question

Derek Fluker avatar image
Derek Fluker asked

New account shows server hours exceed before I ever run any servers

I have been trying to get my first attempt to launch a PlayFab server working. I had trouble uploading the build package many times. Not sure why if finally worked. Then learned that Build ID must be GUID’s only when API calls failed (should be prevented in “Legacy Multiplayer -> Builds -> New Build” dialog). So now I finally have an Active build and wanted to start it.

RequestMultiplayerServer is failing with “"MultiplayerServerNotFound - TitleNotFound - title with titleId ffffffff-ffff-ffff-8ca2-090000000000 is not found!"

My TitleID is “9A28C” which seems to be encoded in the GUID. But why does it not find it?
When I go to the “Legacy Multiplayer -> Servers” tab, it says I’ve used “22 or 20 running server hours”. This is a brand new account and title. I have not even got a server to load yet as this was what I was making the call to attempt.

I am simply trying to get a simple relay server working first. What am I doing wrong?

Is the free account limited to running this light weight server to 20 hours? After that, what will be the cost as this is a free game to try and get donations to a charity? Is my only option to pay $99/month just to allow people to try if for more than 20 hours even if I am not making any money on it yet?

Thanks for your help and guidance,

Account ManagementCustom Game Servers
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jital avatar image
jital answered

Greetings,

The reason why you receive that error when using RequestMultiplayerServer is because this API call is not supported by Legacy Multiplayer services.

The cost of Multiplayer servers are calculated by adding a 10% PlayFab server management fee to the public Amazon EC2 on-demand prices for instances in the regions in which game servers are running.

We will look into why the Game Manager states that you have used your free server hours.

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Derek Fluker avatar image Derek Fluker commented ·

@jital Thank you for your answer. Pay for what I use is a great cost model. Thank you for supporting it.

Could you please give me more specifics so we can understand the costs exactly. If I use EC2 for region Asia Pacific, and want to fully understand our costs, where in PlayFab do I specify the image type (I need "Windows" wtihout SQL) and the performance configuration (t3.nano, t2.large, or m5.metal, etc...)? Or is a specific one chosen for me (which one)? In the Legacy Server -> Servers tab it refers to t2.medium. But I think this may initially be overkill for us and would like to lower it.


What is the equivalent call to RequestMultiplayerServer on the Legacy Multiplay service? Can you supply a link to the documentation? Are only the calls under the documentation's "Classic" section for the "Legacy" server? This is unclear!

Let us know why we have used our free server hours given that we haven't been able to start a server? Please reset it so that we can successfully try PlayFab.

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brendan avatar image brendan Derek Fluker commented ·

First, it's important to understand that the way server hosting works, as soon as you activate a build in a region, you are turning on servers. It doesn't matter if you don't connect players to them - to be able to connect a player to a server immediately when they make a call to matchmaking requires that servers are already running, and having servers running is what accumulates costs on our side. And while we do provide some free hours for server usage for testing, we can't provide a large amount.

For the server type, yes, the legacy service defaults to t2.medium, and only hosts Windows servers (this post is still accurate concerning those costs: https://community.playfab.com/questions/13720/no-pricing-for-auto-scaling-dedicated-servers.html). You can request a change to a different model here, in the forums, or in a ticket if you're in the Professional or Enterprise tiers, via the Help tab.

I would recommend reading through the tutorials on managing servers in our legacy server hosting (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/). These also include details on connecting players to servers.

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Derek Fluker avatar image
Derek Fluker answered

So just to be clear according to your first linked article, total cost would be $8/month for up to 1000 monthly active users PLUS t2.medium Windows hourly charges from my region * 1.10?

What is still not clear is what action on our part "activate's a build"? Does "Saving" a build causes the build image to Upload also "Activate" it? When this was done successfully, the "Status" of the build shown on the "Builds" page reads "Available", not "Active". The site and documentation are not clear on this at all.

If Uploading a build 'activates' it, then the only way to not get charged is to "Delete" the build? If so, this is a very clunky model. Perhaps you need to charge for the build storage even if it is not running. It should be stated on the site and documentation that hitting "Save" of a "New Build" kicks in billing.

If I have this wrong, then what was the cause of my server hours immediately being used up. I uploaded a build to see how it is done (if failed many times). Then the next day I tried to get api's to work against the build. I didn't know (couldn't have) that the clock was being chewed up. My Dashboard gives no indication of this either. The Dashboard shows only the few incorrect RequestMultiplayerServer api calls I made thinking this is what loaded a server and started the clock.

The final link you refer (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/ is documentation that refers to "Preview Mode" and "Azure". It makes no reference to EC2 or the screens under Legacy Server. As such, it doesn't seem to really be about legacy server hosting. There is no where a reference to "Status: Available". So I still don't know the Legacy version of RequestMultiplayerServer. Can you please point me to this documentation?

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brendan avatar image brendan commented ·

No, that would be incorrect.

Our core service is completely free in the Essentials tier. It is free until you hit 1,000 MAU in our Indie and Pro tiers, which have higher limits. After that, it's $0.008 per MAU to start, but pricing drops at higher MAU levels (500K+).

Server hosting is charged at our cost, which is the actual EC2 price plus 10%. It is not possible for dedicated server hosting to be included in our core pricing, as it is potentially unbounded.

Activating a Region is the only way to consume hours in server hosting. Activating a Region turns on servers. Uploading a build does not activate a Region, so it does not consume any hours on its own.

For the tutorial, I do see that - my apologies, I thought our legacy service still had docs there. You can find a write-up here for the legacy server hosting:

https://api.playfab.com/docs/tutorials/landing-tournaments/custom-game-servers

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Derek Fluker avatar image Derek Fluker commented ·

So if I understand correctly, clicking the Regions checkbox for Japan and pressing Save Build then "started servers" ?

And the only way to know that I have servers running that I will be build for is the the Regions list here has something in it as opposed to saying "None"?

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brendan avatar image brendan Derek Fluker commented ·

Yes, that would be how you activate a region. As soon as you do so, you're telling us to turn on servers. Those servers then also show up on the Servers tab.

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Derek Fluker avatar image Derek Fluker commented ·

This user interface is non-obvious and horrible. "active" and "available" are not the same thing. It is "available" and "None" regions means "not-active". It would be trivial to let the user know explicitly that they are running servers. I have never seen anything show up in my Servers tab. I understand this is legacy and will likely not be fixed.
I also guess you will not be resetting my server time since I have asked many times and I still can not try out your services after spending days on this.

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brendan avatar image brendan Derek Fluker commented ·

Sorry to hear you're finding this confusing. The Build tab (the one above) summarizes the status of the build, showing whether the build has been processed (the Status), and what Regions in which it has been activated. The Servers tab shows all servers currently running your builds, how many instances are running on them, and how many hours you have consumed. Here's an example from another title using the feature:

For your other question, there is no simple way to "reset" the free hours we provide, but if you're specifically looking to test for free you could switch to a different Title ID, since the titles do not share those hours.

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