NFO's managed system forces you to make sacrifices

[stickz]

The managed system for game-servers can be a really big pest sometimes, when it comes to removing crucial aspects of server management. All while monopolizing control over the machine, to the point where anther hosting is required to restore these features. It's one thing to complain about the tinny details; like not being able to check the stall time for virtual machines. However, when big things start disappearing like proper measurements of multi-threaded server performance or the ability to install game updates flagged as optional by developers; this really starts to become much more problematic in-terms of properly running a game-server.

A common response to something like this is normally "you should be running an unmanaged configuration for these features". The irony about this statement is that you cannot run more than a few maintained servers before it becomes too much work. The vast majority of posters understand this and use it to reflect issues out of the spotlight.

You should definitely consider switching to an unmanaged configuration, where you will have unlimited control over your OS and can see full details on all processes you run.

But the enhanced CPU stats are most likely a thing of the past; highly unlikely to ever to get implemented. There is anther issue with not being able to install certain game updates; which is significantly more severe than this. If a game developer decides that a server update is "nice to have, but not worth creating outdated servers over", you cannot install it on a managed game-server even if you wanted to. There is no check-box and button in the panel to accomplish this task.

NFO is getting more outdated as time progresses when it comes to operating game servers. Those days where pretty much all server updates were mandatory are fading away. Newer strategies are continuously being deployed by game developers like "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". Antherwards, if the server doesn't crash or lag the update can be optional. And game servers do not need to be pushed through all kinds of negative consistences, like additional downtimes. However, the perception for NFO still seems to be that this update is unimportant; or not worth going to the extra effect of creating and maintaining a new control panel feature.

[Edge100x]

You can make (and do make) suggestions on how to improve our systems, and we will continuing improving them, based on feedback from all customers. However, regardless of what we do, you will simply never have the extreme level of control that comes with using an unmanaged configuration. Having someone else do things for you always means trade-offs on how it is done versus how you would do it yourself.

Our control panel is still the most powerful available and it is crammed with useful features.

Extra per-thread CPU usage graphs haven't been requested by anyone else yet and would not have a significant benefit because it is still rare for a game to have extra threads that use more than a token amount of CPU power (meaning that the current graphing system is still an accurate measurement of overall performance). They also would be complicated to implement. The priority for implementing them has to be put below many other feature requests.

We roll out "optional" game updates that we deem to be important, even when the developer (for whatever reason) does not. When possible, we do this in the nighttime, when usage is low. That said, your guess that mandatory updates are "fading away" is simply not true. There are actually very few games that have frequent optional updates -- I can only think of one major one offhand, Rust, and we have a special game type for it so that customers can choose whether they want all of them. We have no plans to support multiple game versions within a single game type (instead of one listed separately), for a variety of reasons, including that it would eliminate the performance benefits of our linking strategies and add the complication of supporting different sets of bugs.

[stickz]

We roll out "optional" game updates that we deem to be important, even when the developer (for whatever reason) does not. When possible, we do this in the nighttime, when usage is low.

We have no plans to support multiple game versions within a single game type (instead of one listed separately), for a variety of reasons, including that it would eliminate the performance benefits of our linking strategies and add the complication of supporting different sets of bugs.

If someone wants to update their servers, they should be able to at any time. The decision should be left up to the end user, not someone at NFO waving around performance benefits. (most likely due to pushing around caches) And mentioning people might complicate the support process, by complaining about bugs they've created.

you will simply never have the extreme level of control that comes with using an unmanaged configuration. Having someone else do things for you always means trade-offs on how it is done versus how you would do it yourself.

Extra features like being able to check the stall time on a virtual machine are not required. This trade-off is perfectly fine and understandable. However when it comes to not being able to manually update servers, or properly measure their performance when setting slot counts/tick-rates; this becomes a huge issue.

That said, your guess that mandatory updates are "fading away" is simply not true.

Wether or not an update is flagged as mandatory is often dependent on the game and presented circumstances. A lot of game developers like on Nuclear Dawn (which you guys refuse to support on Linux), Garry's Mod, Natural Selection 2 (nobody is buying it because prices are too high, dissipate pref improvements allowing a reduction), Left 4 Dead 2 etc are deciding it's not worth pulling servers out of the pool for every little thing. Even Minecraft has been supporting a few versions back, to give additional time for servers to update. Whereas in the past mandatories were used unknowingly of all the disadvantages they've held.

[Edge100x]

If someone wants to update their servers, they should be able to at any time.

In a perfect world, you could have your cake and eat it to. You could choose what version of every game to run, have full support for it from your host (including having them troubleshoot and fix all new game bugs for you, and be able to revert you back to prior versions), and have the full performance and disk usage reduction that comes with our hardlinking strategy. All with a very low price.

Sadly, this isn't a perfect world, and that's not possible with every game.

If you want all those things, you can't get them anywhere right now. Some of them would are possible to implement, for some games, but not all, and having them for more than we already do would be expensive, forcing prices to go up.

Examples of games where we allow the version to be chosen are Quake3, Rust, and Minecraft. Nearly all other games require that clients play a certain version (there are no optional releases), and that is the only version that we support.

Nuclear Dawn (which you guys refuse to support on Linux)

Your use of "refuse" is interesting, because it implies that this has come up and we've actively rejected that notion. In reality, it's not even on our radar. Nobody asks for it. A single customer here runs a single Nuclear Dawn server, across our entire network.

I don't see game updates for ND coming through, but I'd be happy to apply whatever that customer desires globally, since it's only one customer.

Garry's Mod

Optional updates are uncommon, and we apply them.

Natural Selection 2 (nobody is buying it because prices are too high, dissipate pref improvements allowing a reduction)

People mostly don't buy NS2 servers because it is not a popular game. I have not seen significant performance improvements made to it, but it still may qualify for a price reduction because hardware has gotten faster, and when I have the time, I will look into that. This doesn't apply to customers running managed VDSes or machines, of course, since they don't have to pay.

Left 4 Dead 2

Doesn't have optional updates and I don't know why you mentioned it.

Even Minecraft has been supporting a few versions back, to give additional time for servers to update. Whereas in the past mandatories were used unknowingly of all the disadvantages they've held.

Our customers can use whatever version of Minecraft they would like, and there's an easy selector for it. Customers can also install whatever mod version that they'd like. We've never required updates for Minecraft, but quickly apply any new version to the list.

stickz, the Minecraft mistake tells me you're scraping the bottom here trying to come up with examples of games we don't properly support, and that you aren't really paying attention.

In your posts, I've noticed that you always think that your desired changes are simpler and cheaper than they are to implement on our end. Yet you acknowledge that you don't want to go through the trouble of doing what you want to do yourself on an unmanaged VDS. This makes no sense.