors to consider: CPU, Memory, and Disk throughput.

CPU and memory are self explanatory, but disk throughput can be a tricky one. Make sure to put any game files / install game servers on data disks, NOT on the OS drive (c:/), or the temp drive (d:/).

I like to pick a size that is close to the recommendations, and keep track of the CPU, Memory, and Disk Queue length to see what limits are being hit if the server is not performing as expected, and either resize the VM / change the disk size to accommodate.

ROODAY 6 Reputation points

2020-11-22T20:32:40.297+00:00

I see, thanks for the info! I tried running with a D series as well but that seemed to have a bit more lag than the F series, however even the F series had some lag for GMod, which doesnt make sense, I figured that the F series would be more than enough. Perhaps the disk throughput needs to be increased? (its just on the default 25 mbps which may be why?)
TravisCragg-MSFT 5,696 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2020-11-23T18:26:37.887+00:00

If you are concerned about disk throughput, check out the 'disk' tab in resource monitor and keep an eye on the 'disk queue length'. Small spikes of queue length are ok, but any sustained queue length on any drive is bad. Also, if lag spikes on the server line up with queue length spikes, it might be time to increase the throughput of the disks.

Make sure you are not installing any game files / server files on the OS drive if possible!
ROODAY 6 Reputation points

2020-11-23T19:37:34.233+00:00

You mentioned not to put anything on the OS disk, are there any particular reasons for this? I didn't think about it while setting up my server (I just interacted with my VM like it was an any old linux server) and it seems that everything installed on the OS disk. I confirmed that by taking a snapshot of the data disk, creating a new disk from the snapshot, and creating a VM from that new disk. When I did so, my game server files weren't there. But when I repeated this process with the OS disk, everything was fine.

Is there a specific process required to use files on the data disk? Are data disks inherently faster? Are there inherent limitations with the OS disk? Can't I just increase the disk throughput/performance? (sorry for the barrage of questions!)
TravisCragg-MSFT 5,696 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2020-11-23T19:51:28.803+00:00

Here is a document which outlines the performance impacts of VMs and Disks, It is quite lengthy, so I will try to cover the important topics and answer your questions in this post:

Azure limits the amount of IOs which can occur on a disk, and prioritizes OS calls to the disk over your application if they are on the same drive. Anytime you are running an application on an Azure VM which requires responsiveness (most applications do), it is a best practice to get it off of the OS drive.

Make sure the game files are placed on the data disk, the exact instructions to do this can be OS specific, so I would look into the OS documentation.

If your server requires it to be on the OS Disk / If you would like to keep it on the OS Disk, be weary of frequent lag spikes / a high queue length. If needed you can size up the OS Disk or VM to handle more throughput.
ROODAY 6 Reputation points

2020-11-23T20:09:53.4+00:00

I see, that makes sense! So I'd want to mount the data disk and do all my installs there. One thing I'm concerned about is the ability to quickly deploy a clone of the VM (using a snapshot + new disk and VM). What if my game server recommended that I create a new user for running it? I assume that user will be on the OS disk, so will that mean I'd need to have a snapshot of both the OS disk and the data disk and create both if creating a new VM? Would it be more cost efficient to just have a more powerful OS disk?

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Are Compute optimized VMs worth it for game server hosting?

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