UO Server hosting

ppardalj

ppardalj

Hey guys,

I'm thinking about the possibility of creating dedicated hosting for Ultima Online servers (mainly [Run|Serv]UO). Back when I was a shard admin I struggled a lot with the systems part of setting up all the infrastructure and operations, and I bet that most of the people out there nowadays are still using ad hoc solutions and wasting time reinventing the wheel.

But first of all I would like to double check my assumptions and get some feedback from the community to see if there is an actual demand for this. Would any shard owner (or potential shard owner, or even player) be looking forward to use such a service? My idea is to focus in added value, i.e. not only providing basic dedicated hosting, but also provide things like:
- Private git repo for your server.
- Automated operations such as maintenance restarts, backups, etc.
- Server management using API/Web tools
- Dedicated cloud storage for backups
- Whatever else you may think of that you're currently struggling with

What do you think? Would you be willing to use it? Is there any other thing that is missing but you would like to see in such a service?
 
I think an ideal service would be something to Digital Ocean, but for shard hosting. Each image could hold a shard with selected options, so anyone could spin up at least a basic server with some customs and with no coding knowledge.

If that's something you have in mind, I'd totally use it.
 
Tresdni said:
I think an ideal service would be something to Digital Ocean, but for shard hosting. Each image could hold a shard with selected options, so anyone could spin up at least a basic server with some customs and with no coding knowledge.

If that's something you have in mind, I'd totally use it.
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That was exactly what I had in mind. Although I'm not sure what would have more demand, whether long lived instances to host a production shard or small, short lived to play with friends. What do you think?
 
Given there is not much acceptance of the idea I will probably not continue it. In any case, if someone is interested in hosting an Ultima Online shard, just talk to me and I can offer freelancer services to set up the hosting and all the infrastructure for you.
 
There was a guy that did this a few years ago on RunUO. He had a few people but I think a lot of folks were worried about that didn't want to share custom code were worried about it being taken. Pretty nice of you though. I know he did have several people with him to include a friend of mine.
 
Over the weekend, I wrote a vagrant box that boots with ubuntu 16.04. At first vagrant up, it provisions and automatically clones a fresh copy of ServUO, and compiles it. It also auto installs all needed dependencies. It syncs the ServUO folder too, so you can dev locally while it's running.

So basically, it's "vagrant up" and you have a fresh running copy of serv uo to dev on a VM.
 
I'll finish up a few tweaks, and may release it. I'm not sure how many people here develop in VM's, but I've been nerding out on them lately.
 
I have been using VMWare a lot lately. Got bored and decided to study writing boot sector code and a basic OS to use on Raspberry Pi. Fun.
 
If you'd like to test it out before I do a full release (I've ran it like 40 times with no problems yet), that'd be awesome.

Requires VirtualBox and Vagrant installed, but then just clone the Vagrant setup I've made

https://github.com/Kalan-Brock/Vagrant-ServUO

cd into the directory you cloned it to (it contains a file called Vagrantfile), and then run "vagrant up".

It'll automate the rest and give you your last two instructions. After that you can connect to the shard using the ip 192.168.33.10 port 2593.
 
Yeah man. I'll definitley test it. I'm finishing up custom stuff for a new shard again and will be running on Linux so I'll try it out as soon as I'm ready, and tyvm :D
[doublepost=1496081873][/doublepost]Didn't you make the PvM leaders script awhile back? That was an awesome one.
 
TheDoc said:
Yeah man. I'll definitley test it. I'm finishing up custom stuff for a new shard again and will be running on Linux so I'll try it out as soon as I'm ready, and tyvm :D
[doublepost=1496081873][/doublepost]Didn't you make the PvM leaders script awhile back? That was an awesome one.
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I did, thank you :) I based it on XML PvP Points system, but also added weekly statues of the player leaders to stand in the main town for both systems.
 
Yeah, the statues were my favorite part. I'm getting close to ready and am excited about trying out the box.
 
I'm interested in finding a host for my shard. I tried with Digital Ocean but I am completely in the dark when it comes to linux. Unless someone has a full on guide no how to set up the server on linux I want to simply just use a windows server. I'm not looking for a huge server just something small to start out with.
 
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