Hardware specifications for hosting

[benw]

I'm sure this was probably asked before but I couldn't find it in a search....

Are there any minimum or recommended hardware requirements for running dedicated server? I realise it is probably affected by the number of users so let's say 32 (the default maximum).

If not can anyone share their hardware specifications that are working well?

Obviously most PCs that are capable of running the sim are easily capable of hosting as well but I am looking at the possibility of setting up a small low power PC just for hosting so I only need the minimum processing power to run the server.

[ybuqc]

I think the biggest issue while running a server is the bandwidth, not the CPU power. I don't have the minimum spec for a server but for the bandwidth, check this thread.

[wickid]

I'm sure this was probably asked before but I couldn't find it in a search....

Are there any minimum or recommended hardware requirements for running dedicated server? I realise it is probably affected by the number of users so let's say 32 (the default maximum).

If not can anyone share their hardware specifications that are working well?

Obviously most PCs that are capable of running the sim are easily capable of hosting as well but I am looking at the possibility of setting up a small low power PC just for hosting so I only need the minimum processing power to run the server.

About 6 MB of ram and 0.5% of CPU use on a full server. The real issue is indeed bandwidth.

[benw]

Thanks. Yes, fully understand about the bandwidth bottleneck. I'm reliably getting 6 Mbit/s and 10ms and this is working fine for what I am doing at the moment.

But I am asking specifically about pc hardware. Might it work on, for example, a thin client PC (1.5Ghz, 4GB RAM). This would be a very low cost low power solution. When I look at my Synology NAS handling streaming audio and video to several users at the same time using only a 1.4Ghz CPU and 1Gb RAM I imagine that the Condor server hardware requirement must be quite low.

[janjansen]

Hardware requirements are basically "whatever runs windows" (*). Condor server uses less ram than windows calculator (literally, on my PC calculator uses 22MB ram) and cpu load is basically not measurable. If you can boot windows, you can run a dozen condor servers, at least if you have the bandwidth.
Windows 10 requires 1 GB ram, a directx9 capable videocard and a 1 GHz cpu, but im sure it will run on slower CPUs as wel should you have a vintage machine somewhere. Windows 7 requirements are the same. Condor says it requires windows 7/8/10, but I wouldnt be surprised if at least the server actually runs on XP, should you be brave enough to still run XP and expose it to the internet. I would definately not recommend it, but hey, in that case, system requirements are, well, like 64MB of ram and a 233 MHz cpu. Basically any PC that is less than 25 years old. Admittedly, on those kinds of specs, perhaps there will be ram and cpu bottlenecks.

(*) to be more accurate, whatever runs x86 windows. You can run special versions of windows on ARM devices like a raspberry pi, but those wont run x86 code. Or maybe they do using emulation, Im not sure, but someone would have to test if that actually works.

[wickid]

And have a descent size hard drive. Even with only the serverinstall, some landscapes are pretty large (AA2 for example)

[janjansen]

You dont need to install the complete sceneries on the server. Basically only the files in the root of scenery folder (minus the BMPs and some others). As I recall it was on the order of 100MB per scenery, but its definitely small. tiny even compared to windows itself.

[benw]

Thank you for your advice. It seems the server requirements are quite low as I suspected. I think I will attempt a setup using a thin client PC and see how it goes. I doubt it will have sufficient storage for several landscapes even accounting for the reduced size server install but that's good enough for now.