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Valheim dedicated: why my $3 VPS outperforms 'gaming hosts'

VPS Hosting by JokoNord 38 replies 6.2K views
JokoNord

Member OP

#1

Sir I want share my experience. Made VPS last month on RackNerd, 2 core 4GB, NVMe. Run Valheim dedicated with 8 friend, very smooth.

I try before one "gaming host" — not name but price was 12 dollar — and save take 45 second to load. On my cheap VPS save load 8 second. I check, they use HDD only. Very bad for Valheim sir, game write save every 20 minute.

My setup:
- Debian 12, no GUI
- Docker with ghcr.io valheim image
- cron job for backup every 2 hour to Hetzner storage

Thank you very much sir, hope this help someone.

traffic worse than my packet loss
BI

Member

#2

SWEdish game needs SWEdish hös ting. Fika while server runs itself.

SERiously though — @JokoNord what Docker image? I tried malý valheim setup on KnownHost, CPU was böttleneck not disk. Might be their old Xeons.

steveipw

Member

#3
JokoNord said:
They use HDD only. Very bad for Valheim sir

This. For that money you get:
- 7200 RPM SATA: 150 IOPS, 2ms seek
- SATA SSD: 50K IOPS, 0.1ms seek
- NVMe: 500K+ IOPS

Gaming hosts love auction servers with 4TB HGST drives. RAID 10 helps but spindle latency kills world save stutter. ZFS with slog on NVMe helps if they're stuck with rust.

List of hosts I've tested with fio:
- RackNerd: Samsung PM9A3, good
- CloudCone: Intel S4510, acceptable
- Time4VPS: WD Red, avoid for Valheim

zfs send | zfs receive. repeat.
LO

Member

#4

Cara JokoNord this is very smart kkkkk I pay 15 dollar for "gaming" host before, always lag when boss spawn, going to try RackNerd now

That HDD thing explain everything cara

Craig

Member

scheduled pessimist

#5

The real scandal—gaming hosts know this—NVMe costs them maybe $2 more per user—they charge $10 extra for "premium" tier—same hardware just—different label—I asked one provider directly—sales guy admitted it—then tried to sell me "enterprise" plan instead—distracted by—new concern—has anyone checked if these "dedicated" Valheim servers are actually—shared containers with nice values tweaked—

HO

Member

#6

Joko what kernel version on that debian 12

JokoNord

Member OP

#7
bird761 said:
What Docker image?

Ghcr.io/mbentley/valheim-dedicated-server sir. Very stable, update automatic when Valheim patch release.

Hoshino40 said:
What kernel version

6.1.0-18-amd64 sir. Default Debian 12 backports.

traffic worse than my packet loss
steveipw

Member

6 #8
Craig said:
Shared containers with nice values tweaked

Wouldn't surprise me. I've seen "dedicated" game hosts where /proc/cpuinfo shows 48 cores but cgroups limit you to 2. They rely on nobody checking.

Quick check: run 

systemd-detect-virt
and 
cat /proc/1/cgroup
. If it says lxc or openvz, you're in a container — https://linuxcontainers.org has the details. KVM is fine.

zfs send | zfs receive. repeat.
HO

Member

7 #9

6.1 is solid. I run 6.6 on my home server for io_uring improvements but 6.1 with backports should handle Valheim's save bursts fine. Thanks.

all_rom

Member

Self-Host Or Die

#10

This is why I keep my box in the closet. Bought a used Dell OptiPlex for 200 EUR, put it in my garage in Reykjavik. Geothermal electricity is basically free, fiber is everywhere. No host can beat that.

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