Allocations and reservations in scaling

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.

When a matchmaker requests an allocation, Game Server Hosting’s APIs take scaling into account when selecting which server to allocate.

As part of its scaling duties, Game Server Hosting performs the following actions:

  • Allocates bare metal servers first, and only allocates cloud servers when there are no bare metal servers left.
  • Doesn't allocate servers that are about to be scaled down. Instead, Game Server Hosting tries to allocate servers on machines with other allocated servers.

Scaling presents a potential issue with the reservation model. Because servers reserve themselves in the reservation model, Game Server Hosting has no control over the packing of machines. Accordingly, this makes it difficult to scale down machines.

To leverage the full potential of scaling, Game Server Hosting recommends the use of allocations to find game servers instead of using reservations.