Outspark

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Millions of online video gamers throughout the world depend on Outspark to deliver efficient, highly available technology to support an optimal, free, Web gaming experience. To make that happen, Outspark maintains game servers in San Jose, California, and Andover, Massachusetts. The company also has Web servers in Oakland, California.

In May 2008, Outspark had to address the need for better performance and uptime for its Super Micro game servers. “There were continual operational problems with our previous servers,” says Luc Suryo, Chief of Network and System Operations at Outspark. “They failed quite often, so availability was a big issue. And we couldn’t afford to keep having that problem with the growth of our user base. We have to have close to 100% uptime.” The company’s Web servers presented problems as well. “At least once or twice each month, the systems engineer had hardware issues to fix,” says Suryo. “He was always rebooting the system to get it back online.”

Outspark, anticipating a traffic spike after an upcoming launch of new games, also needed new server technology that was more scalable than its previous infrastructure. “We needed servers that could expand to meet those needs,” Suryo states. “Specifically, we were looking for four-core servers, which would give us more power and memory.” Outspark also wanted to keep its operational costs low — a challenge considering that its servers were large and consumed enormous amounts of power. “We paid about $1,500 a month in power costs at our California datacenters, and that is way too much,” admits Suryo.

In July 2008, Outspark began to evaluate new server solutions from HP and Sun Microsystems. “It became clear very early that Sun’s solution would be less expensive and also had the best-performing servers,” says Suryo. Outspark was also intrigued with the Sun Startup Essentials program, which provides startups with a combination of hardware, software, and support at a discount. Through this program, Outspark was able to purchase Sun Fire X2250 servers to host its online games, as well as several Sun Fire X2200 M2 servers and Sun Fire X4150 servers. Additionally, Sun agreed to provide ongoing technical support and hosted Web services through Sun partner NaviSite. “Sun offered a great combination of hardware and infrastructure support,” remarks Suryo.

With the Sun Fire X2250 server, which runs on Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, Outspark now has the power it needs to manage its game servers. “Performance is much stronger with the quad-core Sun Fire X2250 servers, and we push much more traffic through the network,” Suryo says. “So whatever increase in traffic we get now, our infrastructure can handle it easily.” System availability has also improved dramatically. “Our I/O is much less than it was with our previous environment, so our uptime is much better,” says Suryo. “We used to have about 80% uptime, which was unacceptable for a global 24/7 operation. So far, we are at more than 98% uptime with the new infrastructure.”

The Sun Fire X2250 server also uses significantly less power than the previous Outspark hardware. “Our engineers are reporting that we are saving up to $250 a month in the datacenters,” says Suryo. Outspark has also reduced its overall operational costs because it has a completely managed solution, with infrastructure and technical support from Sun and management services by NaviSite. “At the end of the day, it’s all about the bottom line,” says Suryo. “With this solution, we are able to reduce costs while also getting the capacity, speed, and availability we need to support our game and Web servers.”