Mastering Game Operations: From RAID Configurations to Load Balancer Choices

Operations (运维) refers to the maintenance of an organization’s established network hardware and software to ensure services run smoothly, encompassing network, systems, databases, development, security, and monitoring.

Game operations are divided into development operations (building tools and platforms), application operations (deploying, maintaining, troubleshooting business services), and system operations (providing underlying infrastructure such as systems, networks, monitoring, hardware).

These three roles support each other: development and system operations supply tools and infrastructure for application operations.

Operations staff frequently collaborate with game operators, who coordinate launch schedules, server counts, user acquisition, and activity planning.

When managing 300 servers, a typical approach includes using a jump host with unified accounts, employing configuration management tools such as Salt, Ansible, or Puppet, and maintaining a simple CMDB for system, configuration, and application information.

RAID levels:

RAID 0 combines multiple disks for high read/write speed but offers no redundancy.

RAID 1 mirrors two disks, providing 100% redundancy at the cost of storage efficiency.

RAID 5 uses at least three disks, offering a balance of redundancy and capacity with moderate performance.

RAID 10 combines mirroring and striping for high performance and redundancy.

Typical RAID choices: single servers often use RAID 1 for system disks; database servers may use RAID 10 for primary and RAID 5 for replicas; web servers with modest data may use RAID 5 or RAID 0.

Load balancer comparison:

LVS operates at layer 4, providing port forwarding only.

HAProxy works at layers 4 and 7, offering professional proxy capabilities.

Nginx functions as a web server, cache, and reverse proxy, capable of layer 7 forwarding.

Selection guidance: for high concurrency, choose LVS; for small‑to‑medium traffic, HAProxy or Nginx are sufficient, with HAProxy favored for its simplicity in medium‑sized enterprises.

Proxy servers comparison:

All three (Squid, Varnish, Nginx) act as proxies.

Varnish provides superior in‑memory caching performance and flexible management.

Squid offers extensive documentation and broad adoption.

Nginx primarily serves as a reverse proxy/web server, with caching via modules.

In caching scenarios, professional solutions like Squid or Varnish are preferred.

Middleware is software that sits above the OS to manage resources and network communication, enabling disparate applications to exchange information across platforms.

The JDK (Java Development Kit) is the development environment for building Java applications, applets, and components.

Tomcat ports:

8005 – shutdown port.

8009 – AJP connector port for Apache integration.

8080 – default HTTP port for applications.

CDN (Content Delivery Network) distributes website content to edge locations nearest users, reducing latency and improving access speed.