Shadowsong

You can indeed utilize multiple PC's to setup a cluster, as a real basic starting point i'd consider the following: Allow up up to 5GB of memory per grid (assuming you have no more than 6 islands) Allow 1 Physical CPU core per grid minimum. This can potentially be streched if you have newer processors and drop the server tick rate. As for the server setup, you would install ATLAS on each physical box and then choose one to run the Redis DB and point the others too it. Plan your ports, e.g - Game: 11000 Query: 12000 Seemless: 13000 RCON: 14000 then increase each number by 5 as you work your way though your servers. As a real world example, I run a 5x5 on a new 16 core CPU with 128GB of memory. At idle CPU usage is around 30-40% and memory around 98GB. These figures do increase as players jump on so you need to allow for extra headroom. As for hosting a 15x15 on a single grid - It would be possible, but you would need some considerable hardware. Something like a quad socket server housing the soon to be released 64 core AMD EPYC chips and over 1TB of memory. So nothing viable

Nope unfortunately not, only option as far as i know is to go through manually and check the islands off against the resources sheet.

That is a little strange, players should only be spawning on your freeports. How are the other islands setup? I believe you can allow spawning on them but players would be at a random location and not the freeport like on the other islands (because there isn't any). I'd check over those other island settings and make sure they are setup correctly and don't have the freeport/region assignments tied to them.

Center Maw on my cluster uses 800MB when empty, i have it setup exactly the same as official. So no islands, just the boss spawn.

I've never had any issues with Redis myself on a busy 4x3 grid running Windows Server 2019, I barely notice the memory usage. (21.7MB currently) but i don't use the bundled Redis edition which maybe why. I just use this - https://github.com/MicrosoftArchive/redis/releases install it as a service and configure it as required. (Using the pre-release version) As mentioned above it's a much cleaner way to run the servers, it's always on when running as a service and from my experiense is extremely light on resources.

What happens when you set a generic server name like "Testing123", if it launches with that then it must not be liking a character in your server name. Also not that it should generate that error, but make sure your unique ID is random so that it doesn't conflict with an existing cluster.

This is what i'd try first as well - I haven't ran multiple clusters from the same DB myself, but i do use the standalone redis install from MS (as a service) which works extremely well.

How are your backups working, are you using volume shadow copy or direct file backup? If it's the latter then i'd guess the lag is the delay in which it locks the file while it's backing up. With either option it's also worth checking your disk utilisation during the backup, quite often it can be as simple as maxing out the I/O which will cause a delay. If your backup software can be limited in I/O that would be best, but also lowering the backup process to a lower CPU priority can also help. (below normal)

Not possible as far as i'm aware, got to be set per grid.

+1 I think this would be especially useful for those people who can't play for periods of time. We use the equivalent mechanic for our communities Ark servers to reduce food/element consumption.

Been trying this as well but no luck, tried all the different BP's etc.

Same here, not found any other way. Bit of a nightmare really!

Yea if you've stuff there it does make it more difficult. i don't think there is anyway to tell for sure until you actually do it, most things are stored in the redis DB however it's not quite as straight forward as that from what i saw. I had an issue where one grid stopped saving, (some lock or something) when i unknowingly rebooted it, it reverted back to the last saved version and rolled back the server. In a few cases, Redis had a players in their own grids where they were playing, but duplicates of their character (asleep) in this grid as they had been passing through at the time of that save. So while redis may well hold the locations and data, the actual assets are still within the map file itself from what i can tell. I can't be certain but i'm pretty sure when testing previously i had wiped my redis DB numerous times which prompted me to make a new character, but previously created structures were still there. Going to be a bit of a pain in any case, but i'd still go for a map file wipe as a next step.

Exactly that, works fine on my grids. One company has successfully got the Kraken to spawn.

I imagine you will be fine if you stick with that logic of 2 cores/10GB per grid. You can always reduce the server tick should the need arise, i currently run mine at 20 but you can go down to 15 (like official) if needed. That drops CPU usage a fair bit which is useful for high population.

Couldn't really say without knowing more info and even then it's one of those things that you won't know for sure until you try. Would depend on how modern the Xeon is, clock speed isn't everything especially if the architecture is older. Also it would depend on how many CPU cores the xeon has vs how many grids you plan on running.

Personally i'd go with the i7-7700K's as their clock for clock performance will be better, this is especially useful for higher populated servers. I previously used a Xeon for Ark servers and regretted it as they suffered when under high load. For my ATLAS cluster i now use a i9 9900K. I'm assuming your two options are from kit you already own? If not and your looking to buy new then it would be useful to know the budget I'd also suggest considering the AMD Threadripper lineup, they are clocked well and have a huge surplus of cores. (Not as good single thread performance as the i7/i9 but they are decent and well priced.)

Would be interested to know this as well. You can do that, but generally good practice to do it on each server as the default ini files often get wiped.

Assuming there is no issue wiping the map, i'd go and delete the map file as i imagine there it's something in there that's been changed to disable spawns. Once deleted it will re-create on startup and assuming you don't have the config in your JSON anymore it should be fine. Obviously this does mean any structures etc would be deleted from the grid The center maw grid on my cluster is currently empty, but i plan to add 1-2 islands on the outskirts that can be used as a neutral location for trade, farming and as a staging area to group up before heading to do the kraken. It's the only other uses i could think of for the grid so it's not a waste of space due to the lack of land spawns.

I've done this a number of times on my 4x3 and previous 2x2 without issue. All i did was make the edit in the editor, export and then copy the ServerGrid.json and the folder with the map images. (Not the ServerGrid.ServerOnly.json). - I fully delete the current ServerGrid.json & Map Images folder before copying in the new ones. The most recent edit i did was removing an island from a Tundra biome grid and replacing it with another (needed an island with turnips on the cluster )

Yep it is indeed and no it's not cheap more for curiosity's sake at the moment! Even with the expense though i think it would still be the cheapest way of getting a 5x5 on a single server while still keeping things power/heat efficient. I did look a dual socket servers, but they are crazy money, generally less cores, not as quick and draw more electric. AMD's EPYC chips are the server version of threadripper, they are also nice but are clocked very low so not ideal for gamesevers.

Yea don't advise using it, they should have removed it imo. Wait for the arkapi guys to come out with a plugin, the guy who made the one for Ark is making one for ATLAS as far as i know. (https://arkserverapi.com/)

On a seperate note, i'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on this single server setup for a 5x5 grid. @Sakura@Atlasprime AMD 2990wx (32 core) 128GB RAM My initial thoughts are it would provide 1 core/2 threads per server with some to spare for additional workload & things like territory map etc. Memory wise it would give up to 5GB per grid should they need it which is more than enough for 7 islands per grid. My only concern would be clock speed for lots of players, but i'd still be hoping to set 50 per grid. (Not that it would ever get close to that full)

With my 12 servers (4x3), tick rate of 20 and 7-9 islands per grid, I average about 45% usage overall when servers are empty. That goes up by 10% or so when 60 players are online. Should i need more performance, i can reduce tick rate to 15 like officials are and overclock to 5Ghz across the cores. Power consumption wise is quite minimal currently, as i've not OC'd the processor is still within it's 95w power envelope. Other than that, all i have in there is 2 x m.2 drives, couple fans and a hydro cooler on the CPU. So likely sub 130w i'd guess overall, if not less. Also got an 80 Plus Titanium PSU so as efficient as i could make it.

You said that the 9900k was wasted on a server - It is not by any means. Price aside i think it is one of the best chips you could buy for a busy server where high core speed is required. Also my original point of price/performance being in favour of the 9900k was comparing it to new Xeons and that point still stands. Obviously you can buy some cheap EOL server hardware for less money but that's not what i was stating. I agree with @Sakura - For the most part, Xeons are not the best for gaming servers and it's why the decent hosting providers are not using them. I have nothing against Xeons and even brought one for my Ark cluster originally, but it soon became apparent that a quicker i7 would have been a better choice after cores on the Xeon started maxing out under high player load.