A Service Platform for On-Line Games DebanJan Saha, Dambit Sahu, Anees Shaikh (IBM TJ Watson Research Center, NY) Presented by Gary Huang March 17, 2004

Outline Motivation Introduction Gaming Service Platform Architecture Middleware Services Leveraging the Grid Conclusion

1. Motivation Problem - Deploying a large, dedicated server infrastructure to support a single game title is an expensive approach. -The approach does not make the best use of available resources. Proposal: -A shared, on-demand service platform for hosting on- line games based on grid technology. -A standards-based grid infrastructure provides economies of scale and high availability.

2. Introduction FPS and MMORPG Games Grid Technology Middleware

2.1 FPS and MMORPG Games FPS (First-person shooters) MMORPG (Massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games)

2.1.1 FPS FPS games stress both server and network infrastructure due to strict interactivity requirements. FPS game server can support a fairly small number of players (no more than a few tens).

2.1.2 MMORPG MMORPG games do not have as strict interactivity requirements as FPS games. A single server can support hundreds of players at a time.

2.1.3 Disadvantages and Expectations Disadvantages of FPS and MMORPG games: - require a significant amount of computing and networking resources. -are hosted on individual servers with virtually no global management. These result in a fragmented gaming community with no guarantees on server or network performance and often lead to poor game-playing experiences. Expectations for server platform: -Intelligently allocate computing resources -Optimize server utilization while maximizing game playing satisfaction.

2.2 Grid Technology Grid infrastructure: - is geared initially toward FPS games. -several of the gaming services are applied to MMORPG games as well. Advantages - Grid technology provides a standards-based platform suited for an on-demand computing infrastructure. -Grid-based shared infrastructure provides economies of scale, industrial scale resiliency, and necessary prerequisites for a successful on-line gaming industry.

2.3 Middleware One of objectives is: -to develop middleware based on existing grid components that will facilitate an on-line games hosting platform. The middleware targets the following services: -Player Service -Game Publisher Service -System Service

3. Gaming Service Platform Architecture

Gaming Grid: - consists of a number of server clusters located in geographically distributed data centers. Data Centers - are connected to the Internet via one or more ISPs. The federation of server clusters is a resource: - shared across a number of game publishers. -used to host different games. The allocation of server resources may change over time as the number and distribution of players change.

4. Middleware Services The purpose of MS: -To hide the complexity of managing the grid infrastructure from publishers and players. Three Types of Services: -Player Service -Game Publisher Service -System Service

4.1 Player Services Four Functionalities: - Managing account information - Authenticating the player - Providing game related announcements - Finding an appropriate game server. Hide the details of the underlying architecture, including games hosted on a grid infrastructure.

4.2 Game Publisher Services Five Functionalities: - Deploying a game - Automatically updating game software - Monitoring game server performance - Managing service level agreements - Handling various modes of billing and settlement The automatic software update service should scale to a large number of servers. The game publisher middleware also allows a game publisher to specify an SLA for its players.

4.3 System Services Provide: - on-demand server resource management - directory services for player and game discovery - resource-specific performance -availability monitoring. The objective of resource management: -To maximize the revenue of the grid infrastructure provider while meeting the objectives of the game publishers and players.

5. Leveraging the Grid Current Grid Standards Applying Grid Middleware

5.1 Current Grid Standards Computational grids are currently built around several different models. For the gaming service grid, the service provider (or grid provider) follows a dedicated resource model. To support the model, a number of vendors have released software to construct the grid. One such package is the Globus Toolkit - An open source software project which provides a number of component services in the areas of resource management, information services, and data management. -Version 2 of the Globus Toolkit is currently considered the standard grid implementation.

5.2 Applying Grid Middleware Existing grid middleware can be leveraged to realize key functions of the gaming service architecture. Four components of the Globus Toolkit Resource management -Information services -Data management -Security

6. Conclusion Developed a grid-based hosting infrastructure for on-line games, which is suited for server intensive FPS games and MMORPG games. The grid infrastructure provides economies of scale and high availability. In order to make the best use of the grid infrastructure for gaming, a set of software services based the Globus Toolkit is developed. The gaming middleware provides player management, publisher management, and system management services designed to facilitate hosting of on-line games in a grid environment.