GTX Gaming Server - RAM issues.

[Hippocks]

Hi all, 

 

I rented a server from GTX gaming a few days back, and it's been a pretty decent service already but!!! 

 

I got a message from them saying the server had been stopped due to it using more RAM than what I have rented. 

 

I have rented  somewhere in the region of 5.6GB of RAM... and whilst there is no one on the server at all, it is using over 7GB of RAM. 

 

It's a vanilla server, and we've uncovered about 1/100th of the map. 

 

So what's going on? Why's it using THAT much RAM? The server has only ever had a maximum of 3 players... 

 

Going by that RAM usage, though, I'm thinking I'll need a petabyte worth of the stuff for about £2million a month just to keep an empty server running.. 

 

 

I don't get it. Hosting a normal game p2p doesn't have this problem. 

[Catulus]

I also use Xgaming server with about 226 mods on it, and about 3-6 people. It never gives me a ram issue but it could be due to your save state constantly saving. I had to disable mine as well to make it run well again, because It causes it to save every time you run the server up.

[EnigmaGrey]

That'll depend entirely on what GTX has configured at the OS and game script level. 

 

For 3 players and no mods, you should only need 2-3 GB.

 

If they did not set the Xmx value to a value that matches the plan you purchased, then it could exceed it, but it's fairly unlikely. ZGC does a good job of keeping memory usage low or at a fixed rate rather than growing significantly. 

 

If they host on Windows and disabled the paging file, then it'd use considerably more RAM due to the way the ZGC garbage collector works (it uses the page file to store pointers).

 

If they host on Linux or Mac OSX, the OS will read it as using 3x the amount of RAM it actually uses because the ZGC garbage collector uses 3 separate lists of pointers to the same places in RAM to be pauseless. 

 

In short, you'll have to ask their tech support.

[Hippocks]

On 2/21/2023 at 4:32 AM, Catulus said:

I also use Xgaming server with about 226 mods on it, and about 3-6 people. It never gives me a ram issue but it could be due to your save state constantly saving. I had to disable mine as well to make it run well again, because It causes it to save every time you run the server up.

 

Thanks, I shall check this out in the configuration files as a temporary fix. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Hippocks

[Hippocks]

20 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

That'll depend entirely on what GTX has configured at the OS and game script level. 

 

For 3 players and no mods, you should only need 2-3 GB.

 

If they did not set the Xmx value to a value that matches the plan you purchased, then it could exceed it, but it's fairly unlikely. ZGC does a good job of keeping memory usage low or at a fixed rate rather than growing significantly. 

 

If they host on Windows and disabled the paging file, then it'd use considerably more RAM due to the way the ZGC garbage collector works (it uses the page file to store pointers).

 

If they host on Linux or Mac OSX, the OS will read it as using 3x the amount of RAM it actually uses because the ZGC garbage collector uses 3 separate lists of pointers to the same places in RAM to be pauseless. 

 

In short, you'll have to ask their tech support.

 

Awesome, thank you for the info. I will contact them this morning regarding this. Their support is pretty spot on. 

 

I had opted to upgrade the RAM from 5GB to 8GB when I first posted this a few days back, and it's using over 9GB now... I'm not in favour of just chucking money at it though. It seems very odd that it would use that amount of RAM. 

 

I'll update this thread as and when I figure it out / they figure it out. 👍 

 

[nekuneku]

Hey, do you have any updates regarding the issue? I also have the same thing going but my server stayed up despite the notification. It got really annoying though that I had to see the notification every time my server restart.

One thing to note is that the in-game statistic never reached 3GB of RAM usage, I'm 99% positive something wonky is going on in GTX's RAM reading.

[Hippocks]

On 2/22/2023 at 5:40 PM, nekuneku said:

One thing to note is that the in-game statistic never reached 3GB of RAM usage, I'm 99% positive something wonky is going on in GTX's RAM reading.

 

Hi,

 

I have an ongoing support ticket open with them at the moment, and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it. But I fear I have over-estimated how good their support was/is, as it's a struggle to get any decent information out of them. I've written long messages, detailing exactly what is going on, plus a whole truck-load of information to help them help me, and I get a 2 line reply telling me what I already knew, and they don't appear to give a crap, to the point I don't think they're bothering to even look into it! I think they'll just want me to continually buy more RAM.

 

I have literally just checked it now -  there are no players online, and we now have about 10-15 minor MOD's running; mostly UI changes and a few QOL mods. The server it set to be paused when there are no players online, and it's now using just under 11GB!! WTF!

 

How do you check the in-game server RAM usage? I don't know how to do that. 

 

I'll let you know if I ever get to the bottom of it. 

[nekuneku]

On 2/24/2023 at 2:45 AM, Hippocks said:

 

Hi,

 

I have an ongoing support ticket open with them at the moment, and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it. But I fear I have over-estimated how good their support was/is, as it's a struggle to get any decent information out of them. I've written long messages, detailing exactly what is going on, plus a whole truck-load of information to help them help me, and I get a 2 line reply telling me what I already knew, and they don't appear to give a crap, to the point I don't think they're bothering to even look into it! I think they'll just want me to continually buy more RAM.

 

I have literally just checked it now -  there are no players online, and we now have about 10-15 minor MOD's running; mostly UI changes and a few QOL mods. The server it set to be paused when there are no players online, and it's now using just under 11GB!! WTF!

 

How do you check the in-game server RAM usage? I don't know how to do that. 

 

I'll let you know if I ever get to the bottom of it. 

You can access the in-game statistics if you're an admin by accessing the admin menu (by clicking the button "admin" on your upper left screen, on the same column as your health button).

 

Does your server actually get stopped automatically, though? Mine gave a notification that I exceeded ram threshold but it never actually got stopped/restarted or anything.

[Hippocks]

On 2/21/2023 at 1:09 PM, EnigmaGrey said:

'... If they did not set the Xmx value to a value that matches the plan... '

 

'... If they host on Windows and disabled the paging file... '

 

In short, you'll have to ask their tech support.

 

Well I asked their tech support about this, and it was an uphill battle, that I still don't have a definite answer to. I'm fairly certain their support is either AI or outsourced to the 3rd world somewhere, as you don't get that same person twice - even if their replies are 5 minutes apart, and they answer at any time of day or night! It was all very generic and vague, unfortunately. 

 

Anyway - I did find out that they're running  Windows servers, with page filing configured properly and the Xmx values match that of the server (apparently). 

 

After visiting this forum and also talking with others on Discord and general web searches - I think it's just RAM hungry isn't it?

 

Ive seen a fair few saying that 4-5GB for the server itself (especially with MOD's , which we do have now), and then ~1.5GB per player (so ~11-12GB for a 4 player server). 

We've not had any more than 4 on at the moment, and we're hovering in and around the 11GB mark now, and it doesn't seem to extend much beyond that. 

 

I'll just see how it goes and maybe up it to 14GB in the coming weeks. I just thought that using more than 8GB on a fresh vanilla server had to mean something fishy was going on. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

 

 

 

[Hippocks]

12 hours ago, nekuneku said:

You can access the in-game statistics if you're an admin by accessing the admin menu (by clicking the button "admin" on your upper left screen, on the same column as your health button).

 

Does your server actually get stopped automatically, though? Mine gave a notification that I exceeded ram threshold but it never actually got stopped/restarted or anything.

 

Er.. I must need to set this up server side, so the server sees me as admin? I just "log in" like everyone else at the moment, I don't have admin rights in-game. 

 

And no it's doesn't shutdown or restart. We've been at about 133% RAM usage at times. So until it actually starts to get shut-off, we'll just play I suppose, and up the RAM allocation until it stops sending those notifications. 

[nekuneku]

50 minutes ago, Hippocks said:

 

Er.. I must need to set this up server side, so the server sees me as admin? I just "log in" like everyone else at the moment, I don't have admin rights in-game. 

 

And no it's doesn't shutdown or restart. We've been at about 133% RAM usage at times. So until it actually starts to get shut-off, we'll just play I suppose, and up the RAM allocation until it stops sending those notifications. 

 

You need to give yourself admin privileges, or login with the username "admin" (all lowercase) with the password that's defined on your server startup option (I forgot on which file).

 

You can give yourself admin rights by typing the following command on your console: setaccesslevel nekuneku Admin

 

Replace nekuneku with your in-game username. Be advised that this will instantly turn on God Mode for you (which will cure diseases, zombification, and reset your hunger/thirst meter among other things).

[Hippocks]

4 hours ago, nekuneku said:

 

You need to give yourself admin privileges, or login with the username "admin" (all lowercase) with the password that's defined on your server startup option (I forgot on which file).

 

You can give yourself admin rights by typing the following command on your console: setaccesslevel nekuneku Admin

 

Replace nekuneku with your in-game username. Be advised that this will instantly turn on God Mode for you (which will cure diseases, zombification, and reset your hunger/thirst meter among other things)

Nice one dude  I'll go ahead and do this now with another login. Thanks for the info! 

[Dife2K]

Hey mate, did you find out anything? I'm having the same problem, 2 players inside the server and it's using more of the ram that I have allocated. I looked at the admin panel values in the game and they were way lower than what is shown in the control panel of GtxGaming. 

It only says 1680MB used. Game panel says 5.77GB.

I don't know why there's this difference, could be because of what EnigmaGrey said about Linux servers

On 2/21/2023 at 2:09 PM, EnigmaGrey said:

That'll depend entirely on what GTX has configured at the OS and game script level. 

 

For 3 players and no mods, you should only need 2-3 GB.

 

If they did not set the Xmx value to a value that matches the plan you purchased, then it could exceed it, but it's fairly unlikely. ZGC does a good job of keeping memory usage low or at a fixed rate rather than growing significantly. 

 

If they host on Windows and disabled the paging file, then it'd use considerably more RAM due to the way the ZGC garbage collector works (it uses the page file to store pointers).

 

If they host on Linux or Mac OSX, the OS will read it as using 3x the amount of RAM it actually uses because the ZGC garbage collector uses 3 separate lists of pointers to the same places in RAM to be pauseless. 

 

In short, you'll have to ask their tech support.

 

[EnigmaGrey]

Over-all the heap's max size would be 5.3 GB with only 1.3 GB used.  If it's running ZGC, that value should go down, since there's no point holding onto memory it doesn't need. I don't -think- the in-game measure would be affected by the Mac/Linux issue, it's a bit odd. Will double check that later. 

What is the value when you restart the server, after giving it a few minutes to boot up?

[Dife2K]

Hi, I didn't understand much of what you wrote but those are the values a few minutes after restarting. 
The Total memory line values are static, they don't change at all

[EnigmaGrey]

So they’re setting xms  to 5 gb most likely. Had they not done that, it should only use 800-1200 mb on start (you can see in game that it’s also only using 1.4 gb).

 

If they do use xms and they’re using the zgc, it’ll never get smaller. It deactivates its ability to shrink the heap. If not, g1gc uses more ram, which might also explain it, but it’s most likely they start the server at 5 gb.

 

 Personally, I’d just ignore the panel’s ram value unless you’re going to have 8 people on at once or use a lot of big mods. That is, unless you actually use 5 gb in game, the web panel should just remain constant.

[Dife2K]

Sometimes (when there are or have been more players online) I find the web panel sitting at around 9GB, but I don't think the performances get really worse.
Could it have something to do with what you just said? (Also i only ordered 8GB)

I ask this because it's the third time i get an email like this from GTXGaming:

But guess what? It doesn't stop the server and it runs fine, it just shows an abnormal usage of ram in the panel.

Edited March 7, 2023 by Dife2K

[Hippocks]

On 3/6/2023 at 12:11 AM, Dife2K said:

Hey mate, did you find out anything? I'm having the same problem, 2 players inside the server and it's using more of the ram that I have allocated. I looked at the admin panel values in the game and they were way lower than what is shown in the control panel of GtxGaming. 

It only says 1680MB used. Game panel says 5.77GB.

I don't know why there's this difference, could be because of what EnigmaGrey said about Linux servers

 

I ended up getting some different config settings of some dude on Discord. They made no difference at all. I just ignored it to be honest. 

GTX don't seem too bothered by it, as the server has NEVER shut-down, even though it's apparently been running at about 130%+ since it started. I regularly shut it down manually, and fire it back up again, in the hopes that some of the older info in the RAM would be dropped off. 

 

But all in all, we just play, and as long as it doesn't shutdown... meh!

[Hippocks]

 

Here's my server usage now. It doesn't  marry up with GTX's by a long shot... I'll grab another image when the server has got more players. We normally have between 4-8 now.

[Dife2K]

11 hours ago, Hippocks said:

 

Here's my server usage now. It doesn't  marry up with GTX's by a long shot... I'll grab another image when the server has got more players. We normally have between 4-8 now.

Well, it's definitely something on their side then, it's annoying but if it doesn't affect performances it's ok I guess.
I think next month I'll try another provider, Bisecht hosting.
I used to buy their Minecraft servers back in the years and they always have been great, also their customer service is very nice.

[EnigmaGrey]

Just seems like something they could have easily prevented by writing their start scripts correctly. This is based on assumptions from the above, ofc:

1) They don't need to set an -Xms5G value (start the server with a minimum of 5 GB allocated)

This doesn't really harm anything beyond the server's ability to free memory it doesn't need, so we'll just consider this normal -- it's only really using 1.4 GB of a possible 5 GB it already has access to. No big deal. It just looks like it's using more than it should in their admin panel.

2) They don't need to set an -Xmx value higher than whatever your plan is -- then it'd be impossible for you to run over it.
i.e. -Xmx8G means the JVM can't make the Java heap larger than 8 GB. (Assume around 500 MB for the OS and 500 MB for any data we store in Native code, and you should still be at or under 9 GB). 

So, say the server legitimately filled up all 8 GB of that --  your performance would start to suffer and the server might crash, but it's fairly unlikely you'd get there with only 5-10 people.

If they set this value higher than what your plan is or they didn't set it at all, then it could conceivably grow indefinitely, until the system ran out of RAM in the wort case (but that's not too likely unless there were a severe memory leak)

 

Done right, they'd just change the value based on the subscription you buy, like java -Xmx$WhateverSubscriptionYouHave$ ... zombie.GameServer and that's it. You'd just buy a higher subscription and restart it vs. get naughty messages about going over should this ever happen.

 

So yeah, I'd just suggest self-hosting or using a different service. Just note: don't expect much from these services; they're basically using automated software to provision a virtual server, using a minimum of staff, so they're all (likely) fairly similar. I'd personally suggest spending $20-$30 a month if it's an option, and you're comfortable with Linux, and just skipping the middle man. Services like Hetzner and SoYouStart do have good offerings if it's of interest to you. You'll pay more, but you'll also get something much more capable out of the deal. For example: $30 Canadian gets you a 32 GB linux server with a 400 GB SSD and a 4 core Xeon at SoYouStart, albeit it'll be using linux.

 

[defused]

This RAM issue it's not related to GTXGaming services, it's due to the Garbage Collector that Zomboid it's using.

 

Zomboid uses the Z Garbage Collector (ZGC) by default on Windows 10 systems (Win 2019/2022) and the G1 Garbage Collector by default on Windows 7 (Win 2006) systems, the ZGC uses 60% more RAM (exponentially) than the G1GC, since GTXGaming mainly uses Windows 2019/2022 machines Zomboid selects ZGC by default, making the RAM usage skyrocket! 
 

If server provider X it's using less RAM than server provider Y for the exact same server setup, it's because they are using Windows 2006 or older or forcing G1GC by default on their servers. (Some server providers use Linux machines, not sure what Linux systems use by default, RAM and Garbage Collector wise to compare with Windows).

 

Quote

Below you can find the comparison between both ZGC and G1GC on the same exact server, you can clearly see that ZGC uses around 60% more RAM, and you can also see what the GTXGaming game panel reports it's exactly the same as what the java.exe process it's using on Windows eyes, no mistakes here.

- ZGC Usage

- G1GC Usage

 

 

 

Quote

And below you can also see what the Memory statistics inside the Zomboid Admin Panel it's reporing it's not accurate based on what the Java process it's really using as Memory in Windows, could be some specific type of calculation or conversion that it's doing, but it's not showing accurate values based on what Java process it's exactly using (for Windows eyes).

- Memory usage between GTXGaming Game Panel / Windows Java.exe process Working set memory and Zomboid Admin Panel Statistics.

 

 

 

 

With this being said, if you have a GTXGaming server and your RAM usage it's too high, give it a go on G1GC, with your server stopped, enable it from inside the Start.bat side.

 

Enjoy!

Edited May 9, 2023 by defused