TripleA Server Costs

[ubernaut]

@LaFayette dave ramsey approves of this message.

[LaFayette]

Okay, following some server work today, our new grand total for servers per month is: $54

Lobby server costs were reduced by $19 and a new server added for $5, net down of $14/month.

Our current monthly server cost tally is:

• $25 - 5 bots
• $14 - forums
• $5 - dice server
• $5 - lobby (was $24)
• $5 - support server (AKA maps-server, a new server)

Turns out co-hosting MARTI is likely to not be a good idea. The biggest cost savings we could get right now are perhaps to turn off forum backups for $2/month, or maybe remove one of the bots, which are $5/month/bot. Both of which seem like bad moves.

In the future, the "node relay" feature could remove the need for 3 bots or so. Until then we'll be sitting at that $54/month price tag.

Just about the only other cost TripleA has is the domain address for 'triplea-game.org'. That hits it 10 years pretty soon and would need renewal. I'll cover that cost when the time comes, I think it's around $70 or something,

cc: @prastle

[ubernaut]

@LaFayette 70 for 10 years is pretty decent

[LaFayette]

@ubernaut namecheap FTW.. except was a bit off. $170 for 9 years

[ubernaut]

@LaFayette ouch thats actually abt fair these days. kinda sad google sold off their domains business it was very convent and a great deal

[Cernel]

@LaFayette said:

The biggest cost savings we could get right now are perhaps to [...] remove one of the bots, which are $5/month/bot. Both of which seem like bad moves.

Is it? Maybe I'm overlooking or missing from the lobby when it's really busy, but I'm under the impression that it would be very much safe to remove 1 bot (going down from 15 to 12 automated hosts). Since I've been back, I've never seen the bots anywhere near being all taken.

[beelee]

@Cernel

I would suggest waiting a month or two before removing one. There may be some people still transitioning to the new lobby and/or it might start gaining popularity.

Better to have a couple empty than not enough imo

[LaFayette]

Good points, we need to also keep in mind that the bots need to be available for peak lobby activity.

[Cernel]

@LaFayette And I guess also the possibility of them breaking down. About that, if currently there are 5 servers of 3 bots each (for a total of 15), it seems like that only 10 out of 15 bots are currently working. This appears to be the situation:
California: 1 out of 3 working.
Jersey: 2 out of 3 working.
Toronto: 2 out of 3 working.
London: all working.
Frankfurt: 2 out of 3 working.

(Also, I understand that, thanks to @eyeswideshut, there are now 2 additional private-but-open bots dedicated to its Revised ladder.)

[zlefin]

Monday, 7:20 pm UTC, bot shortage again. It doesn't seem like enough bots atm, it seems common for there to be shortages at peak times.

[Cernel]

All 15 TripleA automated hosts are now working (so that's a total of 17 with @eyeswideshut's ones). Did anyone do anything or was it just something automated? Just curious.

[EyesWideShut]

@Cernel Thanks for flagging this. For the Revised Ladder bots, I set them up to run inside persistent tmux sessions on the AWS server, so they remain active even after I disconnect from SSH or close my computer. I also created separate run scripts for the bots and a startup script that launches them together, which makes them easier to restart and keep online. So far, that setup seems to be working and the Revised Ladder bots are still running, although I’m continuing to monitor them in case one freezes or disconnects. I am paying about $10 a month for both headless servers which I understand is consistent with what triplea in general is paying for the bots.

[Cernel]

@EyesWideShut said:

I am paying about $10 a month for both headless servers which I understand is consistent with what triplea in general is paying for the bots.

I guess this means that you are paying $5 per bot? What I understand @lafayette said is that TripleA is paying $5 per server of 3 bots, which would be $1.66 per bot.

[EyesWideShut]

@Cernel ah my bad. so I'm paying more. My Bots are cloud-based for better or for worse. They seem to be working fine but I haven't had crashes that I'm aware of.

[EyesWideShut]

@Cernel When the Revised Ladder bots were crashing frequently, I moved them onto Amazon Web Services and reworked how they were launched and maintained.

AWS is a cloud hosted Linux server, so the bots run remotely rather than depending on my own computer, home internet connection, or an open SSH window. I connect to the server through SSH, but the bots themselves run inside persistent tmux sessions.

tmux is useful here because it separates the bot process from the temporary SSH connection. I can disconnect from the server, close my laptop, or lose my local connection without terminating the bot. Each bot has its own named session, which also makes it easier to inspect or restart one without affecting the other.

The main upkeep commands are:

tmux ls

This shows whether the bot sessions are still present.

tmux attach -t revised_ladder
tmux attach -t revised_ladder2

These reconnect me to the live console output for either bot so I can inspect errors, freezes, or lobby disconnects.

To leave a session while keeping the bot running:

Ctrl+B, then D

If the bot is frozen rather than fully gone, I can attach to the session, stop the process with Ctrl+C, and relaunch it using the relevant startup script.

I also set up the launch process so that if a bot process actually disappears or exits, it is automatically started again. In other words, the server does not simply leave the bot offline after a crash. The surrounding startup or monitoring process detects that the bot is no longer running and relaunches it. That does not necessarily fix every possible freeze, since a frozen process may still technically exist, but it does handle ordinary crashes and unexpected exits without requiring me to log in immediately.

So the overall setup has three layers:

AWS provides the continuously available cloud server.
tmux keeps the bot sessions alive independently of SSH.
The restart logic relaunches a bot when its process exits or disappears.

This is what I implemented when the bots were crashing a lot. Since then, the AWS and tmux setup has generally been stable, and the automatic restart behavior has reduced the amount of manual intervention needed.