Multi-server scaling

[_Si_]

Hiya,
I just wondered if anyone has any experience scaling SFS2X over multiple servers? Our Malaysian sister company is interested in rolling out our multiplayer games, and they have a user base of 10 million, so our single box solution isn't going to work for them.

Is it possible to deploy to multiple boxes and load balance across them? I saw there are now cloud solutions, so I'm guessing this sort of thing is feasible?

Cheers,
Si

[Lapo]

Hi,
sure we have many customers running multi-server deployments, and some of them are very large.

The strategies to load balance game servers can be quite different from the standard solutions found in web dev. Game servers run "sticky sessions", meaning that a client connects to one server instance and stays connected there for the entire gaming session. As opposed to websites where a load balancer can choose which server will handle each and every request of a client. (not always the case, but it's quite a popular approach)

I'd recommend reading a few of the white papers we have here:
http://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/Overview/white-papers

In particular #2 (Server architecture) and #5 (Hazelcast integration) should give you a good overview of different strategies.

If there's any questions let us know.
Cheers