Game servers deployment automation case study

This paper describes a software system prototype for automated game servers deployment and configuring customized game servers on demand. The described system has a web interface which allows customers to create accounts, purchase, services, and gain access to and configure their purchased web servers. This service consists of a website which acts as an interface for customers to purchase subscriptions, and gain access to and configure their purchased servers. Behind the website is a system which dynamically deploys virtual machines with the requested configurations, handles all of the networking details, and provides information back to the customer on how to connect to their server. The proposed prototype was tested by deploying popular Minecraft game server. This facilitated network research by allowing users to have a more scalable testing environment and thus enable controlled laboratory experiments. This paper goes through the entire life-cycle of the project, starting with some information on existing research about the subject, and how it relates to ours. Following that we describe our project requirements, the solution we ended up using and how it was modified to fit our requirements. We then have a section showing performance experiments we ran. The final section is the conclusion which talks about the outcome of our project in relation to our original goals, and how it will impact future research in this area.