Machine capacity

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

The machine capacity of a fleet is the number of bare metal and cloud machines that host game servers within the fleet. Game Server Hosting (Clanforge) dynamically calculates the ideal blend of bare metal and cloud machines to optimize both performance and cost-efficiency. Refer to Cost optimization.

 Bare metal capacityCloud capacity
CostLess expensive (static prices)More expensive (consumption-based prices)
Life cycle stagesOnline, Provisioning, Ready, Allocation, ShutdownOnline, Provisioning, Ready, Allocation, Shutdown, Deletion
CommitmentMonthly commitmentNo commitment
Provisioning time14-30 days1-15 minutes
Best forFleet baselineTemporary increases in CCU

Bare metal capacity

Bare metal capacity refers to the machine capacity that consists of physical machines. Physical machines typically reside in a traditional data center and have their operating systems installed directly on the machine’s hardware.

A bare metal machine has the operating system running directly on the hardware

Costs and performance

Physical machines cost less than cloud machines in the long run. However, they require a longer financial commitment and take longer to provision. The qualities of bare metal machines make them ideal for a fleet baseline, but infeasible for adding new capacity quickly in response to increased player demand.

Cloud capacity

Cloud capacity refers to virtual machines that exist in the cloud. Game Server Hosting supports using cloud capacity at various cloud providers, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Tencent. Cloud machines differ from bare metal machines in that they're typically virtual machines that the cloud provider manages and exposes through an API.

A cloud machine is virtualized so multiple amchines can share the same hardware

Costs and performance

Cloud machines are more expensive than bare metal machines but more flexible in that it’s easy to quickly add and remove cloud machines to overall fleet capacity. Game Server Hosting can quickly respond to changes in player demand by adding or removing cloud capacity. The characteristics of cloud capacity make it ideal for serving daily user peaks, but costly to use for the bulk of the fleet capacity.

Capacity management differences

Apart from the functional differences between bare metal and cloud capacity, there are also some differences in how Game Server Hosting manages the two capacities under the hood.

The primary difference is between the life cycle stages. Both machine capacity types go through similar life cycle stages, but bare metal machines don’t go through the deletion stage during the descaling process.

When the reactive scaling system scales down cloud capacity, the final life cycle stage of a cloud machine is the deletion phase. In the deletion stage, the reactive descaler deletes the cloud machine instance through the cloud provider’s API. After the deletion phase, the cloud machine is unrecoverable.

Unlike cloud machines, bare metal machines can't be deleted through the hosting provider’s API. When the reactive scaling system scales down bare metal capacity, the final life cycle stage of a bare metal machine is the shutdown phase.

The life cycle of a bare metal machine

Capacity readiness

All machine capacity, including bare metal and cloud machines, starts off as cold capacity. The machines that make up a fleet or fleet region’s cold capacity are clean slates. They're offline, haven’t been provisioned with Game Server Hosting’s services, and don’t have any game images installed.

When the reactive scaler prepares cold capacity, it powers on the machines, provisions the machines with Game Server Hosting’s services, and installs all the requirements of your game. After a machine is ready for a game session, it’s part of the fleet or fleet region’s hot capacity.

While scaling down capacity, the reactive scaling system shuts down unnecessary capacity before deleting it. The shutdown capacity remains in the shutdown state until it exceeds the configured shutdown TTL value. These machines in a shutdown state make up a fleet or fleet region’s warm capacity.

The reactive scaling system can use warm capacity to respond to player demands faster than it can with cold capacity. Since the reactive scaling system has already provisioned the warm capacity machines, all it needs to do to prepare the machines for a game session is turn them on, and possibly install or update a game image.

In contrast to warm and cold capacity, hot capacity consists of machines that are online, provisioned, and ready to fulfill an allocation.