#vultr

Previously I benchmarked a node.js first person shooter game server on smaller Vutlr VC2 instances (1024: $5, 2048: $10) comparing them to the dedicated $60 offering.  My conclusion was that the dedicated cpu came at a premium of 3x, perhaps too pricey for my specific game. I abandoned the dedicated offerings, and then the question evolved to be: which of the VC2 instances offers the best value? Previous estimates suggested that renting multiple 1024s would be the best. My answer now is that renting 8192s is the fastest, which comes as a surprise!

The Geekbench Scores listed by vultr (detailed in previous post) suggested that each tier of VC2 was roughly *but not quite* twice as fast the previous tier. Using their own benchmark data, I calculated that running 8x 1024s would result in ~28% more processing power than running 1x 8192 albeit spread across 8 different servers. 

Rather than take the theorycraft at face value, I have now rented an 8192 and run my own game benchmarks on it. On the 1024 I was able to run 3 game instances at ~85% cpu. On the 2048 I was able to run 6 game instances at ~95% cpu. And much to my surprised on the 8192 I was able to run 24 game instances at ~78% cpu. These all come out the same dollar-to-player ratio. 

I had to write a special node.js child-process-fork version of the nengi.Bot to connect 240 players to 24 separate games-- which was the number consistent with a full round of ZombiesWithGuns.io.

Screenshot: 73% total cpu usage, 24 instances and 4 nginx workers at 10-16% cpu each (out of a total of 400% cpu).

So the 8196 really was at least 8x as strong as the 1024, and 4x as strong as the 2048. This runs counter to the Geekbench Score, which would’ve predicted only running ~17 games instead of 24. In fact in my test, it actually came out to be the strongest per dollar by a 5-10% margin. Technically I may have been able to squeeze 25 or 26 game servers for https://zombieswithguns.io/ onto this machine, but I like to leave a little breathing room.

On a related note, that breathing room is a much bigger deal. Having 15-20% of the cpu allotment idle isn’t a whole lot on a 1024... but having that percentage on a 4vCPU 8192 is quite a bit of processing available just in case one of the game instances spikes.

Why did the 8192 perform better in my game benchmarks than what was projected in Vutlr’s Geekbench scores...? Well the real answer is I don’t know. I’m not even sure what a Geekbench score is. But here are some theories. Multi-threaded benchmarks often suffer some overhead. Four cores never registers being 4x as fast as a 1 core, etc. But I’m not running benchmark software.. I’m running nengi.js game instances which are designed to scale horizontally as entirely separate processes (!!). In my case this is obviously superior to a benchmark because it is the actual program that I intend to run. Other theories are perhaps that nginx does a better job with more workers, or that the CPU is somehow prioritized over other tenants, or that the RAM or network i/o was more of a factor than anticipated and thus benefited from being improved. I don’t really know about any of that.

Well that about sums it up. For ZombiesWithGuns.io the bigger VC2 instances (up to 8192) have been better, not worse! I’ll be deploying several 8192s across the next few weeks and I’ll write another blog post if I find out more.

Vultr, la mayor empresa privada de infraestructura en la nube del mundo, anunció hoy, junto con SUSE y Supermicro, un marco arquitectónico estratégico diseñado para simplificar la implementación y operación de cargas de trabajo de inteligencia artificial en entornos distribuidos. A medida que la IA se acerca cada vez más al lugar donde se generan los datos, desde plantas industriales hasta puntos de venta minorista, las organizaciones enfrentan desafíos crecientes en materia de latencia, costos y consistencia operativa. Esta iniciativa conjunta ofrece una arquitectura integrada desde la nube hasta el extremo de la red, con hardware de alto rendimiento, infraestructura regional en la nube y una gestión unificada de Kubernetes.

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Vultr is a cloud computing provider that offers high-performance cloud infrastructure to businesses and individuals worldwide. Founded in 2014, Vultr provides a variety of cloud services, including virtual private servers (VPS), bare metal servers, block storage, and dedicated cloud compute instances. With 17 data center locations strategically placed around the world, Vultr offers a reliable and…