Background
i3D.net is a hosting provider operating a global network of 7000 servers in Rotterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Tokyo and Sydney. Bundled with our proprietary software we provide the hosted environment for many game titles on Microsoft Xbox360, Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, PC, Apple iOS and Android and we provide deployment and management software to our clients. Our server footprint grows with an average of 70% per year.

Dell offered us the opportunity to test the Dell R620 hardware in preparation of the launch of our private cloud offering. i3D.net is creating a customer setup on the Openstack software, with Dell hardware and adapted to hosting game environments such as scalable Facebook games and rich media Xbox Live (Arcade) titles.

Dell R620 Hardware
The Dell R620 has impressive hardware features compared to the 11th generation Dell server (Dell R610).

Hardware specs
Dual Socket Intel E5 offers increased performance, more cache, a multiple of cores. We tested the dual Intel E5-2660 setup with 20 MB L3 cache and 8 CPU cores per socket.

A total of 768 GB DDR3 memory is supported, running on 1666 MHz. Our test setup has 8x8GB = 64 GB DDR3 memory.

Chassis
The chassis will be available as 2.5″ hot swap configuration supporting 10 disks for a total of 20 TB disk space. This configuration has front VGA, no optic drive, no diagnostic front LED and does not support the SD card reader with front slot.

Other configuration options include a 4 disk 2.5″ system that supports all options including VGA port and optic drive. There is also a 6 disk and 8 disk chassis. For data center operations the front VGA port and diagnostic LED are only used to resolve hardware failures, where on-site staff is faster to respond than the external Dell 4 hour 24×7 support. The benefit is minimal thus our choice is the 10 drive chassis.

Network
The Dell R620 features an incredibly flexible network setup: the choice is between “on-board” Intel, Broadcom and another 3rd party network chips. The default configuration has 4 copper ports with 1 GbE. The network uses a click-on system so you are able to swap two ports to 10 GbE over copper. There is a fifth port for the iDrac 7 Enterprise card.

Dell Lifecycle Management
The Dell Lifecycle management is updated and now supports automatic plug and play driver and firmware configuration. If the controller detects new or changed hardware it will be able to recognize this hardware and update the firmware on demand. This is useful for motherboard updates if a new CPU generation is installed, if a PCI-E card is added, if a new SSD disk is installed or if one of the “on-board” NIC cards are swapped.

SD cards
The Dell R620 can boot from internal SD cards. One main card is installed and a secondary mirror card can be used for redundancy. This will make the Dell R620 a powerful disk-less server system in advanced cloud environments – where servers will be shutdown if not used, saving in energy consumption and data center cooling overhead costs. There is a third SD card installed near the back-plane and depending on the chassis you can insert a fourth SD card in the front bay.

The server also supports Fusion IO type of swappable cards, to improve the available system IO for specific tasks, such as databases.

One of our trusted server providers i3D.net have gone nuts this year with an offer that you just can’t refuse. For a limited time only you will be able to get your hands on a free, yes, FREE! Battlefield Heroes trial server in London (England).

These servers will allow you a feel of what it is like to run your own server for a trial period at no cost to you. These servers will remain online until November 10th, so the faster you take advantage of this offer, the longer you can be the KING or QUEEN of your own server.

How to get in on this incredible offer?

• Create an account at i3D.net
• Click on game servers and select “order new gaming package” from the drop down menu.
• Choose the option that states “Free London Game Server” that includes Battlefield Heroes.
• Complete any other sections as needed.

 

Server Renewal

If you enjoy having your own Battlefield Heroes server to play in and change to your own liking then it doesn’t have to end there, does it?

Simply contact i3D’s support department and request for an extension before November 9th and not only will you get your own server, but as an added bonus for extending it, you will gain a whopping 25% discount AND you don’t pay any set-up fees.

But wait…there’s more!

Included with this free server offer, i3D are also offering a 50% discount on TeamSpeak 3 and Ventrilo when ordering a new game server!
And don’t forget those bonus Battlefunds. When you order a server with i3D.net you also get several 50 Battlefunds codes for you and your friends.

Let’s not forget, Christmas is just on the horizon, so why not get into the festive cheer early with i3D.net’s offer.

i3D.net Free game server counter hit 2000 game servers! Wow!

i3D.net choose HP as a second brand to it’s growing server base. Together with Dell, HP completes the i3D.net signature dedicated server line.
HP servers deliver quality and expandability, allowing customers to grow on demand. The new batch of servers has the following three configurations:

HP DL180
Dual Intel Xeon Quadcore 5506
8 GB ram
12x 1 TB disk with raid

HP DL160
Dual Intel Xeon Quadcore L5630
12 GB ram
2x 250 GB disk with raid (max 4)

HP DL120
Intel Xeon Quadcore X3430
4 GB ram
250 GB disk (max 4)