What's the best server host out there?

[Sgt Joe1 5]

First of all please forgive me if this is posted in the wrong section, I went to the server section of the forum but apparently it's basically everyone advertising their server so I decided to ask here. Any forum admin/mod feel free to move this topic if needed.

 

What is the best server host out there? I'm looking forward to buy a small 30 man public server for our clan. I'm currently looking for a server that doesn't lag that much, has low ping and preferably doesn't cost more than 70$

so far these are the ones I checked out.

 

http://www.multiplaygameservers.com , 30 slot public server = 69.49 $ - a bit expensive price I'm willing to pay but I must make sure their servers run good.

 

https://clients.fragnet.net , unfortunately least amount is 40 slots so price = 82.20$ - too expensive for me but I'm still willing to find out how their servers run.

 

http://www.gameservers.com , 30 slot public server = 68.95$ - just about same price about the previous 30 slot one but I've heard bad things about gameservers, so far a lot of people have warned me about buying from them. Their server seems to lag alot and their customer support is the slowest according to alot of customers.

 

https://www.vilayer.com , 30 slot public server = 55.55$ - VERY VERY cheap compared to others but I've been warned about their customer support and server pings. I personally get frequent desync on every server hosted by Villayer.com while playing Dayz.

 

https://www.gamingdeluxe.com , 30 slot public server = 56.58$ - Very cheap + I've heard good things about them. Their servers seem to run very well and their customer support seems to be extremely good. Looking forward to buying from them but I still need to make sure before buying.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this :D

[boneboys 7988]

Moved to the Server Forum.

This question is asked often enough but is never conclusive.

[Valdenburg 200]

Hey there -we tested all those GSPs and stick to fragnet - best server performance and very good/quick support.

[Sgt Joe1 5]

Hey there -we tested all those GSPs and stick to fragnet - best server performance and very good/quick support.

How was gamingdeluxe.com? I'm planning to try them out and want to just know a little bit more about them :)

[sinnaman 90]

Hey there -we tested all those GSPs and stick to fragnet - best server performance and very good/quick support.

 

I can agree to this to a certain degree. If you buy a public hive server your number of customizable options are a bit limited. We could for one not put in our own scheduler for about two months, causing our restart schedule to go completely haywire. Responses to tickets are indeed quick, but some times we've asked ourselves what we're really getting as a response when we're told to paste logs from what happened when they should have full access to this info themselves.

 

Not being a prick about it tho, all in all very satisfied with Fragnet, uptime's great and never had any suspicion of them being an overseller. Had quite a few different game servers with them and the latency/uptime/price of them have all been satisfactory. They also don't throw in any extra charges to "de-brand" the server or gain access to certain functions.

 

Check out my signature if you'd like to try it out for yourself. :)

[The Riddler (DayZ) 410]

We're also using Fragnet and can say we've been satisfied with them as a GSP. 

 

I will also say that their support is quick to respond but I guess it depends on what shift receives the ticket b/c we too have gotten responses back that made me wonder why they didn't look further into the issue when they have the ability to do so and save the reply for when they have more info instead of asking the client to dig further into it for them.

 

I know a lot of that has to do with their KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) they have to take responsibility on; been there done that. The more tickets you respond to, the higher your KPI goes which makes the manager of the team happy but that sometimes leaves the client who was asking the question in the first place a bit frustrated/left in the dark b/c the answers are so basic or only half-answered.

 

That happens with any tech support so don't let my opinion on the matter change your mind on using fragnet. Overall we're happy with them.  

[saintofthesystem 5]

At first I got tired of gamingdeluxe's bullshit.  Now I'm going to say Multiplay is worse.  That's just because I'm that needy part of the consumer base, and think I deserve a reply that acknowledges when a server is down almost 24 hours, and want to know what the fuck is going on.  It's too much to ask, I tell you.  Don't dance with them.

[Sgt Joe1 5]

At first I got tired of gamingdeluxe's bullshit.  Now I'm going to say Multiplay is worse.  That's just because I'm that needy part of the consumer base, and think I deserve a reply that acknowledges when a server is down almost 24 hours, and want to know what the fuck is going on.  It's too much to ask, I tell you.  Don't dance with them.

to make matters worse, all multiplay server servers are on an enforced 24 hour cycle since 0.52 update. Even after you restart server, it continues the time on that before the restart and doesn't reset, and even their support is not responding because "holidays". We pretty much learn lessons everyday so I'm gonna be switching GSPs at the end of the month :)

[sneakydudes 278]

I've been happy with Vilayer so far. The cost was 90.60 CDN per month. I find it pricy for an alpha server.

 

The server we run is 30 man, ssd, with DDOS protection. I find it runs very well concidering the bugs with the crashes.

[f3cuk 2]

Looking for an extreme performance driven server host

Hi everyone,

I'm contemplating the idea of starting a new DayZ server. Money is not an issue but I'm not settling for anything less then maximum performance, meaning:

• At least 2 cores (Intel 4th gen+) operating at 4.2Ghz+ speed;
• Either a dedicated box or dedicated cores, i have no intention on sharing CPU power;
• Fully SSD driven.

Are any of you aware of providers that offer these specs? If not, are there any providers that let you assemble your own hardware?

Edited March 5, 2015 by Boneboys

[The Riddler (DayZ) 410]

Unfortunately at this point Private hosting as you'd like to do is not available with DayZ as far as I know.  You have to rent a server from one of the providers. However, it might be possible to "upgrade" your services through your GSP so the server Dayz is on is more powerful, but I do not know the details on this. Won't hurt to contact the GSP's who host DayZ servers now if its possible to run on a better server than what they offer as the standard. 

[f3cuk 2]

Thanks, i did know private hosting is not available but was simply interested if any of you guys were aware of a host that offers other specs then they show on their website. Right now I'm not really interested in anything they are offering. Like ARMA 2 and 3 i feel like you need at least 4Ghz single core performance to be able to host a decent high capacity server in DayZ's current state.

 

I'll try to contact them individually to see if there is room for upgrades.

 

--

 

Also, since i have no experience with any of the GSP's, which one do you guys feel is most passionate about performance?

Edited March 10, 2015 by f3cuk

[f3cuk 2]

Okay so i had an e-mail conversation with Fragnet. They are using Intel E3-1270v2 CPU's per Bohemia's recommendation, which is a 3th generation (Ivy Bridge, about 3 years old now) processor with 4 cores (+4 threads). They have a policy of max 3 instances per machines which means you get about 1.33 core (+1.33 thread), by default you will only get one core assigned and if you host there it might be wise asking them to assign a second one (they will do so free of charge).

They seem convinced the 1270v2 is the best possible CPU to host a DayZ SA server on (lol), which is why i feel i can't take them too seriously.
 

[..] The 1270v2 is simply the best CPU you can get for DayZ [..]

Other then that i like the fact how fast their responses were and they seem like a decent choice if you are not obsessed about performance like i am.

Edited March 7, 2015 by f3cuk

[f3cuk 2]

Okay over the past few days I have been having contact with all the different GSP's (and even Bohemia) about their services and possibilities. It's a sad fact that market right now is really non-existant, chosen GSP's have all the power and although it seems they work on upgrading their services to comply with Bohemia's wishes, and Bohemia in fact has reasonable guidelines to make sure game servers aren't overpopulated and run on decent hardware. It's hard to order anything of them when none of them can really guarantee anything and are so tied in the contracts they signed that even if they wanted to, they could not offer any kind of server we would be interested in.

 

The only thing we want is the best possible experience of DayZ, for us that means it has to run on the best possible (within certain pricing limits) hardware currently available. Why is it so hard to achieve something that should not be.

 

The market won't change anytime soon (Bohemia told me no new GSP's will be considered in 2015), which leads me to believe that not much will change in the near future and i think it might be wise to reconsider things. At the very least give GSP's some freedom in hosting servers better then the minimum specs you have set without them having to upgrade all the other services.

 

Why would i even consider an official host when the best they can offer me is a shared E3 processor (4 core that runs 3 instances) that operates at a max of 3.9Ghz and a cheap SSD with throughput speeds below 600MB/s. The only offer i got that kind of came close to what we wanted involved us buying 3 hosting packages plus a dedicated server package to at least get the core control we want (meaning we could - if we wanted - actually host a DayZ server with 4 dedicated cores assigned to it). However it would still be on hardware that doesnt come close to maximum performance and I'm definately not paying 300+ a month for a mediocre server. Certainly not when i could build a server under 1K that would outperform (by a good 20%) every single DayZ server money can buy right now.

 

This sucks so much.

Edited March 9, 2015 by f3cuk

[Valdenburg 200]

Looking for an extreme performance driven server host

Hi everyone,

I'm contemplating the idea of starting a new DayZ server. Money is not an issue but I'm not settling for anything less then maximum performance, meaning:

• At least 2 cores (Intel 4th gen+) operating at 4.2Ghz+ speed;
• Either a dedicated box or dedicated cores, i have no intention on sharing CPU power;
• Fully SSD driven.

Are any of you aware of providers that offer these specs? If not, are there any providers that let you assemble your own hardware?

So far i know Fragnet servers do use max 60% of the servers capacity when the server is full with players 50/50 ;)

[f3cuk 2]

So far i know Fragnet servers do use max 60% of the servers capacity when the server is full with players 50/50 ;)

 

Yes and if you will check actual server performance it won't be anywhere near 50FPS, how come? Simple, DayZ is hardly optimized to use more then one thread. Let alone 8 which most of the processors that the GSP's are using currently have.

 

This is why single thread performance is important. Let's say a server has 4 cores and 4 extra threads but the game is only able to utilize half of that (not real numbers). It would seem like even when the server hits 50 players, it would 'only' use 50% of the server capacity, but in fact it is using 100% of it's maximum capacity and although the server has resources left, DayZ SA cannot utilize them. In the mod and i think for A3 (not sure) this has partly been solved by the use of a headless client, which is basically another dayz_server.exe (running on another thread) chipping in and helping the main server with it's tasks (like zombie AI) but I don't think that is already the case for DayZ SA and I'm not sure it ever will.

In order to get the server to perform better, you have to make sure that the sum of the core speed that are actually viable is the highest it can be. With that in mind it could very well be that a dual core processor (e.g. G3258, ~$75,-) operating at 4.3Ghz+ will outperform (meaning higher server FPS under same circumstance) a quad-core E5-1630v3 (~$500,-) operating at max speed of 3.8Ghz. I don't know the real statistics and how much a DayZ server really can utilize, this is something probably only the devs and the hosts know or can test. The closest things we can test are Arma 2 and 3, 2 being the platform DayZ has been build upon and we know that one is barely capable of utilizing more then one thread.. Yes they have made progress in that department, but how much exactly we do not know and we cannot test. There has been little or no talk about it in their dev updates.

Edited March 10, 2015 by f3cuk

[Valdenburg 200]

Yes and if you will check actual server performance it won't be anywhere near 50FPS, how come? Simple, DayZ is hardly optimized to use more then one thread. Let alone 8 which most of the processors that the GSP's are using currently have.

 

This is why single thread performance is important. Let's say a server has 4 cores and 4 extra threads but the game is only able to utilize half of that (not real numbers). It would seem like even when the server hits 50 players, it would 'only' use 50% of the server capacity, but in fact it is using 100% of it's maximum capacity and although the server has resources left, DayZ SA cannot utilize them. In the mod and i think for A3 (not sure) this has partly been solved by the use of a headless client, which is basically another dayz_server.exe (running on another thread) chipping in and helping the main server with it's tasks (like zombie AI) but I don't think that is already the case for DayZ SA and I'm not sure it ever will.

In order to get the server to perform better, you have to make sure that the sum of the core speed that are actually viable is the highest it can be. With that in mind it could very well be that a dual core processor (e.g. G3258, ~$75,-) operating at 4.3Ghz+ will outperform (meaning higher server FPS under same circumstance) a quad-core E5-1630v3 (~$500,-) operating at max speed of 3.8Ghz. I don't know the real statistics and how much a DayZ server really can utilize, this is something probably only the devs and the hosts know or can test. The closest things we can test are Arma 2 and 3, 2 being the platform DayZ has been build upon and we know that one is barely capable of utilizing more then one thread.. Yes they have made progress in that department, but how much exactly we do not know and we cannot test. There has been little or no talk about it in their dev updates.

• According to Fragnet this is what they use: "E3-1270v2 CPUs offering 3.5Ghz (turboboost to 3.9Ghz), minimum of 16Gb DDR3 ECC RAM and SSD"

[The Riddler (DayZ) 410]

I'd imagine when the game is 1.0 or greater the options to host your own server (to your specs) will be available and the game itself will be developed further to allow multiple cores and thus better performance. Only time will tell, but for now we're happy with Fragnet. They've helped us when there were wide spread server lockups a few versions back, and they've changed our CPU affinity settings for .54 and we're seeing better performance. Nothing staggering, but overall the server is more stable and restarting every 2 hours without any freezes or lockups. 

[f3cuk 2]

• According to Fragnet this is what they use: "E3-1270v2 CPUs offering 3.5Ghz (turboboost to 3.9Ghz), minimum of 16Gb DDR3 ECC RAM and SSD"

 

Correct, still ivy-bridge though which will get outperformed by most of the Haswell chips. Which is something they know and probably why they are upgrading to the E3-1271 which is one of the best performing single thread processors out there and a full 12% extra performance per core. Depending on how many threads DayZ server utilizes the impact that will have is pretty big.

 

I'd imagine when the game is 1.0 or greater the options to host your own server (to your specs) will be available and the game itself will be developed further to allow multiple cores and thus better performance. Only time will tell, but for now we're happy with Fragnet. They've helped us when there were wide spread server lockups a few versions back, and they've changed our CPU affinity settings for .54 and we're seeing better performance. Nothing staggering, but overall the server is more stable and restarting every 2 hours without any freezes or lockups. 

 

Yes probably hopefully. If i'd had to host a server I would go with Fragnet. Hardware wise all of the hosts seem to follow guidelines set by Bohemia (which are decent), but Fragnet by far has shown best response times, knowledge and hardware dedication. It's just that when I know performance could be much better with a few hardware tweaks, i don't really feel like hosting at all. For instance a 4790K with a reasonable overclock to 4.8Ghz will perform about 25% better per core then a E3-1271 (which is yet to be introduced). Given that per bohemia's guidelines there can be 3 instances on a 4 core server i'd say the game currently is not able to utilize more then 1.33 +1.33 thread. It means the performance gain will be probably be between 25% and 40% percent which - in my opionion - is pretty huge.

Edited March 11, 2015 by f3cuk

[stefeman 1]

For performance, go to Fragnet. it's the first one to come up after updates and it's the least lagging GSP with least desync. However it's the most expensive one. But they have nice support :)

 

For price, go to Vilayer. They offer same features and tools, but for almost half price. However they are the last servers to come online after updates and they have some desync issues and their persistence is not working as good as other GSP's. And most of all, their support is bellow average due the insane wait times.

[stefeman 1]

Depending on how many threads DayZ server utilizes the impact that will have is pretty big.

 

DayZ server uses 1 core, which is why Vilayer hosts 4 of them per machine with different port numbers. That's what I think based on my experience with them :P

 

Edited March 12, 2015 by stefeman

[f3cuk 2]

As far as I'm aware per Bohemia's rules there can only be 3 instances per server (quad-core) max. I think by default server hosts assign 1 core and 1 extra thread to each server. I'm not sure about other hosts, but Fragnet does assign an extra core on demand. Same IP does not mean same server, it could easily be internally redirected to other machines, although that doesnt sound too smart given denial of service attacks are IP based.