Dedicated machine price reduction

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stickz
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

kraze wrote:We do not use consumer based processors here, so we would be unable to add this type of package. Our packages are designed in a way to meet a wide range of needs, and due to this it is not possible to offer custom configurations. Offering custom configurations actually ends up being more expensive since we're not setup to do so. Custom machines also become useless to us after a customer has cancelled since we can't immediately re-purpose the machine for internal use. This means we must pay to ship it back to the office and rebuild it to a standard configuration or send parts and have the on-site tech do it(which is very expensive). Either way, it's not feasible for us to do.
Other hosting providers are offering i7-4790k's because they know 4.4ghz haswell is 8% stronger than 4ghz haswell. (your strongest offering) https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Multiple configurations of this could sell pretty quickly and cost a lot less to implement. If someone wants a competitive or higher population server, they have to go directly to Internap and pay twice the price. It doesn't make sense to say "okay, you can only host 66 ticks with so many slots."
stickz wrote: 4 cores of i7-4790K (4.0ghz base, 4.4ghz turbo)
8gb of DDR3-1600 ram
240gb Intel SSD
8TB of Bandwidth (95th percentile billing after)
edit:
Edge100x wrote: There are good reasons why few companies offer dedicated server packages that are less expensive than ours.
Is it because you guys already have the facilities and bandwidth to implement things on a mass scale?
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by Edge100x »

stickz wrote:Other hosting providers are offering i7-4790k's because they know 4.4ghz haswell is 8% stronger than 4ghz haswell. (your strongest offering) https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
I'm sure the few non-reseller providers that offer them are doing it because there is a niche for it, with some customers requesting them. Those providers have different setups and circumstances than we do. For instance, if you are a very large dedicated server-centric host with many employees on-site, it's not as expensive to make custom configurations, and you can offer a wider variety of configurations because you have more customers to buy them.
Multiple configurations of this could sell pretty quickly and cost a lot less to implement.
Nope.
Edge100x wrote: There are good reasons why few companies offer dedicated server packages that are less expensive than ours.
Is it because you guys already have the facilities and bandwidth to implement things on a mass scale?
Nope. We're pretty small.
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by Edge100x »

Also, I should remind you that our primary focus is not dedicated server hosting, which is an established segment with some very big players already. We are not trying to compete with all comers there, and we know that we won't fit everyone's needs. Our primary focus is still game server hosting, which is a niche that we are well-established in and where we excel. Dedicated servers (like webhosting) came as an extension of that, because customers requested them, and there has never been a high demand for them.

Yes, it has turned out that our dedicated servers have been so reliable and high-performance (partially due to the bandwidth) that they have had a broader appeal than just gamers. We don't mind that, but dedicated servers are still not a huge part of our business and there is not enough demand yet to justify the sort of changes that you have suggested.
stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

Edge100x wrote: Our primary focus is still game server hosting, which is a niche that we are well-established in and where we excel.
If I wanted to pile up slots or increase tickrates on Garry's Mod, Natural Selection 2 or Nuclear Dawn; I would have huge troubles doing this. These are all game servers which have extremely high entity counts. Your packages do not suit certain customers who need extra computing power.

Garrys Mod: When playing sandbox mode, people many want to build something massive. The sky is the limit on this game. Interms of computing power, the sky how fast the processor can run.

Natural Selection 2: This game engine is so demanding, they run 30 ticks out of the box. The amount of lag compensation to make this game work is drastic. If someone like myself comes along and wants to offer higher levels of performance by toning down lag compensation, it cannot be done. Running this on any VDS without moverate penalties isn't possible at the recommended slot count.

Nuclear Dawn: This game started off very basic but with the same concept as NS2. The game developers decided they could improve the game by adding new features. This in-combination with server modifications, raises the entity cost to the point where the single thread is ready to explode.

Reducing the amount of packets scheduled and cutting server slots is required to keep this on your strongest VDS. (e3-1270v3) Dedicated packages are too expensive, because they are so wasteful in-terms of resources. And games/voices aren't supported or much stronger. (e3-1271v3 + 3% (no xen))
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by kraze »

Stickz, you've taken this topic too far off track. Please move this discussion to another forum immediately.
@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!
stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

kraze wrote:Stickz, you've taken this topic too far off track. Please move this discussion to another forum immediately.
Okay sorry. I didn't know that the price per performance of dedicated machines was off-topic.
"Dedicated machine price reduction"
Last edited by stickz on Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by theRadAleks »

stickz wrote: Okay sorry. I didn't know that the price per performance of dedicated machines was off-topic.
It kinda is, the whole point of this post was to inform you that the dedicated servers went down in price, but what you guys started talking about is something that would belong in the Dedicated Servers and Virtual Dedicated Servers forum
stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

theRadAleks wrote:
stickz wrote: Okay sorry. I didn't know that the price per performance of dedicated machines was off-topic.
It kinda is, the whole point of this post was to inform you that the dedicated servers went down in price, but what you guys started talking about is something that would belong in the Dedicated Servers and Virtual Dedicated Servers forum
Sorry about that, I was using Virtual Dedicated Servers to enhance my point about Dedicated Servers.

They are still overpriced and over spec'ed for certain customers.
stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

Edit: And in many cases do not offer the highest level of performance per dollar possible.
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by Edge100x »

stickz, we'll just have to disagree on this.

We offer dedicated server configurations that appeal to a wide variety of customers. These dedicated servers are offered at the lowest prices that we can afford. They come with the guaranteed highest-quality bandwidth, a 100% SLA, our very high service levels, very good best-effort DDoS mitigation, and many other features that other companies can't match and which are important to those running game servers and other high-performance services.

The prices on these packages are actually lower than many of the top quality-oriented dedicated server-focused companies.

Our VDSes are more powerful than you believe and work very well for the vast majority of customers. Garrysmod is a very popular game and we have a large number of Garrysmod customers who take advantage of VDSes and are quite happy. NS2 works fine on a VDS, even at 18 slots. Most other popular games (TF2, CS:GO, Minecraft, CS:S, ArmAx, L4D2, KF2, CS 1.6, and so on) also run well on VDSes.

We have quite a bit of experience with offering dedicated servers and we put a lot of thought into our offerings. Everything you've brought up here has been previously considered.

We welcome, and integrate, customer feedback, including yours, and our decisions factor in customer demand. But, you need to try to keep what you say in the territory of feedback and not flame.
stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

Edge100x wrote:We offer dedicated server configurations that appeal to a wide variety of customers. These dedicated servers are offered at the lowest prices that we can afford. They come with the guaranteed highest-quality bandwidth, a 100% SLA, our very high service levels, very good best-effort DDoS mitigation, and many other features that other companies can't match and which are important to those running game servers and other high-performance services.
Well, there's two things you do not offer.

[*] i7-4790k's which is stronger than your best dedicated offering by 8%.

[*] Streamlined specifications for reduced costs. The day source engine servers use x8 (400mb) more ram is when the extra ram will do more than eat money. And is it against terms of service to use 30TB of bandwidth as a migration farm to deflect ddos attacks on your website? You're paying for that extra bandwidth and there's no way game servers will ever come close to using it all up.
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by soja »

stickz wrote:
Edge100x wrote:We offer dedicated server configurations that appeal to a wide variety of customers. These dedicated servers are offered at the lowest prices that we can afford. They come with the guaranteed highest-quality bandwidth, a 100% SLA, our very high service levels, very good best-effort DDoS mitigation, and many other features that other companies can't match and which are important to those running game servers and other high-performance services.
Well, there's two things you do not offer.

[*] i7-4790k's which is stronger than your best dedicated offering by 8%.

[*] Streamlined specifications for reduced costs. The day source engine servers use x8 (400mb) more ram is when the extra ram will do more than eat money. And is it against terms of service to use 30TB of bandwidth as a migration farm to deflect ddos attacks on your website? You're paying for that extra bandwidth and there's no way game servers will ever come close to using it all up.
Stickz I rent 7 fully dedicated machines here, and there are many reasons I choose NFO over other hosts. Sure I could pay half the price somewhere else, but NFO makes up for the cost(and then some, especially with the recent price cuts. I bought the 1270's when they were $210+, now only $140?!?!). You don't sound like you rent a dedi, so I'll fill you in from my perspective, running multiple servers that are #1 in the world..(Here is a list, if you want: http://www.gametracker.com/search/?quer ... &order=ASC)

Our busiest machine tears through over 16TB per month, and no, you're not overloading Internap or any transit provider with your 1 30 player server. Our other machines take around 10TB each. Each of our populated CS:GO servers use around 1GB ram, 16/32GB gives us flexibility to add servers as we want without worrying about it as a limitation since adding RAM to a machine would require physically changing the server and having a decent amount of downtime. Our custom files on the server use a ton of space as well. Unfortunately we have filled the 160GB, and 240GB SSDs NFO has with game server files on occasion. The ability to order a machine and have both HDD and SSD available is awesome, some games require high I/O, while others need a lot of space.

The option to have a dedicated server with 4GB ram is laughable, and pretty much makes me close any website that offers it. I usually see it as a way to advertise low prices, to get page views. The host looks like it has servers for x amount, but that comes with 4GB ram and 10Mbps bandwidth, yeah right, what are you going to do with that?

If you go managed, the dedis are an even better value. The control panel is something you would need to pay upwards of $20/m per server for, and I have yet to see a control panel that is better than NFO's, it sure is miles ahead of TCAdmin. IP addresses are also free on managed, so that is a big cost savings right there.

All of this, and I haven't even mentioned support, or free (D)DoS mitigation, which picks up a lot of game-specific attacks that other, non-specialized hosts don't detect and require an extra fee up to hundreds of dollars.
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stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

soja wrote: The option to have a dedicated server with 4GB ram is laughable, and pretty much makes me close any website that offers it. I usually see it as a way to advertise low prices, to get page views. The host looks like it has servers for x amount, but that comes with 4GB ram and 10Mbps bandwidth, yeah right, what are you going to do with that?
I would run four of my favourite 400mb ram source engine servers, with an operating system which uses 75mb. Nextly, I would crank to the tickrate up to 100 to massively reduce the delay between the client and server.

If i'm running ns2, I would push the tickrate up to 45-60 and host 20-24 premium slots at high performance. (yes that would nearly max out 4.4ghz on dedicated Haswell, ~70% on first thread)

p.s 8TB of bandwidth, not 10Mbps... there's a difference.
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Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by soja »

stickz wrote:
soja wrote: The option to have a dedicated server with 4GB ram is laughable, and pretty much makes me close any website that offers it. I usually see it as a way to advertise low prices, to get page views. The host looks like it has servers for x amount, but that comes with 4GB ram and 10Mbps bandwidth, yeah right, what are you going to do with that?
I would run four of my favourite 400mb ram source engine servers, with an operating system which uses 75mb. The next thing I would do is crank to the tickrate up to 100 to massively reduce the delay between the client and server; Or increase the server slots to something insane like 64.

If i'm running ns2, I would push the tickrate up to 45-60 and host 20-24 premium slots at high performance. (yes that would nearly max out 4.4ghz on dedicated Haswell, ~70% on first thread)

p.s 10TB of bandwidth, not 10Mbps... there's a difference.
So you have a dedi with 4 servers, what about expansion, future servers? If you have a gaming community, people constantly come to you with new server ideas. If you're already maxing out your ram(400MB is a pretty conservative value, GMOD can use over 2GB, CS:GO can use over 1GB) you have a server that cannot do anything else. You only max your CPU during peak usage, it is not practical to expect every server to be full at the same time every day. Out of our 7 machines, the one with the least ram usage is still using over 5GB, with CPU headroom to spare. It seems like you are basing your scenarios in a perfect world, where my experience is in the real world.

I know the difference between 10TB and 10Mbps. There are server hosts that offer 10Mbps as a baseline, and then upsell you once you are on their site.
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stickz

Re: Dedicated machine price reduction

Post by stickz »

soja wrote: So you have a dedi with 4 servers, what about expansion, future servers? If you have a gaming community, people constantly come to you with new server ideas. If you're already maxing out your ram(400MB is a pretty conservative value)
I don't think that's a really conservative value. 4gb leaves plenty of room for expansion in the future with less than half used. Not every server needs tons of ram, some just need CPU to process entities.

Code: Select all

400mb x 4 + os (75mb) = 1675mb.
Edit: Xen cannot offer that high level of CPU performance required in many scenarios.

Edit2: My servers only use 400mb of ram when memory leaking, that's also a bloated value.
Last edited by stickz on Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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