Online Game Cluster

axehind writes "Carlo Daffara posted to the openMosix mailing list about his game cluster. It's a 6 node cluster using Athlon XP cpus and running linux & openmosix (with some qdisc trickery) for the OS. It is used to host approximately 1000 users playing online games, like Jedi Knight and Quake III. Here's a link (italian) to the pictures."

Comments

RDMA for GigEthernet

[selectspec]

This is slightly offtopic, but RDMA for GigE is nearing finalization. I would imagine this will play as a huge win for these clustering technologies.

Re:No wait

[zaqattack911]

Wait.. does a CLIC cluster work the way openMosix does? openMosix behind the scenes migrates processes (or server connections) to the least busy machine at that time. It doesn't do threads, and I don't even know how it works if it's not a network drive.

How does CLIC do it?
Don't assume it's the same thing... christ you could even call my webserver a cluster just cuz it's webpages spread amoung two different machines... but they (the servers) really have no concept of eachother.. and it doesn't share threads or diskspace or anything really.

Clust is more of a buz word. It is what is technically going on that I'm most concerned with.

Re:FP

[zapfie]

It's no more of a good business model than building kit cars, or designing Quake levels.. but who cares? What counts is that you enjoy it and get something from it. If you can also make it into a business model, all the more power to you.

ok so you're using qdisc for packet control

[honold]

but does this really count as ONE BIG SERVER for each game? if not, what is the advantage to having a single-entrance point of failure for the whole lot, when you could just use multiple independent servers?

SICK OF SLASHDOTING

[NextAdvantage]

Why dosen't /. show cached pages, we get the point... offering cached pages would sure be nice.

FAQ

[Catskul]

Yes, Ive read the FAQ, but as the parent noticed its getting rediculous.

Regarding the issues in the FAQ, most of the news isnt time critical, especially if its a link to a small site. So waiting 6 hours isnt a big deal. Despite the FAQ response I think it would still be a good idea.
In response to worrying about if the content changed: First of all it wouldnt be a big deal and second of all, how much harder would it be to recache it every 5-10 min ?

So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.

I think its time someone went ahead, thought it though and implemented it.

Re:Local Cacheing

[DeadBugs]

Even though Slashdot handles all of its users fine now. Serving up large files like images and video instead of just text would cause it to suffer its own effect.