Best practices for elastic computing in the game industry

Search for the wild , Alibaba cloud elastic computing product solution architect

 

Abstract ： Games have always been a hot industry in the Internet field , With the rise of mobile Internet , Mobile phones and Pad The popularity of , The game started in the early days PC Page tour of the times 、 The swim , Gradually developed to mobile games occupy the main trend . In recent years , Game manufacturers are constantly exploring cloud games , Hope to bring a smoother experience to players , The cloud has become the best choice for the game industry .

 

How to make the game run more stably on the cloud 、 Fluent 、 Efficient and economical ？ As the largest cloud manufacturer in China , Alibaba cloud provides game manufacturers with the best cloud solution . This article mainly introduces three game scenes ： Game services 、 Big data operations 、 The architectural features of cloud games , And the selection and deployment scheme of Alibaba cloud game industry computing infrastructure based on these scenarios .

 

One 、 The recalculation scenario of the game industry

 

The game industry is a scene of recalculation power consumption , Three of the scenarios where the demand for computing power is more prominent are ： Game clothes 、 Game operation 、 Cloud games .

 

l   Game clothes

There are many kinds of games , This article will focus on two types of computing intensive in game clothing ：MMORPG The type and MOBA/FPS type .

 

l   Game operation

Several major trends in the current game industry include ： Category integration and playing methods are constantly superimposed 、 Social class DAU The trend of this kind of game 、 And the trend of boutique games , This requires a lot of data operation analysis , And help game companies improve user retention 、 Optimize the playing methods and strategies in the game .

 

l   Cloud games

This article will introduce the practice of elastic computing products in combination with the above three scenarios .

 

Two 、 Game service business and technical features

 

1.   Game service business features

 

From the game category level , Yes RPG、FPS、MOBA、SLG Other categories , Each category has its own characteristics in terms of the playing method of the game itself .

From the perspective of technical architecture , Due to the strong interactivity of the game , Game technology architecture is different from other Internet applications ：

 

 

a.   A long connection

Games usually require long connections , That is, a long connection from a client to a server , Facilitate timely feedback and push of player's behavior ;

 

b.   Low latency

Due to the strong interactivity of the game , No matter in PVE still PVP in , All need timely feedback , similar FPS、MOBA Class and other multiplayer games are typical PVP, The tolerance of network delay and jitter is very low , So low latency is required ;

 

c.   Write frequently

Due to the high frequency of player information recording in the game 、 The characteristics of the operation , These records are recorded when there are a large number of players, such as typical MMO game , Need to write data frequently , Concurrent reading and writing is very high , This kind of scene needs strong IO performance ;

 

d.   High performance

The game is highly interactive 、 Features of low latency , In today's gradually layered decoupling Architecture , We also need to ensure the interaction effect of game players , Will further rely on the strong computing power of the underlying server ;

 

e.   High elasticity

Cycle characteristics and peak valley characteristics of game business , Very high elasticity is often required .

 

2.  MMORPG Elastic computing product practice

 

RPG（ Role playing games ） It's a big category of games , Players simulate a virtual character to experience and play in the game .

 

 

a.  MMORPG The characteristics of game clothes

• MMO： Massive players, high concurrency scenes , High computing performance 、 Strong stability ;
• Gateway Service ： Network packet forwarding 、 High throughput , High network PPS;
• Center Service ： Minute level asynchronous warehousing , Write frequently 、 high IOPS;

 

b.   Elastic computing product practice

Based on the above characteristics ,MMORPG The selection of elastic computing products should also be distinguished according to the scene ：

• MMO： High computing performance , Seven generations Ice Lake ECS example , Improve the performance experience ;
• Gateway Service ： High network PPS, Suggest 6 Generation enhancement 、7 Generation examples ;
• Asynchronous warehousing and logging ： For scenarios with high disk read-write performance , Use different levels ESSD Cloud disk , Avoid disk read / write bottlenecks ;
• Efficient operation and maintenance ： For partitioned Services , Scenes such as opening and closing services quickly , It can be done by CADT Yunsuda 、ESS Stretch and stretch 、OOS Choreography and other tools （3） It can be done by CADT Yunsuda 、 Stretch and stretch 、 The use of cloud operation and maintenance tools such as operation and maintenance arrangement with products can improve the operation and maintenance efficiency .

 

3.  FPS、MOBA Elastic computing product practice

 

image FPS/MOBA This kind of competitive game , More interactive , Delay is more sensitive .

 

 

a.   Features of war games

• Low latency ： A lot of computing intensive scenes in the game ;
• Ultra high performance ： Big map battle 、 Small room battle ;
• Elastic room ： Rolling switch in combat room .

 

b.   Elastic computing product practice

• Deployment form ： Platform function center , Combat clothing area deployment ;
• Low latency and high performance ： High dominant frequency 7 generation 、7 Generation computing instance , Higher single core performance provides better combat effectiveness ;
• Elastic room ： Battle room games , Due to the peak and valley characteristics of the business itself , Flexible use of cloud resources , It will often better optimize the overall resource use cost ,ESS Stretch and stretch + The cloud monitoring CMS+ Saving plan , Reach the cost optimal solution ;
• Containerization ：ACK Container services +ECI Examples of flexible containers , It further releases the flexibility and elasticity of basic resources ;
• Platform business ： This part is closer to the general Internet technology architecture , For example, the wonderful real-time recording scene is a typical high-definition image quality + Demand for real-time recording , Often based on GPU Capacity building , Selective elasticity vGPU/cCPU product , Achieve finer grained use of... On the cloud GPU resources .

 

3、 ... and 、 Game big data elastic Computing Practice

 

 

Business performance in the whole life cycle of the game , If retained by the user 、 Business transformation 、 In game playing methods and strategies are the business support data that game manufacturers pay close attention to .

Big data is the current game business 、 Operation and other main technical means , Thanks to the richness of the big data open source community technology stack , There are many technical options for big data , The optional scheme shall be adjusted to local conditions according to its own project .

 

1. Game big data business features

 

• Data scenarios ： Business operation data 、 Game content data 、 Platform technical data 、 Safe operation data ;
• Technology stack selection ： Technology selection 、 Deployment options 、 Operation and maintenance pressure ;
• Efficiency issues ： Business performance 、 Cost burden 、 Elastic demand .

 

2.   Elastic computing practice

 

a.   Based on cloud products

Different game companies are in different stages of data construction , There will be different choices , Included in IDC build by oneself 、 Self built based on cloud based resources 、 On the cloud EMR Suite hosting 、 And use more big data products on the cloud , Improve business efficiency and reduce the burden of operation and maintenance , such as ： choice SLS Data collection ;Kafka Data gateway channel ; adopt Flink Do real-time calculation ; adopt Elasticsearch or Clickhouse Do data aggregation analysis ;

 

b.   Selection idea releases efficiency

The specific product selection of computing storage also needs to be based on business requirements 、 performance 、 efficiency 、 Balance costs in many ways . Such as real-time calculation / Near real-time computing scenario ,Flink High performance 、 Low latency features , Computing and network performance are required , Give priority to the selection of seven generation main sales examples or 6 Generation enhancement instance ; And for Remote Shuffle Service Scenes with many intermediate processing results , A lot of join Class scenes , You can choose to partially process through memory ; Offline data calculation and storage may choose SATA Local disk instance ; as for SSD Local dish 、SATA Local dish 、ESSD Cloud disk , We need to take a comprehensive look at the calculation 、 The Internet 、 Choose from storage performance and capacity as well as comprehensive cost ;

 

c.   Release elasticity

be based on OSS The data Lake scheme of object storage is also one of the trends , The advantage of the decoupling architecture of storage and computing on the cloud is that it fully releases the ability of elasticity on the cloud , You can also use more lightweight elastic computing products , Such as SPOT example ,ECI Calculate elastic big data for container instances , So as to meet the business needs and save more costs ;

 

d.   Safety operation and maintenance

Account security management , Local dish D2S Heat exchanger plate , And event triggering mechanism .

 

Four 、 Cloud game elastic computing product practice

 

 

from 2009 year ONLIVE Launch cloud game products and start , Cloud games have passed a technology cycle , Especially in the last two years , More and more companies pay attention to and invest in cloud games . The platform is based on fluidization capability , Drive the game in the form of video streaming , Enable users to enjoy higher quality games at low cost .

 

Cloud games are mainly divided into terminal and cloud . The terminal part is based on Windows、IOS、Linux Terminal equipment of operating system , Including mobile phone 、 Flat 、 The computer 、 The TV 、VR All-in-one, etc. .

 

The cloud architecture is mainly the game application layer 、 Cloud game platform layer 、 Basic resource layer . The application layer is a huge amount of game content ; The platform layer is the necessary operation platform for cloud games 、 Support platform 、 Fluidization technology platform, etc ;IaaS The resource layer includes the basic network 、 be based on X86 Architecture and ARM Architecturally GPU The server .

 

1.   Cloud game business features

 

• Multi terminal adaptation ： Mobile devices 、 Home appliances 、 Scene equipment ;
• End to end experience ： Achieve end-to-end high performance and low delay , Instruction stream 、 Edit code ;
• Graphic calculation ： HD game rendering

 

2.   Elastic computing product practice

 

• Enrich GPU example ： High performance GPU（3A）、vGPU（ Page to swim ）、ARM+GPU（ Cloud hand tour ）;
• Performance acceleration experience ： Streaming technology 、 Rendering acceleration 、 Hardware acceleration ;
• center + Edge scene coverage ： Public cloud + Edge cloud box ;
• Flexible construction ： Rapid deployment 、 Elastic use ;
• Yunyunwei experience ：CloudOps、 Cloud speed CADT etc. , Help game customers to build cloud game business more quickly and conveniently .

 

5、 ... and 、 Alibaba cloud provides high-quality game infrastructure services for global game developers

 

Through years of technology accumulation and continuous operation , At present, it provides very large-scale infrastructure cloud services all over the world , Through excellent and stable performance , And the cost dividend continuously released through technical means , Provide game customers with more benefits 、 More secure 、 A more stable 、 More flexible infrastructure cloud services .

 

 

Domestic business goes to sea 、 Game going to sea is also one of the main trends in the domestic game market , Many game companies have turned going to sea from a business option to one of the necessary options .

 

2022 year 3 month , Alibaba cloud has also launched two regions, South Korea and Thailand , It can provide a smoother and more stable game experience for the localization service of the game . Alibaba cloud will be in the business field of game going to sea , Provide more help to customers .

 

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