# VPS specs recommendations?



## Ace (Oct 30, 2015)

Hey there!
 


I've been lurking around for a while now, just ran across a question for you who might know more about all this stuff.


I will be hosting a few (32-slot) teamspeak servers and most likely 2 gameservers for a kinda old game (Call of Duty 4) in the future, I'm just in trouble with the specs which I should get, and also with reliable providers, like I have literally no idea what would be the minimum, or the recommended specs. Just thought I'd ask here for any kind of help from anyone who might know better. I really do not have a budget, but also it is unnecessary to pay for an overpowered VPS.

Any kinds of answers are appreciated.


Regards,


Ace.


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## HalfEatenPie (Oct 30, 2015)

Howdy Ace,


Welcome to the forums.  In terms of gameserver hosting, most of the time I've found the hosting provider's network to be the most important part of the equation.  Make sure you find a provider that has the best latency and network to your users.  The difference is night and day between a server with a budget and unstable network, and a server with a reliable network (also your users/clients will be really annoyed and angry with you if the server lags or just drops traffic during peak times).  Something that you don't want is random packet loss during peak hours and optimized routing to you and your users/clients.  Especially with a FPS game like Call of Duty 4, latency plays a major role in the gameplay and experience.  I'd suggest you contact providers near your location and ask them for a test IP and/or a looking glass and see what routes it takes to you and back.  


Teamspeak servers are fairly lightweight.  The only worry is that sometimes (for like OpenVZ VPSes) teamspeak could potentially trigger a "flooding warning" due to the amount of packets the default codec and configuration generates.  You might have to tweak the configurations a little if this is an issue with your provider.  


I have no experience with call of Duty 4 game servers, however, I'm fairly certain most game servers are single core or dual core at most.  While this link lacks a ton of details on the requirements, it very much depends on how you're planning on configuring the game servers.  Like are we talking 50 players on a single game server?  Or something like 10 people total?  Regardless, most people usually suggest higher clocked CPUs (such as around 3.0 GHz+ CPUs) for game servers due to the large volume of CPU computations required for a popular game server.  An E3 or an i7 server could be considered more beneficial here.  


In terms of RAM, again depending on how many slots you're planning on having, I'd probably allocate roughly 1 GB to 1.5 GB (to be on the safe side) per game server (per every 15 person slot).  However, the link I mentioned above suggested around 500 ~ 600 mb per game server.  


Personally, I'd recommend a dedicated server with SSDs due to the amount of resources a high-volume game server will use up.  This link suggests that a bare minimum of 20 Mbit+ guaranteed for a 32-slot COD4 Server.  Teamspeak will tell you the maximum amount of bandwidth used per person depending on your codec and quality configuration so you can get that information from there.  Do some math and you'll figure out the maximum amount of bandwidth you might use when all services are full (Full Teamspeak server + Full COD game servers).  You should probably start searching what you need depending on that.


While most people do want to save the most amount of money, I would still recommend spending a little extra and going with a provider that you know is absolutely reliable.  Going too cheap/budget wise and later finding out their network isn't reliable could make things difficult for your community/group as you'd have to switch IPs to a different provider's.  Minimize this issue, pay a little bit more and go with someone good.


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## OnSebastian (Oct 31, 2015)

Hi Ace,


Welcome to vpsboard 


While Dedicated Servers are always prefered for Gameservers, it should be possible to run two Call of Duty 4 Gameservers on a good VPS without any problems. The CoD4 dedicated server software itself is not that ressource hungry like many newer games, using a Debian 8 VPS with 1 to 2 GB RAM for Teamspeak and two Gameservers should be working pretty good. Probably start with a 1 GB VPS and upgrade to 2 GB if required, this just depends on your real performance usage based on the Mods and Addons you will use with your Gameservers.


More Performance / Higher CPU clock speeds are always recommended regardless of the gameserver you run so I personally would go with a Xeon 3.5 GHz CPU instead of slower ~2.4GHz cores. For VPS i think the most important part is that you get a VPS from a host that is not totally overselling his ressources and everything will be fine.


Now the self-marketing part ;-)


Some of our happy customers (and me for myself) are already running perfectly working Gameservers on OnVirt VPS so I would be happy if you would give us a try and order a VPS at OnVirt as it should be perfect for your needs. In case you should not get satisfied, we offer a 14-day full money back warranty.


(Do not forget to use the coupon code in my signature ) 


Best Regards
Sebastian


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