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Warhawk PS3 dedicated server cluster - Awesome display

Wollan

Member
Originally posted by captive in the Warhawk bundle thread. They're using actual PS3's. Crazy.

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PS Blog - Dylan Jobe (Game Director) said:
As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to give you guys a bit of a “peek-behind-the-curtain,” to show you our sweet Warhawk server setup.

Those of you familiar with Warhawk already know that the game features a very unique server method that we call “Integrated Game Server” or IGS for short — the industry needs more acronyms don’t you think :-)

The Warhawk IGS method means that instead of us forcing players to be connected to the SONY “mothership” for any and all games, we instead let players host their own servers on their own PS3s. This is fairly unique and it enables a couple of really nice benefits.

First, since Warhawk is a global online game, our IGS method scatters game servers quite literally into player’s homes all over the planet — the US, China, Europe, Australia, and Japan! No matter where you live, what time you want to play, or what language you speak, you’ll always be able to get your game on.

Secondly, this helps with latency. If you haven’t heard, Warhawk is a fast game, a very fast game, so we wanted to ensure you had the best chance of finding servers with good ping times. We also wanted to make sure people could host *and* play on their own servers. After all, why should you have to connect to a server a gazillion hops away when you know that there are Warhawk servers running in your state or city? Possibly on your same ISP? Maybe even friends in your neighborhood or buddies in your dorm?

Hence our desire to develop an IGS system for Warhawk.

All that said, we still want to make sure that there are always an abundance of wicked-fast Ranked Dedicated servers available for players. The images that accompany this post were taken by our very talented IT team here at SCEA. And yes, what you’re looking at is an enormous server cluster for Warhawk…of rack-mounted PS3s!

During the public beta, many of you wanted *way more* Ranked-Dedicated servers to play on so you could level-up and earn awards, rank upgrades, etc….

Well…ask and ye shall receive!

In addition to players being able to host their own servers, 32-player “dedicated” servers for your clan practices or 24-player “player” servers, SONY has made a great commitment to all of our Warhawk players by staging Warhawk Server clusters similar to this one all over the world.

The system that our IT team engineered for Warhawk is truly killer and we couldn’t be happier with the setup — and hopefully players will be stoked too once the game launches. Just for the record…I am fairly confident that our IT team is not comprised of Autobots.

For those of you who participated in the beta, you may remember toward the end that some players started to “spoof” the official SONY server names — shame on you. I will find you all online and shank you repeatedly or snipe you in the crotch!

So…in the beta forums you all asked for a way to identify official SONY servers from player servers…Again, your wish is granted.

When Warhawk launches, all official servers are displayed with an eye-pleasing blue color in the server list. This gives players a really quick way of picking which server they want to connect to.

Alright, this post is getting pretty damn long so I gotta wrap it up.

The last thing I want to mention, and those of you who participated in the beta already know this, is that we don’t force game match-making on to our players with Warhawk. When you log-in to Warhawk, you get a server list…a *global* server list (with customizable filters of course), just like many of us have come to love from years of PC gaming. *You*, the player, get to choose the server you want to play on. If you don’t see a server out there that has exactly what you want…then launch your own.

And yes, you can play on your own server too…even in 4-way split screen.

Well…hope this gives you a bit more info on Warhawk’s server system and setup. If you have any questions please post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.

Rock on!

http://blog.us.playstation.com/
 
"You get what you paid for lol lol."

Seriously this is awesome for online gaming. Keep it up Sony.
 
that looks pretty sexy. 399 for one plz.

BamYouHaveAids said:
If Sony does well in this months NPD we now know the reason.

the game doesn't come out 'till the last days of august, i believe.
 
That's pretty awesome.

I'd love to see the network admins having to run and maintain a cluster of Xbox 360 :D
 
That looks so freakin cool :D

I don't know about the cost side, but remember that Sony/IBM/Toshiba are also trying to prove that the CELL makes an excellent server CPU.

I wonder just how much folding work those things could do...
 
cgcg said:
"You get what you paid for lol lol."

Seriously this is awesome for online gaming. Keep it up Sony.
Please dont start shit, we already have enough system warz bullshit as it is, as Dennogizer and Kittowny have pointed out the vitriol is tiring and old.
 
captive said:
Please dont start shit, we already have enough system warz bullshit as it is, as Dennogizer and Kittowny have pointed out the vitriol is tiring and old.
QTF.


Thanks Wollan and Captive those photos are crazy!
 
Haha, that looks crazy.

Armitage said:
Using PS3s? That's weird. Seems like it would be cheaper to use custom built machines.
It's a good question. PS3 does have a lot of components that are completely unnecessary for this purpose. But maybe Sony uses only those PS3 that have failed the BR drive check for example, and couldn't be sold to retail.
 
Marconelly said:
Haha, that looks crazy.

It's a good question. PS3 does have a lot of components that are completely unnecessary for this purpose. But maybe Sony uses only those PS3 that have failed the BR drive check for example, and couldn't be sold to retail.

Well, they probably get them at cost. ;)

Not to mention it's a brilliant bit of marketing.
 
Interesting that they're going with what appear to be off the shelf PS3 units. Would've expected them to take out the blu-ray drive and put the contents in something that is a bit more friendly when it comes to a standard 19inch rack.

I suppose they're using the front USB ports to connect to a KVM/Terminal Server of some type.
 
I thought Dylan said in the beta the PS3 dedicated servers run Linux, not sure though now, its been a while since the beta forums closed.
 
wow, that's pretty awesome :lol


What's the point tho.

I mean, are there any obvious advantages over using PC's ? oO
 
Dylan Jobe needs to stop linking to inane crap. I shuddered when a blue man staring me in the eye filled my screen.


...That said, I think it's pretty interesting they're using actual PS3s for this instead of regular servers. But I'm all for it. :)
 
Raist said:
I mean, are there any obvious advantages over using PC's ? oO

There are people on this forum who have pretty much been using Folding@Home (CPU burn application) 24/7 since March. If that isn't proof of durability I don't know. :p
 
Raist said:
wow, that's pretty awesome :lol


What's the point tho.

I mean, are there any obvious advantages over using PC's ? oO

Admins can jump in anytime and own you...

Plus it seems that PS3's would be cheaper than a PC server. So if they are stable why not?

Plus dedicated servers are built into the games options...so...its way simple too probably.
 
Trying to imagine a 'Halo 3 server cluster room'...
Some kind of red light district.. *grin*

Would have been a cool gif atleast...
 
KongRudi said:
Trying to imagine a 'Halo 3 server cluster room'...
Some kind of red light district.. *grin*

Would have been a cool gif atleast...

Good joke.....no seriously though its original. And not completely irritating in anyway whatsoever.
 
JB1981 said:
I wonder how the final netcode is. The beta wasn't nearly as smooth as Resistance.
As long as you were on the dedicated servers it was lagfree (I was playing from Australia even). I had lag on certain user hosted servers though.
 
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