System Requirements for Dedicated Server

Hi,

I have a few questions regarding the needed hardware for a multiplayer SE server.

Me and two friends (at the moment it is unclear if there will be more) started playing space engineers, and soon got annoyed with the need that always one of us needs to be online to host our savegame, and syncing it across all of us is not that great of a solution, so I started looking into dedicated server options. I am not to keen on using a hoster like nitrado or others, because for most of them I just can't find out how many ressources we would get, and they are not even guaranteed.

Since I already own an ubuntu vServer for playing around and hosting some things, but SE on linux is dead at the moment (at least as far as I could find out), I started looking at the possibility to rent a second vServer with Windows for Space Engineers. Sadly I am not sure how much ressources we would need, since the opinions and experiences vary wildly (which could be attributed to the different dates on which these experiences where posted).

At the moment I am looking at two options, and I was hoping you guys would help me out:

Option 1: * 2 dedicated cores of a Xeon E5-2680V4
* 6 GB DDR4 RAM
* 40 GB SSD

Option 2: * 4 dedicated cores of a Xeon E5-2680V4
* 12 GB DDR4 RAM
* 60 GB SSD

We / I plan on using torch with essentials and concealment, since I've already read in some posts that torch + concealment is pretty much mandatory.
Are these specs strong enough for 3 players, possibly a few more ? (if I'd have to guess, never more than about 6) If not, what am I looking for?

Thanks for the answers in advance!

 

From my experience the Space Engineers server generally uses only two cores, but it can load them up to their maximum performance. If the 2 cores that you get are clean of all processes except for some very easy tasks, you can go for the 2-core setup. If the cores also host the operating system, like Windows, they will compete for CPU time with the dedicated server.
I have Windows on the first 4 logical cores and I set affinity to all other cores for my Space Engineers server, but I haven't seen more than 2 used. Also I have found that Space Engineers server prefers to run on two adjacent logical cores which belong to one "real" core.
So you should try hosting with 2 dedicated cores and see if those cores are also used to host the OS. If they are also used by the OS I'd suggest switching to the 4 cores setup and changing the affinity so the server runs on the latter logical cores so it doesn't compete with the system.

As for the RAM requirements - it depends on how big your world gets. My server currently uses only 1.5 GB of RAM if the Task Manager is reporting it correctly.

 

First, thanks for your answer!

The cores would also be used by the operating system, so I will probably go with the 4 core option.

1,5 seems to be lower than I expected. But since the 4 core option comes with 12 GB RAM, I don't have much choice in the matter and it is enough for future growth.

Would you generally say that hosting it yourself (provided that you have knowledge about server administration) is a better option than letting it host by a gameserver hoster? I found one which offers SE gameservers with an underlying i7-6700K, but as usual with these hosters you don't know how much you will actually get or how many people you are sharing the server with. And generally as an IT guy I am inclined to host it myself, since I like to have control about every aspect and am interested in doing it myself.

 

I would say that you might do fine with the 2 core option if you host your server only for 3-4 people.

There are pros and cons in hosting the server yourself on your own machine, as on the plus side you have a very large amount of control and tweaks you can do with your server, but the downsides are some that your ISP might not be suitable for hosting. One of the other downsides is that if you host it on something like Xeon E5-2680V4 it would run slower than if it is hosted on i7-6700k, which has a much higher CPU frequency and is more optimized for games.

I host my server on my own machine which has AMD Ryzen 1700x and 32 GB of RAM and so far the simspeed has been about 1 for most of the time.