BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

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gamemann
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BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by gamemann »

Hello, I got a few questions I would like to ask and see what the NFO community thinks.
1:
Is it good to have the Server restart every day(In NFO's managed control panel)? I have a 64 slot rush server. The reason I ask this is because when I restart the server when it's only going up to 4 players and staying there, when the server is restarted in instantly goes up to 10 instantly(If I idle there ofcourse). I don't know if it's a good thing to restart it everyday or not.
2:
Is it normal for a server not to get above 10+ players after the weekend? I know this was a special kind of weekend since BattleField 3 was only $5.00 and it was double xp weekend but my server was at 64/64 the whole weekend and suddenly today(monday) it just won't get above 8 players. I am new to BattleField 3 so I just don't know if this is expected or not. I looked up all the BattleField 3 rush servers that are 64 slots in the battlelog browser and all of them are at 64/64 most of the time besides mine. Could restarting the server everyday cause anything like this?
3:
Is it normal for a 64 player server to lag on a 4 core VDS(when it is full ofcourse)? My rush server has been lagging lately when there's 60+ people on the server. I know it's a VDS and I should expect this but I want to make sure it's normal to lag since VDS's aren't that strong with 64 players. I tried enabling Multi-threading, but that didn't help. The VDS has 2 TF2 servers on it that gets to 32/32 everyday but the max CPU usage for the VDS while every server was full was around 45-50% which isn't that bad(Atleast isn't bad for my machine on linux I have). Also, if I got a full machine in the future(Intel xeon e3-1270 @ 3.3 GHz, 16 gb of ram), should it be able to run that 64 player rush server just fine? I don't like lag at all for my servers especially when I have "No Lag" in my hostname for the server(Probably will take it out later).


I am just trying to populate my server and I know it will take a while but it's always good to try to get advice from good BattleField 3 server owners.

Thanks,
Gamemann
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kraze
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Re: BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by kraze »

1:
Is it good to have the Server restart every day(In NFO's managed control panel)? I have a 64 slot rush server. The reason I ask this is because when I restart the server when it's only going up to 4 players and staying there, when the server is restarted in instantly goes up to 10 instantly(If I idle there ofcourse). I don't know if it's a good thing to restart it everyday or not.
Yes, restarting your servers on a daily basis is good and can help keep top notch performance. However, the time of the restart doesn't necessarily matter.

As for the second part of your question, I am not sure what you mean by that. Can you elaborate?
2:
Is it normal for a server not to get above 10+ players after the weekend? I know this was a special kind of weekend since BattleField 3 was only $5.00 and it was double xp weekend but my server was at 64/64 the whole weekend and suddenly today(monday) it just won't get above 8 players. I am new to BattleField 3 so I just don't know if this is expected or not. I looked up all the BattleField 3 rush servers that are 64 slots in the battlelog browser and all of them are at 64/64 most of the time besides mine. Could restarting the server everyday cause anything like this?
Depends on the server and its configuration. We have a good guide here on how to make your server more popular.
http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =70&t=5931

However, with BF3 being out for so long now, I personally wouldn't say its a good time to start a serve from scratch. No doubt the sales will bring more people in it but It will be much harder to get a full server consistently.
3:
Is it normal for a 64 player server to lag on a 4 core VDS(when it is full ofcourse)? My rush server has been lagging lately when there's 60+ people on the server. I know it's a VDS and I should expect this but I want to make sure it's normal to lag since VDS's aren't that strong with 64 players. I tried enabling Multi-threading, but that didn't help. The VDS has 2 TF2 servers on it that gets to 32/32 everyday but the max CPU usage for the VDS while every server was full was around 45-50% which isn't that bad(Atleast isn't bad for my machine on linux I have). Also, if I got a full machine in the future(Intel xeon e3-1270 @ 3.3 GHz, 16 gb of ram), should it be able to run that 64 player rush server just fine? I don't like lag at all for my servers especially when I have "No Lag" in my hostname for the server(Probably will take it out later).
That is normal and expected. If you notice the VDS order page we list a soft cap of 48 slots for BF3 servers. Simply because a full 64 slot server is so intensive and since just about all games do not multithread well it normally isn't possible.

The multithreading option was put there for slower machines. For faster machines we do not recommend enabling it as it could have an opposite effect, but slower machines it could increase performance a bit.

There are also a few other factors that can cause lag. Some of the biggest I see would be anti-cheat streaming and Procon plugins which send a lot of data via rcon.

Our standard E3-1270 machine would be more than capable of running BF3. We originally did our testing on an E3-1270 and showed that a 64 slot server would use about a full core of an E3-1270.

We also talk a bit more about BF3 usage here.
http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =70&t=5815
@Kraze^NFo> Juski has a very valid point
@Juski> Got my new signature, thanks!
@Kraze^NFo> Out of context!
@Juski> Doesn't matter!
@Juski> You said I had a valid point! You can't take it back now! It's out there!
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Edge100x
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Re: BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by Edge100x »

For a 64-slot BF3 server, I definitely recommend going with a dedicated machine or using a regular standalone server in our system. The performance on any VDS just isn't quite there yet to do it.
gamemann
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Re: BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by gamemann »

Just wanted to update this: We got a dedicated machine(Canceled some other things we didn't need). It does not lag at all now! Only thing that I don't get now is how the server has been doing good(Very populated) for 9 days and now these past 2 days it won't get above 20 players. I will keep trying though, if you have experienced this before and know any tricks on re-populating it, feel free to post it here.
Thanks for all the help!
Thanks,
Gamemann
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Re: BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by TimeX »

We have some tips here to help BF3 server population: http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =70&t=5931
TimeX
gamemann
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Re: BattleField 3 server questions(Again).

Post by gamemann »

TimeX wrote:We have some tips here to help BF3 server population: http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =70&t=5931
Thanks, but it lost population. We didn't have a problem filling it up for 9 days(Even on weekdays), then it suddenly can't get above 10 players. My server is new so that might be why. As soon as this past weekend ended, the server lost population so maybe that's why. Like I said before, all the other servers with my gametype are full and I am the only one at 0/64 most of the time. I don't really mind how it lost population for a few days but my question is will it get populated again. I am going to give it a few more days then I might switch some things around.
Thanks,
Gamemann
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