Choose compute resources for a managed fleet
For Amazon GameLift Servers managed hosting, including managed EC2 and managed containers, the service deploys your game servers to fleets of computing resources in the Amazon Web Services Cloud. When you create a managed fleet, you want to configure the hosting resources to best suit your game. This topic discusses key decision points when choosing and configuring your game hosting fleets.
Topics
Geographic locations
Consider where you plan to deploy your game servers. In general, you want to put your game servers as close as possible to your players to deliver the best possible player experience. For Amazon GameLift Servers managed hosting, you can choose to put game servers in any of the supported Amazon Web Services Regions and Local Zones. If you're building a hybrid solution, consider how managed fleet deployment can supplement the locations of your self-managed Amazon GameLift Servers Anywhere fleets.
For most development and testing scenarios, deploying to a single location makes sense. As you prepare for launch and beyond, there are many reasons to deploy across multiple geographic locations. These include supporting a widespread group of players and improving overall game hosting resilience and reliability. Multiple locations can also boost player experience by speeding up game session placement and enabling more choices when optimizing placements for latency and cost.
For a list of locations that are supported by Amazon GameLift Servers and more information about locations for all fleet types, see Amazon GameLift Servers service locations.
Multi-location fleets
A single managed fleet can deploy resources to multiple locations. You can manually set capacity for each individual location in a multi-location fleet.
Advantages of using a multi-location fleet:
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Simplified fleet deployment and management – You supply the game server software and fleet configuration, and Amazon GameLift Servers deploys it to fleet instances across multiple locations (build once, deploy anywhere). In a production fleet, you can view and manage all locations in a fleet instead of having to manage multiple fleets each located in a different region.
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Local Zone availability – If you want to use a Local Zone you must create a multi-location fleet with an Amazon Web Services Region home location and Local Zones as remote locations. Local Zones are extensions of Amazon Web Services Regions that can deliver even lower latency to areas and customers that need it. You can add a Local Zone to any multi-location fleet; you don't need to include the Local Zone's parent Amazon Web Services Region.
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Compatibility with game session queues – You can build game session placement queues with one or more multi-location fleets. This approach gives the queue flexibility when prioritizing and choosing locations to host a new game session.
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Efficient resource utilization – With auto-scaling turned on, Amazon GameLift Servers can better optimize capacity scaling across all locations in a fleet.
Tips for using multi-location fleets:
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Check for quotas on the number of locations per Amazon Web Services Region or fleet. See Amazon GameLift Servers service quotas.
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Not all instance types are available in all locations. Depending on your chosen locations, you might have limited instance type options. The Amazon GameLift Servers console provides useful tools to help you find the right balance of locations and instance types.
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Consider using to collect player latency data for all your fleet locations. Amazon GameLift Servers can use this data to optimize game sessions for low latency and prevent players from joining sessions with unacceptably high latency. These special endpoints accept UDP messages instead of traditional ICMP pings, providing accurate latency measurements to help you select optimal fleet locations.
Operating systems
All instances in a managed fleet are deployed with an Amazon machine image (AMI) that provides a complete runtime environment for your game server software. For managed EC2 fleets, you specify the game server build's operating system when you upload the build to Amazon GameLift Servers. For managed container fleets, you specify the operating system in the container group definition. For more information about the latest AMI versions, see Amazon GameLift Servers AMI versions.
AMI versions are regularly updated. When you create a new fleet, Amazon GameLift Servers assigns the latest available version of the AMI you selected for your game build. All instances that are deployed in that fleet use the same version. To keep your AMI version up to date with the latest security and software updates, you need to regularly replace your fleets. As a best practice, we recommend replacing your managed fleets every 30 days to maintain the runtime environment for your game servers. For guidance, see Security best practices for Amazon GameLift Servers.
Instance types
A managed fleet's instance type determines the kind of hardware that is deployed for all fleet instances, and instance types are generally available in various sizes. All Amazon GameLift Servers managed fleet use Amazon EC2 instances, and support a wide range of instance types that offer different combinations of computing power, memory, storage, and networking capabilities. The availability of instance types varies depending on the locations you choose.
The Amazon GameLift Servers console provides useful tools to help you find the right instance types for your game build and your deployment locations. For managed container fleets, the console also offers guidance on your game's CPU power and memory requirements.
When choosing from available instance types for your game, consider:
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The compute architecture of your game server: x64 or Arm (Amazon Graviton).
Note
Graviton Arm instances require a server build for a Linux AMI. Server SDK 5.1.1 or newer is required for C++ and C#. Server SDK 5.0 or newer is required for Go. These instances do not provide out-of-the-box support for Mono installation on Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) or Amazon Linux 2 (AL2).
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The computing, memory, and storage requirements of your game server build.
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The size of your instance type. In addition to meeting the requirements of your game server software executables, larger instance type sizes can run multiple game server processes and/or containers on each instance. Factors to consider include cost (is it cheaper to run a few large instances or many small instances). Also consider how game session capacity might be impacted by adding or removing instances during fleet scaling events or when shutting down unhealthy instances. If each instance runs many game server processes concurrently, adding or removing an instance can significantly affect ame hosting capacity.
For more information about instance types, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types
On-Demand Instances versus Spot Instances
Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances and Spot Instances offer the same hardware and performance, but they differ in availability and cost.
On-Demand Instances
You can acquire an On-Demand Instance when you need it and keep it for as long as you want. On-Demand Instances have a fixed cost, meaning you pay only for the amount of time that you use them. There are no long-term commitments.
Spot Instances
Spot Instances can offer a cost-efficient alternative to On-Demand Instances by utilizing unused Amazon computing capacity. Spot Instance prices fluctuate based on the supply and demand for each instance type in each location. Amazon can reclaim Spot Instances with a two-minute notification whenever it needs the capacity back, and game sessions actively running on a reclaimed instance are interrupted.
Amazon GameLift Servers offers several tools to help mitigate the likelihood of Spot interruptions to your game sessions. A spot viability algorithm tracks instance type historical data to anticipate when the risk of interruption reaches a critical point and avoids placing new game sessions on Spot Instances of that type. If an interruption does occur, your game servers can use the notification to gracefully end a game session for players.
Game hosting with Spot fleets must use a queue for game session placement. A queue is able to prioritize game session placements based on Spot fleet viability, cost, and other factors. See these topics for more information about how to take advantage of Spot for your game server hosting:
Service quotas
You can view default service quotas for Amazon GameLift Servers and current quota status for your Amazon Web Services account using the following tools:
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For general service quota information for Amazon GameLift Servers, see Amazon GameLift Servers endpoints and quotas in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.
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For a list of available instance types per location for your account, open the Service quotas
page of the Amazon GameLift Servers console. This page also displays your account's current usage for each instance type in each location. -
For a list of your account's current quotas for instance types per Region, run the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) command
describe-ec2-instance-limits. This command returns the number of active instances that you have in your default Region (or in another Region that you specify).
As you prepare to launch you game, fill out a launch questionnaire in the
Amazon GameLift Servers console