How to run a DCS dedicated server on a VPS (A guide)

The main reason being that the VPS is cheaper than running a dedicated.

True, but I've got access to quite a bit of hardware and handle both VMWare and HyperV virtualization-systems pretty much every day through my job, I was wondering which of the two technologies was used.

I haven't tested it out on VMWare due to the issues with not having a proper graphicscard forwarded from the host to the virtual machine (VMWare are notoriously picky about which cards they allow to be forwarded, and I personally don't want to mess with that if I can help it), but if I can get it to work on VMWare's drivers through some LUA-muppeting, I'll want to give it a shot.

I'm trying to bash through a solution for my own hardware.

I've got ESX (vmware) running on a DL380 G6 (dual xeons, no onboard video) that I'm hoping to get DCS playing happy on. I'm fairly certain I'm going to have to stuff a GPU in there and set up passthrough to make it happen.

Teej

Please let me know how it goes, Teej :) I might be coming into a dual-node Dell VRTX-server in january/february, and I plan on using that for a DCS-server.

Well, I've solved MY issue, but it's not going to be an answer for those looking to rent a VPS somewhere, in most cases.

I did in fact drop a lower end video card (radeon 6500) in my ESX server and set it to "pass through" to the VM I'll use as my DCS server. Tested and flown on.

Excellent, then I know what to do with some hardware I have flopping about :D

For what it's worth, I developed this solution because I have the ESX server running anyway for several other purposes. When I wanted to run a server in the past, I've been using my old gaming rig. That thing runs 130-140 watts the majority of the time even if it's not running the game.

The current additional load on my ESX box is only about 16 watts, and I may be able to get that down even lower....plus the heat it does generate isn't in my man cave.

I've done some testing after yesterdays update to 2.5, and I can get the server to run comfortably on ESXi 6.5 on a single-6-core CPU HPe Proliant DL360p WITHOUT having a GPU in it. Not too sure why I can't connect to it yet, but that's probably because of firewall-muppetry.

Testing continues.

Thanks for the guide Neon!

I can inform that I have been running 2.5 MP server stable for over a week now on ESXi 6.5, running Windows server2016, 8 gb vRAM and 6 vCPUs.

Though the beta of 2.5 is very memory hungry so instead of giving it more vRAM i sat a pagefile of 32GB static.

To get down cpu usage I throwed in a GT710 gpu in the server and run as passthrough to the MP server.

I am not sure what did it, but before I changed the pagefile size to 32 the server would chrash randomly, sometimes after an hour or so, after a couple of days, or dependent on what was going on on the server.

*Update... and it still crashes.. Shortly after it has started, after a couple of days, hours etc..

Guz

Does this work for 2.5?

If the server is powerful enough it should work just fine.

Does this work for 2.5?

Yes but it uses a lot of memory and all 100% CPU.

Yes but it uses a lot of memory and all 100% CPU.

Yeah without a GPU DCS is a CPU monster.

Thanks guys appreciate the information.

Would these specs be Sufficient?

eight HT CPU cores (Intel Sandy Bridge or better)

8192 MB of RAM

800 GB of RAID-protected storage

48000 GB of bandwidth transfer

How many you want to be able to connect? with a few people 5< you will

be hitting 5G of RAM used, once you start having more players

more RAM will be used

As of March 18th, 2018, I can say that these tweaks work for both the 1.5 retail and the 2.5 beta (with the latest patch). It lowered the CPU usage to about 1/2 of what it was before. The GPU usage did decrease by 1/2 with 1.5, but wasn't as successful with 2.5. With 2.5, the GPU load was lowered to about 60% instead of maxing them out. What is strange is that in the machine with dual video cards, it had both of them about 55%.

DCS 1.5 had CPU 30% and GPU 35% = Q9550 @3.4/8GB DDR2-800/GTX580 1.5GB/Samsung SM841 256GB SSD + WesternDigital WD5000AAKS (24GB Pagefile)

DCS 2.5 Caucasus had CPU 30% and GPU 60% = Q9550 @3.4/8GB DDR2-800/GTX950 2GB/Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD + WesternDigital WD5000AAKS (24GB Pagefile)

DCS 2.5 Nevada had CPU 20% and both GPU1 and GPU2 55% = FX-8150 @4.2/12GB DDR3-1600/2xGTX580 SLI/RAID0 OS (2xIntel 520 120GB SSDs) + Segate ST500LM021 (24GB Pagefile)

Mind you that the most people I have had on these at once was about 8 as they are used for other purposes during the day and only act as servers at night. But the lower CPU and GPU usage has made it much easier to keep the rooms they are in cooler compared to before. These are all on a single Suddenlink 1Gbs / 50Mbs connection.

Hey there,

you have azure account and run DCS I"m thinking down that path but have no clue of Azure could you point me to some docs or help to get a DCS server running on Azure??

Anyone have this running on ESXi 6.5 w/DCS 2.5?

I tried a Win7 VM, but get an error about graphics card not supporting directx11..

Anyone have this running on ESXi 6.5 w/DCS 2.5?

 

 

I tried a Win7 VM, but get an error about graphics card not supporting directx11..

The ESXi 6.5 software emulated GPU if i'm not wrong it's only DirectX 9 capable.

You can try to enable the Hardware accelerated GPU enabling the "direct access" of the physical GPU by the virtual machine. Seem works also with integrated GPU on CPU ( most server config ) but I'm not sure.....Unfortunately I don't have a spare server/machine where test vSphere.

Try follow this steps => https://elatov.github.io/2018/04/esxi-65-passthrough-video-card-to-plex-vm/

Let us know, could be a nice info for everyone and ED as well.

Figured I'd add a few notes to this for any one who maybe trying to get things running on a Windows 2016 box that 'has' the right equipment.......

1. make certain that the 2016 install is the one with the Desktop Experience items.. else your going to have to make certain to get the Virtual Machine items installed and working from the start.

2. By default the Desktop experience items do NOT include Direct Play and a few other items like this.. you may find you have to install them to get DCS to work.

3. Make certain you don't moronically name your Autoexec.cfg as Autoexec.cfg.txt and then wonder why things aren't working properly ;)

4. Server 2016 is very aggressive on port protection so you'll have to cross check all that as well.

5. Make certain windows is up to date...

My suggestion if you can run 2012 or 2008 server but a lot of data centres aren't giving licenses for these guys any more :/ at least over here in Oz.

I have a DCS World instance working on ESXi on a Windows 10 Host with SSD datastore. I picked up a cheap old Quadro K2000 card for GPU passthrough. One thing I had to do to get it working was to remove the Vmware video driver in Device settings so that it used the installed Quadro driver as preference.

Bear in mind that a normal GPU won't work in ESXi for GPU passthrough.

At the moment I've been using it on the LAN only. No noticeable drop in performance as yet.

Hoping to host something publicly to push the host and see how it performs under higher player and load conditions at some stage when I get free time and more experience on MP missions building.

robgraham,

Hit me up a PM if you wanna try it out online as I'm in Perth, Oz.

I did all the above (main post) and still some players can connect and others can't. Some are able to see the server's name, others can only connect via IP and yet most players can't do either.

Anyone having this problem?

EDIT:

Problem solved.

Sorry for necroposting but now as we do have DCS server withought graphics available what are the pros ad con`s of VPS over dedicated server host?

This method of server config is ancient mate. you dont need a graphics card to run a dedicated server. If you have no hardware contention you wont see any performance degradation between a dedicated server and a VM.

I run my servers with ESXi 6.7, Dual vCPU and 10GB RAM and 200GB of HDD space. That is with about 600 units on the mission with no lag or server issues.

This method of server config is ancient mate. you dont need a graphics card to run a dedicated server. If you have no hardware contention you wont see any performance degradation between a dedicated server and a VM.

 

I run my servers with ESXi 6.7, Dual vCPU and 10GB RAM and 200GB of HDD space. That is with about 600 units on the mission with no lag or server issues.

Is there a hostting you could advice for a small server . I want to make server for the first time anddon`t know much about it.

Smallest possible configuration. I tried to find info mhow to run server on a VPS host butfound old guides that where done for old DCS when it didn`t have dedicated server.

I want test things out first and learn how to manage such server.

Could you point me to relevant info on the topic and maybe share sime tips.

Thanks!