0

I'm planning on getting a VPS to host websites that I develop for clients, but I also am thinking about leasing out some of its resources for hosting a game. Hopefully having a heftier server with more stuff on it will smoothen out the peak loads.

Details: - I'm just getting into all this so still learning. Willing to take risks now while I'm in a major learning stage and I'm not handling super crucial data. - Windows Server, probably 2012 assuming that's the best. I'm proposing to have it all on one OS. - Sites are ASP.NET, will run off IIS. A few of the sites will have an MSSQL DB. - Game is Team Fortress 2 - VPS, so I can easily scale resources as needed

Thoughts? There's a little bit of "games = vulnerabilities" creeping into my mind, but I can't actually justify that concern.

Or would it really be worth me going for a VPS that does multiple VMs, and host the games on one VM and sites on another? It's an extra ~$100/month or so to do that, so that wouldn't really be worth it given you can get a good game host for that much.

Andrew B
  • 32,588
  • 12
  • 93
  • 131
andrewb
  • 151
  • 8

1 Answers1

2

The biggest problem I see is not security (though don't let that fool you, its a BIG concern), it's how you appear to clients. Presumably you will be setting up demo sites on this server and having clients view it, suggest changes, etc.

If they happen to be doing that while your game server is active, your site is going to slow to a crawl. Game servers are fairly resource intensive. MSSQL is very resource intensive. Putting them both on the same box is asking for trouble.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but it will take a lot of extra work to ensure the game server doesn't interfere with your test sites. Clients will get frustrated when your demo site doesn't load, or takes 5 minutes to load, and you will look bad.

Grant
  • 17,859
  • 14
  • 72
  • 103
  • Thanks for the reply. I think if they were eating up too many resources I could just scale up, but if the games mindlessly eat all available resources, then that would not work. One bonus is that usually games and business websites are used at different times - if I'm meeting with a client to run through a website, it's likely during business hours. The game will most likely have peak loads around 8-10 PM. – andrewb Aug 10 '13 at 01:20