[RaWClan]

So its been 23 (almost 24) months since I first contacted Killercreation with my enquirys about dedicated servers for a new multigaming community I was creating. My first contact back came just a few hours later from Justin who went into great detail to answer all my questions, concerns and queries... I was impressed! So impressed by the level of customer service and description of thier services that I stopped my hunt for a dedi box provider and ordered our first dedi server with KC a few days later. As a newbie to the world of running gameservers from a box with remote desktop access and no CP its fair to say I was a little out of my depth and the hours that the guys here put in were many to resolve all my stupid questions and help me get my box up and running to the level I wanted.

Anyway Jump on allmost 2 years, severall dedicated server upgrades and changes and we come up to last month. We were renting a Dell R300 which we have had for a long time now and I feel like its a part of me becasue of the amount of hours I have spent logged onto the thing installing servers, setting up admin bots and god knows what else but allways learning. Anyway we were starting to run out of space as our machine was only fitted with 4GB of ram as standard and all our servers were spending thier time full up and with the latest boom in both Minecraft (which I heard was a resource hog) and Steam making TF2 free to get and play I had requests from my commuities members coming in thick and fast for some new server instances (Minecraft and TF2 + a modded CoD4 Server). I checked the peak time resource useage on our box and our ram was running at around 90% while our CPU was only maxing at 30%.
I wanted to please my community since it is mainly them that donate each month to cover our costs so I contacted Justin once again about the options we had available and also some queries about setting up minecraft servers (as I have never touched Java or Minecraft).
Within a couple of hours as usual I get a message back telling me the avg requirments for minecraft for the instance then per person and also saying that Justin was looking at options and prices for me and he would contact me shortly.
I natrally though that we would have to upgrade to a new server or possibly downgrade to an R200 with 8GB whch they had available but I was not overly keen on as our R300 has a great CPU and a much bigger Cache and Faster Clocks, also I have had this R300 for well over a year and like I say it has become a little part of me so I was not liking the idea of loosing it.
Anyway as promised Justin got back to me extreamly quickly and offered a solution that I did not expect and certanlly one that NO other GSP would provide for a customer... Justin said the easiest thing to do would be to order me another 4GB of Server RAM from (I guess) Dell and fit it into our box to take the total to 8GB leaving us with our great dedi and its fantastic CPU but the obvious downside (i thought at the time) was that we would have to upgrade our OS from Win2003 32Bit to a 64bit OS to accomadate and recognise the extra RAM. The price for all this??? Just the cost of the RAM itself and thats it! Free fitting, free install of new os and even some help to split the extra cost down into our bill.
You find me another GSP that offers a service like that... You wont as they dont exist!
Anyway of course I went ahead with the RAM upgrade and it arrived from Dell a few days later and was fitted nice and early the very next day!!! Amazing Job and Amazing Service!!!

So the second part of this upgrade... As I said above we needed to change our OS to 64 bit which I knew could be a problem as it would mean a reformated drive and hours and hours of re-installing servers but NO. They gave us special permission to use our map/mod redirect space to hold over 40GB of server data and obviously being on the same network this ment that we could littrally copy all the server instances accross to the redirect server at high speed leave them there while the OS was updated and then fly them back again and put them back in place and a few cases of re-installing but we still had ALL our configs and mods and maps so it made the job very easy and once the new OS was installed I was up and running with ALL our previous servers in about an hour.

OS wise it was a difficult choice. My first choice was to go for the Win 2003 64bit Server Ed as I knew 2003 well by now and knew it was a nice OS to run from so this is what I asked for.
Unfortunatly (or VERY fortunly as it turns out in a min..) they did not have an image of the 64bit OS ready for a Dell R300 with 8GB as it is not a server that they stock as standard. So Justin once again stepped up and took resposibilty and appologised for the issue and delay in the upgrade (even though it was not his fault or anyone elses fault) and offered to make a new 2003 64bit image after finishing for the day very late at night OR we could try the latest Server OS Windows 2008 R2...
I went online that night and read up on 2008 R2 and found the same over and over again... "The BEST Windows Server OS ever!" "Fantastic" "User Friendly and packed with features" and so on and on. So I took the gamble and decided to go for Windows 2008 R2 as our New OS. Again Justin had to make an image up for it as our box was now custom and not a stocked version but justin was perfectly honest and said he wouldnt give me a time/day when he MAY be able to do it as he didnt want to let me down so instead he actully made space for the work setup for a few days later and gave me the time he would do it.
As promised the OS was installed and patched on the day/time stated and in 1/4 of the time he had quoted me.
Later that day Kash contacted me as promised and set me up my first Minecraft Server and wrote me clear instructions on how to change things, add mods and upgrade verions etc, it worked perfectly and again was done in no time at all with no disturbances to the rest of the server.

With the new RAM, OS and attached to Killercreation's insanely fast low latency network we were seriously in business again. With the extra ram and newer OS (See Below for details) the box could handle the existing servers and tools and the extra ones I had thrown on too asweek as minecraft.
Being on the KC network is the best part of the whole KC package. It is by far the best game server hosting available and so damn fast and lag free. We get players on a daily basis asking how we keep our servers lag free and low ping and we simply point them over here! With all its peering solutions and contracts with major ISP's its lightining fast. I live 150 miles from our server and get a steady ping of around 27-32, compared to another server owned by another GSP located in the same area I get a ping of 39-55 fluctuating wildly and suffering from all kinds of lag/latency issues that make a game much harder to play! You just cant beat this network!

So once again GREAT service from KC that you would NEVER EVER find with any GSP's anywhere else. The guys here are just amazing and I cant thank them enough! I owe Justin, Godsbane and Kash ALOT of drinks for all the help they have given me over the past 2 years!
I have said to Justin a few times now that they should hold an open day for Customers to come upto London (or wherever) and meat the team and give us server owners and community leaders a chance to meet these superheroes of the GSP world in person and a chance for us to buy them all a few drinks and also meet other cln/community leaders. I dont know the size of thier office up thier but since most of the Hardware is elswhere around london and the SE im guessing its quite a small office and not suitable for such an event. It would be very very cool though to come up and shake all your hands and buy you all a few drinks for all the fantastic work you do for us and every one else here!!!

WINDOWS 2008 SERVER EDITION R2
Just briefly I want to also share with you guys my thoughts and experiances on moving away from Win 2003 Server which I was very used to and knew my way around very well and upgrading to the R2 Release of Win 2008 Server.

My first thoughts were WOW!!! This was due to the lack of having to use VNC to connect to 2008 as it has a far superier RDP (Remote Desktop Protocall) then 2003 has so there is no need to use a 3rd party app for a secure link. Also Vista and Win 7 both have the RDP feature built in as standard and you can connect to a 2008 box in seconds with it.
I dont know weather it is the lack of using VNC or just the fact that 2008 is so much better but the connection speed between Server and Workstation is incredable! VNC on 2003 used to be horrible to connect to as there was allways a 500ms delay in all things and often keystrokes were missed or in the wrong order if you type quickly. Also trying to veiw things like PB ScreenShots on 2003 was a nightmare as they took ages to load each one and then the quality of the image was poor due to the limits of VNC.

My second thoughts about 2008 R2 is "My god this OS is fast!!!" It boots quickly, it reacts quickly and it opens files and starts apps possibly 5 times faster then 2003! The smoothness of connection using RDP from Vista to 2008 is unbeilivable! in full screen you would never know you were connected to a server 150miles away through god knows howmany miles of cable and fiber and bits of hardware. It is seemless. Opening images is instant and opening large text docs like log files is also nearly instant, where on 2003 the same files and docs would take 10-20 secs to open.
Every move you make is instant and you really cant tell its a remote connection.
2008 R2 also appears to have a smaller resource footprint then 2003, it definaly runs much nicer and uses less resources for background tasks and events.
Speed wise for game servers also feels quicker. We have been complimented so many times now on our servers (which allways got alot of praise for being lag free and low latency anyway) for the smoothness of gameplay through our hosted servers, my first hand experiance of it and I can definalty say it is much much smoother for running CoD4 and Source based games then 2003 was.
The Actual OS is a very nice place to work in, its essentially win7 with all the crap stripped away and all the usefull server stuff added instead. The amount of tools you get with 2008 R2 is immense! There are tools there from the off to take care of anything you want to do quickly, cleanly and without problems.
Finally stabilty wise its much better. On 2003 we had source servers, CoD4 Modded servers, our cod4 admin bot and our Alien Swarm Server crashing and stopping with errors as a regular thing but since installing 2008 we havent had a single crash in 3 weeks now!!! It is definatly much more stable and optimised for game server use.

I know that Justin has a couple other communities testing out 2008 R2 aswell but from my point of view if you are running 2003 on your dedi and you DONT use GamePanel then ditch it now and upgrade to 2008 R2 as it is so so so much better. It is truly unbeilivable how much difference it makes!
I dont know how it runs with GP as your servers front end but im guessing you are going to find all the same benifits to speed, smoothness and resource managment that we have seen with RDP. I think One of you guys testing or going to be testing 2008 R2 are GP users due to you running BF:BC2 so It would be good to hear your experiances.
In my opinion it is an absolute winner of an OS and every one who is currently renting a 2003 server with full VNC/RDP access should upgrade now, you really wont regret it. With regards to servers running GamePanel I just dont know but I would guess it will def give you benifits over 2003. Im sure Justin or someone else who has tried a 2008 based server with GP and the same with 2003 can tell you how it is.

Right and thats it,
Appologies for a long and rambling post but I wanted to tell you all about these 2 things. How great Killercreation are and also how great Windows 2008 R2 is over Windows 2003 Server.

Finnally another and a last thank you to Justin, Godsbane and Kash and everyone else at KC for (very nearly) 2 great years!!!

Our community is on the increase in size again and I have no intention of ever stopping being a customer of KC. I have joked before about it to ppl in my community and here that even if my community dropped to 3 members and 1 game I love our little R300 server and the customer support and network that killercreation provide and host so much that I dont think I will ever give it up, the server has become a little part of me due to the hundreads of hours spent on it and the 10,000 players with over 1,000,000 kills/frags we host on it every week!!! Even if I was offered an upgrade to a R210/310 I think I would stick with my lovely, reliable powerhouse R300 with 8GB RAM and Win 2008 R2!!!

fin.

[KC-Justin]

Thank you for the very detailed and excellent testimonial. It's our pleasure to host your community.

With regards to Win 2008 R2, it's pretty good but I actually prefer Win 2008 Standard. R2 being the server counterpart of Win 7 and original Win 2008 being the Vista counterpart. I'm probably just a little too used to using Win 2003, which is why I prefer the original 2008 edition, but we did have some driver issues with R2 and I just found the nav sometimes to be a little long winded / hard to find certain things.

[movedgoalposts]

That is some feedback of a testimonial. I'm impressed

But Justin, How anyone could like anything that is spawned from the beta software called Vista is beyond me.

I look forward to seeing true Windows 2008 R2 when we upgrade our work server. As our dedi runs the BF:BC2 and MOH series we'll never get to appreciate the subtleties that it might offer. So long as it enables KC to continue the tradition of a stable reliable and popular gaming server platform that is all I'll ask.

[RaWClan]

movedgoalposts, on 03 July 2011 - 07:56 PM, said:

That is some feedback of a testimonial. I'm impressed

But Justin, How anyone could like anything that is spawned from the beta software called Vista is beyond me.

I look forward to seeing true Windows 2008 R2 when we upgrade our work server. As our dedi runs the BF:BC2 and MOH series we'll never get to appreciate the subtleties that it might offer. So long as it enables KC to continue the tradition of a stable reliable and popular gaming server platform that is all I'll ask.

TBH I Hate HATE Windows 7, I use it on my Lappy but still have Vista SP2 on my gaming rig as I find it a much nicer interface and much more simple and efficiant then messing around with all the useless crap MS have stuffed onto 7. Win7 is (IMO) trying to be too much and it doesnt feel like enough of an update from Vista for me to Justify buying it for my Gaming PC... If DX11 had been Win 7 only and not patched to Vista then I would of swapped but im Vista with DX11 for my gaming and with Server 2008 R2 for my servers.

With regards to Win 2008 and Win 2008 R2 obviously I havent used the initial release based around Vista but you DO notice instantly a few familiar Win7 bits and pieces. I think despite what Justin has said about some driver issues and some log winded actions to do stuff, R2 is a damn sweet server OS. I really do like it alot. (Even tho I am now stuck on a few bits and how to do them that I would of jumped straight into on 2003.

I loved 2003 and knew my way round the OS backwards on our dedi before upgrade and I also (until Vista SP1 was released) loved and used XP for a LONG time, but now has come the time I think to update any 2003 servers and XP workstations as it is just too dated and Vista, 2008, 2008 R2 and Win 7 out perform it all the way. You wont regret updating to Win 2008 Server which ever revision you use!

NOTE : Ironicly within an hour or so of posting my review we had our first issue on the server with just 2 of our 5 CoD4 servers lagging out every 60 secs or so (All other CoD4, Source, TS3 and KF Servers were unafected)...Now resolved but no idea what casued it, Justin had a look and drew a blank also so its unknown if its OS releated or just one of those things that happens now and then or even an error on my account when I reinstalled the servers for the upgrade. We are keeping an eye on it and still reasearching the problem and any solution.