作者：Gary Orenstein

社交游戏应用随各开发公司的涌现而在一夜之间突然爆发，成为流行元素，这一行业顿时变得炙手可热。许多工作室迎合这一趋势，据悉，移动和在线游戏领域到2014年产值有望达到440亿美元，这是全球电子游戏收益的50%。在今天的设备推动领域中，就连成年人都无法抵挡电子游戏的沉浸性娱乐，53%的美国成年人表示自己会玩电子游戏。

随着越来越多成年人逐步变成游戏玩家，以及46%的成年人持有智能手机，社交游戏领域持续扩大不难想象，但这一发展趋势并非毫无挑战。随着游戏获得病毒式传播，要跟进发展步伐且同时向用户提供高性能的体验非常困难。虽然很多游戏服务都免费，但糟糕运作会促使玩家转投其他免费服务，这意味着各公司无法负担以自己的服务器托管游戏的费用。

Gary Orenstein from siliconangle.com

控制服务器蔓延同时维持盈利性是所有在线公司面临的后端困境，且随着游戏日益受追捧，这一问题将更加凸现出来。在游戏高峰时期，开发公司每天需要多提供几百台服务器，方能跟进发展速度。Zynga 曾在2010年表示，他们每周需要提供1000台服务器，方能满足所有游戏的需求。总成本因日益提高的能量消耗（游戏邦注：功率及硬件方面）而提高。数亿资金可能化为泡影，而且有些社交游戏公司据悉每天处理1拍字节的新数据，因此寻找应对此发展势头的解决方案迫在眉睫。

将闪速存储器植入服务器架构中能够减少出现性能延缓，进而跟进社交游戏快速变更的性能需求。闪存可以充当常用数据的存储器，它比DRAM提供更多的容量。将所有应用数据直接存储至闪存服务器上是向玩家呈现内容的最高效方式，这主要通过提供消除滞后问题的必要宽频，促进在线互动。

某家在跟进虚拟角色服务器蔓延问题上遭遇困境的公司通过落实闪速存储方式消除其MMOG（大型多人在线游戏）数据库的瓶颈问题。在转投闪存方式之前，公司日益增多的服务器数量逐步拖垮其商业模式。在图1中，你可以看到，通过将应用和数据库服务器结合起来，以及在闪存上放置密集虚拟计算机（VM），公司得以将表现密度提高5倍。

虽然非I/O密集VM被留在磁盘上，但闪存能够提供一致性能，即便是在高峰游戏时间，确保公司能够在任何负载情况下就所有应用提供高服务质量水准。

图1 from insidesocialgames.com

某在线赌场游戏软件公司就曾因网站流量1年里提高2倍多而遭遇困境，且发展势头依然维持。公司认为，基于闪存的解决方案能够提供必要性能，以跟进其用户发展速度。在设计解决方案的过程中，公司将所有活跃数据移至闪存，连同短期备份——SAN存储其长期备份文件。

通过此解决方案，备份及查看DB的运行时间提高10倍（游戏邦注：从4个小时左右变成25分钟）。图2呈现的是促使此解决方案具有可行性的全新简化架构。

图2 from insidesocialgames.com

闪存能够带来这些性能是因为它在服务器中提供持久存储器的字节。通过PCIe插槽将闪存同CPU直接联系起来令闪存得以充当新的存储层。这一架构让闪存能够在访问高峰提供较高吞吐性能，能够灵活根据用户基础的扩大而扩展——这是社交游戏公司在追求病毒式传播过程中跟进游戏的必要条件。

将闪存当作新的存储层能够协助各公司最大化其紧缩预算，这主要通过减少数据中心空间及降低能量成本。某日本社交游戏公司通过闪速存储器将每机架单位的性能提高80倍。这通过将1U服务器由36个减少至9个实现，同时依然将性能提高4倍（图3）。这不仅降低数据中心的空间，节约能量及提高用户体验，同时还提供系统容量满足未来的性能需求。

figure 03 from insidesocialgames.com

最后，系统性能能够造就或破坏一款社交游戏。现今的玩家希望获得无缝隙体验，当开发者将数百万美元投入下款社交游戏时，他们需确保能够满足热门作品的数据要求。闪存若落实得当，就能够满足这些性能要求，且不打破预算。

Gary Orenstein曾在众多数据中心基础构架公司担任管理者。在加入Fusion-io前，他是MaxiScale的营销副总裁，而在这之前，他是Gear6的营销&业务拓展副总裁。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Social Gaming Infrastructure: Winning with Flash

By Gary Orenstein

With social gaming applications exploding overnight as companies pop up and become smash hits, the industry has never been hotter. Numerous studies have confirmed this trend, showing mobile and online gaming could grow into a $44 billion market by 2014, which would represent 50 percent of global video game revenue. In today’s device-driven world, even adults can’t resist the addictive diversion offered by video games, with 53 percent of U.S. adults saying they regularly play video games of some kind.

With more adults than ever becoming gamers, and 46 percent of adults owning smartphones, it makes sense that the social gaming market would be expanding, but this growth is not without its challenges. As games go viral, keeping up with growth while still providing a high-performance experience for customers can be difficult. And while many gaming services are free, poor performance can cause gamers to move on to another free service, meaning companies cannot afford to play games with their servers.

Keeping server sprawl under control while remaining profitable is the back-end quandary facing all online companies, and it is exacerbated when a game’s popularity explodes. At a game’s peak, it can require several hundred added servers each day to keep up with growth. In 2010, Zynga reported that it adds up to a thousand servers a week to keep up with the demand for all its games. Overall costs are multiplied by increased energy consumption used to power and cool hardware. With billions of dollars on the line, and some social gaming companies reporting to be processing one petabyte of new data every day, finding a solution to manage this growth is imperative.

Incorporating flash memory into server architecture can provide the low latency performance necessary to keep up with the rapidly changing performance demands of social gaming. Flash can be used as a cache for commonly accessed data, providing much larger capacities compared to DRAM. Storing all the application data directly on the server on flash is the most efficient way to deliver content to happy gamers by providing the necessary bandwidth to eliminate lag and facilitate online interaction.

One company experiencing trouble keeping up with server sprawl in its virtualization datacenter implemented a flash memory solution to eliminate bottlenecks in its Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) database. Before turning to flash, the company’s growing number of servers began to strain its business model. In Figure 1, you can see that by combining application and database servers, while placing I/O intensive virtual machines (VMs) on flash, the company was able to improve performance density by more than five times.

While non I/O intensive VMs were left on disk, flash was able to provide consistent performance, even throughout peak playing times, allowing the company to guarantee high service levels to all applications under any load.

An online casino gaming software company experienced trouble when site traffic had more than doubled over a 12 month period, with further growth expected in the future. The company determined that a flash-based solution would provide the necessary performance to keep up with its customer growth. When architecting its solution, the company moved all its active data to flash, along with short-term backup – leaving its SAN to house its long-term backup files.

With this solution, back-up and check DB run times were improved by 10 times, from about four hours to 25 minutes. Figure 2 reviews the new and simplified architecture that made this solution possible.

Flash can deliver such performance because it provides terabytes of persistent memory right within the server. Connecting flash directly to the CPU through the PCIe slot allows flash to act as a new memory tier. This architecture allows flash to deliver the high throughput performance during peak access times and the flexibility to scale linearly as the customer base grows – something social gaming companies need to keep up with a game on its way to going viral.

Using flash as a new memory tier can also help companies maximize tight budgets by reducing data center footprint and cutting energy costs. One Japanese social gaming company used flash memory to improve performance per rack unit by 80 times. This was accomplished by reducing 36 1U servers to 9 1U servers, while still achieving a performance improvement of 4x (Figure 3). Not only does this reduce the data center footprint, save energy and improve user experience, it also provides system capacity to meet future performance demands.

Ultimately, system performance has the ability to make or break a social game. Today’s players expect a seamless experience when they play, and when millions of dollars in resources have already been invested in creating the next big social game, developers should ensure they are prepared to meet the data demands generated by hit titles. Flash, if implemented in the proper way, has the ability to meet these performance demands without breaking budgets.

Gary Orenstein has served in leadership roles at numerous data center infrastructure companies. Prior to Fusion-io, he was the vice president of marketing at MaxiScale, focused on web scale file systems and acquired by Overland Storage. Prior to MaxiScale, he was the vice president of marketing and business development at Gear6, focusing on storage and web caching. He also served as vice president of marketing at Compellent which went public in 2007, and was a co-founder at Nishan Systems, which was acquired by McDATA/Brocade.（Source：insidesocialgames）