Does Smartfoxserver work on Amazon EC2 & S3

[nitgamedev]

Has anyone successful installed smartfoxserver on Cloud Computing offered from Amazon Webservices of EC2 + S3, instead of Terracotta.

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

and

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

How easy or difficult it is to manage it on S3+EC2, as regards to the cost benefit of paying only what is used.

[Lapo]

Has anyone successful installed smartfoxserver on Cloud Computing offered from Amazon Webservices of EC2 + S3, instead of Terracotta.

Why 'instead' ?
Terracotta is not an alternative to that, it can be used on EC2 to 'clusterize' the application.

Anyways we have several customers using Amazon's hosting services and they seem to be happy with that.
This is something we'd like to inspect a little bit more in depth on our side and maybe provide a ready-made virtual machine with preinstalled SFS or so...

I can't say about the management as I have never personally used it. I will try to gather comments from our customers and see what they say.

[willypow]

We are hosting our Smartfox server on Amazon, but are only in very limited release, so I can't speak to performance under load. One problem we have had is with the Smartfox licensing model, which is IP dependent. Each server instance is only aware if it's unique internal IP address, though the public IP remains the same. So if a server is terminated, which sometimes happens on Amazon, and you need to recreate the server, you will require a new license file from Smartfox because of the new IP address, even though the public IP remains the same.

[Bax]

We're restructuring our licensing system to provide more flexibility for dynamic environments such as Amazon EC2 etc...
With the next release we'll be able to provide dynamic-IP licenses and introduce a small License Server which will help admins to easily manage multiple licenses in one place.

[willypow]

Any hints on ETA? It's a make or break factor for deciding whether to stay with Amazon.

[Lapo]

We already have many customers running on EC2 and we can provide temporary licenses for you to use while we finish our development.
In other words there is no problem on your side, simply we'll replace the temp licenses with the License Server as soon as it is available.

Expected release is in a couple of weeks.
Hope it helps

[willypow]

That's great, because EC2 is an excellent product for this type application, where usage may fluctuate greatly. They're introducing built-in load-balancing soon, which was the last big annoyance for us.

[Lapo]

Great to know.
The "dynamic" licenses are not yet available in our shop, so if you need to order one (or more) please drop us an email and we'll tell you how to proceed.

Thank you

[giorgio79]

Hello,

Would you have some guidelines of how to start out with smartfoxserver on amazon? I come from a regular hosting background but want to jumpstart with this new stuff as it seems more suited in case the app is a success.

Such as:
1. Do you use Amazon stuff directly, or through an amazon hosting service company with prebuilt tools?
2. Do you use EC2 and AWS only? How about database storage?
3. How about Red5 on Amazon?
4. Perhaps, can you recommend a step by step dummies guide to get started?

[Lapo]

Maybe you should take a look here:
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/labs/ami/

1. Do you use Amazon stuff directly, or through an amazon hosting service company with prebuilt tools?

Amazon directly

2. Do you use EC2 and AWS only? How about database storage

You can use S3 (the storage service) for the database.

3. How about Red5 on Amazon?

I don't see problems running it, at the end of the day it is just another server application.

4. Perhaps, can you recommend a step by step dummies guide to get started?

Yep, the link above
Plus the Amazon docs in case you'd like to learn more details, it is very well done.
Also a quick update: at the time we published our EC2 demo we used the GUI-less (console based) client tools. Recently they have added a much more convenient web-based interface which simplifies the operations.

[giorgio79]

Thanks Lapo, looks impressive. I also done some calcs and starting with a smaller instance looks pretty cheap as well.

I assume this AMI contains the RedBox as well right?

In case of growth would I still have to do this load balancing terracotta voodoo I have read about around here, or with Amazon, I wont need to, and just adding another AMI and configuring that as a separate gameroom will be sufficient? Giving a splash page showing users which gameroom has space and guiding them there like in Club Pengiun?

I assume the smartfox admin tool lets me know if an AMI is coming to its limits and it is time to fire up another instance for smartofx?

For other newbies reading this thread:
Here is an explanation how to use properly a mysql db (I will need it for the users) . Basically it can be done on a separate EC2 AMI with regular S3 backups
http://askville.amazon.com/SimilarQuest ... zon-S3-EC2

I also found this nice little tool for managing AMIs for newbies to Amazon like me
http://tag1consulting.com/Drupal_and_Am ... uick_Start

[Lapo]

I assume this AMI contains the RedBox as well right?

Yes it does.

In case of growth would I still have to do this load balancing terracotta voodoo I have read about around here, or with Amazon, I wont need to, and just adding another AMI and configuring that as a separate gameroom will be sufficient? Giving a splash page showing users which gameroom has space and guiding them there like in Club Pengiun?

The Terracotta voodoo is always necessary for true clustering, but it's not mandatory if your architecture doesn't require it. CP doesn't use it, for example.

I assume the smartfox admin tool lets me know if an AMI is coming to its limits and it is time to fire up another instance for smartofx?

Yes and no. You will need to integrate basic server monitoring. In other words take a look at memory and CPU resources in addtion to SFS monitoring