Over the last few months I've been constructing the server which will handle the client connections. The goal was to build a server powerful enough to handle hundreds of connections simultaneously, without breaking the budget. While I would have loved to construct a $3000 server with 32 cores and 128 Gigs of ram, that just wasn't realistic. After careful research and scouting ebay for a few weeks, I was able to build the following server for roughly 500 USD.
Server Hardware* 1U half depth (380Watt) Supermicro chassis.* 2x Quad Core Xeon 2.5Ghz processors.* 24GB ECC SDRAM RAM.* 2x 500GB 7200 RPM (RAID 1).
Not too bad! That gives this machine a total of 8 cores and 24 gigabytes of RAM, more than enough! I'll be honest, I was planning to run the server in-house for awhile until things started to pick up. However since it sounds like a jet engine when powered on, this was no longer an option! Since power consumption had already been a consideration beforehand, it made collocation a lot cheaper!The server arrived last week to a data-center in Dallas Texas, where it's currently on a 10Mbs unmetered connection. Due to the geographic location and increase in network speed, most players should have a better connection. I updated the cname records yesterday, so everyone should now be able connect and play Realm Zero on the new hardware!