VPS Hosting for a Counter-Strike Game Server

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So, you’ve caught the Counter-Strike bug, become an expert at playing the game, and now you want to go further. You want to test your skills out against the best, baddest players out there, and you’ve decided that the best way to do this is to set up a Counter-Strike VPS game server. A Counter-Strike VPS game server is a cheap way to host online Counter-Strike tournaments, whether just between you and your friends or inviting world class champions of the game to participate from anywhere around the world.

There are two main types of game server VPS hosts – Windows VPS server hosts and Linux VPS server hosts. They are both easy to use, although if you are a beginner, a Windows server will probably be best for you. It’s not crucial to have huge amounts of bandwidth in order to run a speedy server without lag. If it will just be you and your friends playing, 256 kbps will probably be enough bandwidth. As a general rule, it’s good to have about 500 kbps for every ten players that will be participating. In other words, if your game server VPS host will have 30 players participating, you should have a bandwidth of about 1,500 kbps.

You should also have about 700 megabytes of memory available for every ten players you will be hosting. Of course, more memory is always better, but the above figure is a good minimum to shoot for. Additionally, you will need a big hard drive with a large cache size and a fast CPU – 2.4Ghz will be good to start with. As you grow in size and popularity, you will need to upgrade your specs. Once your number of players exceeds your recommended bandwidth or memory, you should consider upgrading your server specs to maintain peak performance.

Many VPS game servers come with the Plesk control panel. Fortunately, Plesk VPS has a built-in plugin for Counter-Strike. If your VPS host does not come with the Plesk control panel, download the HLDS update tool from one of the following links and use it to download and install the Counter Strike server files. Here is a link to the HLDS update tool for windows. If your server is running Linux, you can download this HLDS update tool. Make sure your server has Steam and AMXMODX installed. If not, download and install them onto your server.

Now you are armed with all the tools you’ll need to run a successful Counter-Striker VPS server at whatever scale you choose, large or small. Have fun!