Scaling

Note: The content on this page pertains to Game Server Hosting (Multiplay) available on the Unity Cloud Dashboard. If you’re using Game Server Hosting (Clanforge), refer to the Game Server Hosting (Clanforge) documentation.

Game Server Hosting allows you to scale the number of servers in your fleet up and down in response to player demand per region using the scaling system. The scaling system controls when and how regions within a fleet scale up and down. Each region has independent scaling settings that allow you to tailor how they scale.

Game Server Hosting uses each region’s scaling settings, the build configuration’s server density, and the current number of allocated servers to decide the number of available servers to keep per region.

The region’s scaling settings tell the scaling system the minimum number of servers you want be available within the region and the maximum number of servers that can be available in the region.

  • The region’s scaling settings tell the scaling system the minimum number of servers that can be available within the region and the maximum number of servers that can be available in the region.
  • The usage settings you define at the build configuration level tell the scaling system the number of servers running the connected build can fit on a machine.
  • The current number of allocated servers tells the scaling system the number of the servers in a region are in use and not available for an allocation.

The scaling system considers all the build configurations within a fleet and uses the worst-case usage settings to find the number of servers that can run per machine. Game Server Hosting uses the worst-case usage settings to prevent the fleet from re-scaling each time you change build configurations.

It’s essential to understand how the worst-case usage settings impact scaling. For example, if the usage settings allow for three servers to run per machine and the scaling settings require four available servers, the scaling system spins up two machines. The two online machines result in six available servers instead of four due to the usage settings.

Game Server Hosting creates these two additional servers to make the most of the available capacity. By default, these additional servers are in a stopped state and offer a quick way of increasing server availability without needing to start a new machine.

Explore the following topics to learn more: