question

robertdemjan avatar image
robertdemjan asked

Custom game server not reaching limit

Hello!

Our current Custom Game Server limit is set to 100, but it seems like we are hitting the limit, when we shouldn't.

Currently, the EUWest servers running at max game count (set max 10 per game, and all of them running 10), and new servers doesn't get opened, although only 30 servers are up.

When trying to start a new game, we get back the "RegionAtCapacity" error. We never been even close to 100 open servers, so we should not get this error.

Can you please check what is the problem?

Title ID is 2ABB

Thank you

Custom Game Servers
10 |1200
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.

1 Answer

·
brendan avatar image
brendan answered

The RegionAtCapacity error is thrown if we're unable to start a new server in the given region in EC2. It's possible that, if you are scaling quickly in a region, that AWS might be capping the number of servers available temporarily. We're about to update with a new server model in Azure that should help with this.

7 comments
10 |1200
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.

robertdemjan avatar image robertdemjan commented ·

Are you 100% sure that this is the case?

I've been monitoring the servers for good 2 hours, and didn't see a single server opening up. All of the servers were running on 90% to max capacity. Got RegionAtCapacity way too many times, and not a single server was opened after that.

In the last 1 day interval, we got more than 4000 times of this error.

Also got this message several times: "Error trying to parse the response for POST JSON for the URL https://2abb.playfabapi.com/Client/LoginWithCustomID.. Response code: 503"
Only got several of this message in prime time, so I guess it's not that much of a problem, but I thought it's worth mentioning

0 Likes 0 ·
brendan avatar image brendan robertdemjan commented ·

Oh, wait - you have your servers set to a min available instances of 1. That's the issue. The min available instances needs to be set to the number of servers you might need for new players over the course of several minutes, at least. The way you have it set right now, it won't start one until you run out of space on the running servers. And since it takes time to get a server from EC2 once requested, then image it with the AMI, then copy your build from S3 and unpack it, you'll have a chunk of time where there are no servers available with space for new players.

The 503 is something that can happen occasionally, depending on load conditions. The thing to do for those is have an exponential back-off and retry.

0 Likes 0 ·
robertdemjan avatar image robertdemjan brendan commented ·

I see. I've set it to 3 for now, but do you have any advice how should I determine this number?

0 Likes 0 ·
Show more comments
robertdemjan avatar image robertdemjan commented ·

Are we talking about the "Min free slots" field what you can set when configuring the build? Because that field doesn't let us set higher value than the max instances per host. It gives this warning:

"We recommend having at least 3 times more MaxGamesPerHost than MinFreeGameSlots."

We currently have 10 instance per host. We through that we would set min slots to 10 ( so we run one more server than it's needed, so new players do not have to wait for new server ), and set this value higher, when we expect peaks. But according to this warning, it would consume our server hours.

What would be the ideal setting in this case?

0 Likes 0 ·
brendan avatar image brendan robertdemjan commented ·

Yes, "min free slots". Thanks for the info on the issue - that appears to be a mistake in the Game Manager checks. The Admin API will let you set the Min Free Slots far higher than the Max Instances Per Host, so you can use that to set it how you need it for now. I'll open a bug on the Game Manager, meanwhile.

But yes, the point is that you need to have enough instances ready to start for the max number of instances you'll need in about a ten minute period. That will always mean that you'll be starting a new server before players need it. That's the only way you'll have instances ready when players need them. And yes, running servers do consume server time. But there's really no way around that. Server host machines cannot start instantly - physics has some limits we cannot get around.

0 Likes 0 ·
robertdemjan avatar image robertdemjan brendan commented ·

Okay, thank you. It actually lets me save the value, just shows a warning.

0 Likes 0 ·

Write an Answer

Hint: Notify or tag a user in this post by typing @username.

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.