Comments on: The Cloud vs. The Home http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/ Virtual Worlds and Beyond Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:46:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.32 By: Michael Blade http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-192 Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:59:55 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-192 I’ve been running my virtual world and learning opensim for about three years now. Initially I had a virtualized server instance (I use windows server) and it was ok with the provider I had for a while. The problem was that ISPs tend to oversell the VM (quad cores or eight cores) and getting a consistent performance level from a virtual world with many regions can be an unknown, things seem to slow down for unknown reasons, but then again this was earlier on before the opensim refactoring and my experience could also be related to performance improvements in opensim versions. So I had also done the cable hosting thing, and for a sandbox its ok, but never for a growing virtual world. So I got a real deal on a server in a San Diego Data center, It doesn’t sound like much (a dual core celeron) with windows server installed, usually microsoft wants $20 extra for a license per month, so my total costs were $70 per month, highspeed professional business comcast was asking $100 a month and a contract, I’m month to month in my datacenter, but I doubt you could get such a good deal again. I have been shopping around and now best deals for dedicated servers seem to be core 2 duos for $125-140 per month. A little high, I had looked into the cloud computing costs a while back and it was still expensive, but I just might check those out again. There are some small guy’s in texas that are gaming server setups and they provide a good deal, but this would be a third or fourth move now and I hate going through those DNS domain name move hassels… but if you’re looking for a deal you probably have to do it! What did I forget? yes I have tested 3 avatars simulataneously in my world from three seperate computers at home going over my wireless network into a comcast cable provider and the limitation wasn’t my datacenter opensim server, but upstream speeds of my cable connect… so if you’re serious you’ll need to be in a datacenter or cloud! Just the way it is here in Feb 2011… http://viradu.com

]]> By: Las ventajas de correr OpenSim en la Nube | Tecnolives http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-191 Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:11:11 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-191 […] a OpenSim con su código de teletransportación, hace una reflexión muy interesante sobre la ejecución de OpenSim con un servicio en la nube, en lugar del alojamiento en redes […]

]]> By: peterhost http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-190 Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:48:58 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-190 Hi Diva,

Interesting post :)

I’ve been digging in the VM personal hosting for opensim since early 2010, when I could get my hands on pretty nifty beta virtual machines as a beta tester (french company OVH). Sadly enough, they won’t support UDP anymore on most of their entry level cloud distros, but it gave me time to experiment with many different companies in the meantime, and different virtualization techniques.
I’m not willing to get into the hosting business myself, as I’m more interested in developement, but I have tried to develop for my own use a set of scripts to automate, migrate (from grid to grid, from cloud-host to cloud-host, upgrade, backup opensim regions on the cloud (including Ovh, Amazon S3, Rackspace, and some more), with an adjacent set of inworld tools. Goal was, as your distro already does, to provide a fast setup for non-technical persons (or for myself, cause i do not want to spend 1 hour every time I setup a new region). User pays his hosting company, then installs the cloud (opensource, to come, not on github yet) management scripts, and voila.

From my own experience, contrary to what many have said, hosting a sim on the cloud is not only feasible, but in many case it’s the home user’s best option. If you’re hosting a small set of regions with very little traffic, the basic rackspace with 512MB ram is plenty sufficient. It amounts at an average 15 USD/month, which is also very affordable. I host scenery only regions (with low to null trafic) on very cheap VMs for less than 3$/month.

As comes to techniques, I’ve tried (on full servers I rent), different virtualisation techniques. Vmware & Xen work very well and is what most hosting companies use, for ease of use and management, and customer service. The most debatable techinque being Proxmox/OpenVZ containers, which are often used to sell very cheap VMs as you need not dedicate RAM/CPU per VMwith this system. However, when handled well, its overload is close to null (almost native OS perfs) and a 512MO 1GHz VM holds well, even with a 6×6 megaregion and several (more than 5 !) avatars.

Thx for your work, by the way. We owe you much.

Pete

]]> By: OpenSim forecast – cloudy? at i live in science land http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-189 Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:15:35 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-189 […] knows OpenSim inside and out and that is why her post on using cloud servers is a great read for anyone curious about cloud computing for […]

]]> By: Ener Hax http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-188 Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:09:21 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-188 thank you for the thorough discussion of the feasibility of cloud computing for OpenSim. it certainly does seem less than traditional hosting plus the “green” aspect of being able to shut down is an attractive thought

]]> By: Dirk Krause http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/opensim/the-cloud-vs-the-home/#comment-187 Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:35:18 +0000 http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=41#comment-187 Yup. That’s why I started the OpenSim-In-A-Box project some time ago.
http://goo.gl/mIMb

Great summary, thank you!

Best,
Dirk

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