Trying to pick from the various options for Game Server Providers such as Southnode can be daunting if you're new to server hosting - not to worry, we're here to break it down in plain English with no faff. We've been hosting servers here at Southnode personally and professionally for years, so let's put that experience to use!
Where do I find the Game Servers list that Southnode can host?
You can find a listing of all the different servers we at Southnode host at the current stage via this link here. We add more to this list as our roster expands!
Okay, I've picked the game I want to be hosted - what do all these options mean?
Let's start from the top and work our way down with the various options that we here at Southnode allow you to choose from to customise your experience better:
"Choose Billing Cycle"
Here is where you choose how often you would like to be billed. Southnode provides discounts for longer billing cycles in increments - so you get the following discount depending on the cycle:
Monthly (Default) - No discount
Quarterly (3 months per cycle) - 5% discount
Semi-Annually (6 months per cycle) - 10% discount
"Location"
This one is pretty simple - this is where your server is hosted. Currently, we have four options depending on your game, and the requirements set out for the game. These locations house their very own separate control panels in addition to having specific game servers within their region:
[AU] Sydney - we recommend this location for those who live in Australia and New Zealand.
[SG] Singapore - we recommend this location for those that live in the South East Asian region, including the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and other countries within the region.
[EU] Germany (coming soon) - we recommend this location for those that live in Germany and Eastern Europe.
[UK] London (coming soon) - we recommend this location for those that live in the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
[NA] Central - we recommend this location for those that live in the United States and Canada, with special mention to those in the central states of the U.S.A.
"Server CPU Priority"
There is a difference between a dedicated and shared instance for Game Servers. Game Servers hosted by Southnode are considered to be shared instances as multiple clients will occupy the same physical hardware. Whilst Southnode has a policy to not over-provision a server (that is, not to put more services on a single server than it could reasonably handle), some clients prefer to be the first ones to get processing power when their instance calls for it. We do allow clients to choose whether their server receives this priority processing via three different settings:
"Normal" (Default) is the normal processing priority level. This will be more than enough for the vast majority of users as all of our server nodes throughout the regions we host are built to the highest performance specifications.
"High" - one step above the "Normal" selection. When an instance with the High and an instance with the Normal option for CPU priority are contending for latency-sensitive resources, the server will prioritise the instance with the High option.
"Realtime" - this is the highest level of priority available. The only time an instance with this priority level will ever have to fight for resources (even above the operating system) is when another instance of Realtime priority is present. So this would be very rare in most cases.
"Player Slots"
This one is self-explanatory - more slots = more players allowed on your server at one time. This can be increased or decreased later via the Client Area of our website.
"Ram Allowance"
A misconception with game servers is that you need the most RAM possible - this depends highly on the use case. At Southnode, we have tailored our spec of RAM per instance to be acceptable for the game as it comes installed, and as the developer intended (a.k.a "vanilla") - you may wish to increase this for heavily modded servers, were more often than not the additional data that comes with having a mod loaded on top of the standard game increases RAM usage.
"Additional Services"
Here you can select additional add-ons for your services. We include many Discord bots to allow for different levels of utility for you and your community:
Premier Support - need an extra hand? Whilst our support services are normally within an hour or so, this can be a little bit of extra hand-holding for you whilst you set up and administrate your server. (This is not a pay-for-setup option - you configure your server, and we'll just provide information based on our experience)
