I've dropped hints here and there that I'm looking at upgrading my server (or outright replacing it) which should give us a nice platform to run games from. My current server--running our two minor TF2 servers, two L4D2 servers, and Minecraft--is pretty much maxed out on every resource. And it didn't perform well with a lot of players in TF2 to begin with.

Preliminary research has lead me to believe I can get a pretty nice machine for $1800-$2000, and I have the hope of being able to run upwards of 10 CPU-intensive game instances (TF2/L4D2) and 4-6 memory-intensive game instances (Minecraft). Not that I'd actually run that many... but I hope to have that sort of capacity.

Though I'm sure tech will change by the time I get to ~$2000 saved up, I'm tentatively planning on dual quad-core Xeons (8 core total) and 16GB of RAM. And a motherboard to match. Everything else I have now is hopefully usable, though I might need to upgrade from a 1U to 2U. =/

But I digress. Thanks to my refund check I currently have $550 saved for the cause. I hope to be able to put $50 into it per month, but that's coming out of my personal "allowance" which I also need to buy gifts for people for holidays and shit. So it may vary.

I won't turn away donations but let me make this clear: bragr gets first dibs on donations as long as he's providing us with the Tempest. A new server is a nice long-term plan, but the Tempest is a known short-term commitment. Hopefully we won't need to dump the money we are on it once mine gets upgraded. $300 every 6 months for the Tempest still makes me squirm.

If anyone has any server/hardware advise, please share. It's a tough topic to research since you usually end up at sites of companies offering server rentals. Meh.

Probably worth a vote, assuming bragr doesn't just pull the plug due to lack of donations. Last I saw he was pretty far away from getting paid back for the last rental fee.

Here's a rough estimate of costs:

Some case like this: $600 (if I can't use my existing 1U)
Some Supermicro motherboard: $450
Then a couple quad core CPUs: $240 x2 ($480)
And 4 4GB memory sticks $132 x4 ($528)

I have harddrives already that can be used.

Okay so that all comes to like.. $2058. But it's ballpark. Some pieces I can get from Amazon Prime w/o tax or shipping, and others I can get cheaper from the place my employer buys equipment from. And if things get too pricey out the door I can slim it back to one CPU, half the memory, etc., then buy more later on.

Regular expenses aren't a concern. My employer will host it for free so long as I don't do a crazy amount of bandwidth. Just checking with them to make sure it's okay to replace my 1U with a 2U.

The only limitation might be that I only do Linux OS. Most game developers are smart enough to release Linux server software, but not all of them. I guess I can consider going Windows but there will be extra costs with that and I have no idea how to administrate a Windows server. We might not get the same bang for the buck with Windows, either, since it comes with a much higher overhead than Linux.

P.S. Yeah, I know that CPU won't work with that MB. Again, just ballpark.

Yeah, hopefully I can find one for cheaper. I've come to like Supermicro for server chassis and motherboards, but not all of their motherboards fit all of their cases well. The above motherboard/chassis is a combo that works and had good reviews. I'll probably get some more options once I talk to someone in person from that reseller my employer works with.

Ideally they have a modern dual xeon motherboard that fits in the 1U chassis I have now, but I doubt I'm that lucky. The MB I have now is actually a dual xeon but a lot has changed in the 6-7 years it's been since I bought it.

Probably in the $100-$200/month range. Colocation ain't cheap. =/ It might be more for a 2U, since they take twice the space of a 1U.

I might be able to pull off free hosting even if I leave the company. The cabinet is technically called "Friends and Family", so maybe I could pull off being a standing friend of the company. =P The only real limitation is that I can't use the server for any commercial purpose.

DON"T DO IT RIK! Maybe if it was like $500...but not the whole shebang. That would be no good.

So I can donate via the paypal button?

Once we get nice jobs again I'm sure we could contribute to a tf2 site :P

I'll re-research expectations but as I recall from my first round, I left with the impression it should be able to handle upwards of 10 game instances. It's likely the many CPU cores that will matter the most to that. Naturally newer games will require more resources than TF2, so if we run--for example--something like BF:BC2 with destructible terrain, we may get fewer instances overall.

Plus I think BF:BC2 might be Windows only... so that might not be a good example since the server will be some version of *nix--probably Gentoo since I know that best. I've toyed with the idea of paying for Windows server, but I'm very wary of that. I don't know the first thing about running DNS, MySQL, PHP, email, websites, etc. in Windows. So while that might be best for games, it's bad for everything else. And of course it costs more $$$.

So to answer your question more broadly, besides the game instances it will be:
- Running bind/DNS
- Apache for websites (including hosting wdfnews.com eventually)
- E-Mail, assuming I can figure out how to get that working... my previous co-admin helped with that before
- MySQL database

Nothing too fancy, really. The games will by far be the priority and the resource hogs.