RESOURCE MANAGEMENT OF SERVER HOSTS IN ONLINE GAME ENVIRONMENT

• US 20120102185A1
• Filed: 10/20/2010
• Published: 04/26/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sony Interactive Entertainment America LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Computer Entertainment America (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Fernandes, Brian
• Application Number:
  US12/908,740
• Publication Number:
  US 20120102185A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/352 involving special game server arrangements, e.g. regional servers connected to a national server or a plurality of servers managing partitions of the game world
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/358 Adapting the game course according to the network or server load, e.g. for reducing latency due to different connection speeds between clients
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/534 for network load management, e.g. bandwidth optimization, latency reduction
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/535 for monitoring, e.g. of user parameters, terminal parameters, application parameters, network parameters
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5022 Workload threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5083 Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/131 Protocols for games, networked simulations or virtual reality

Abstract

Managing resources of server hosts in an online game environment, including: monitoring metrics data of the online game environment including configurable thresholds and rules defined for a game title; processing and analyzing the metrics data; determining whether the metrics data indicates an over or under capacity of the server hosts in the online game environment; sending a first request to locate, deploy, connect, and register additional game servers to the online game environment to support increasing load, when the metrics data indicates the under capacity of the server hosts; and sending a second request to isolate, remove, disconnect, and un-register surplus game servers from the online game environment to make them available to support the player load in other game titles, when the metrics data indicates the over capacity of the server hosts. Keywords include resource management, online gaming, and server architecture.

Claims

1. A method of managing resources of server hosts in an online game environment, the method comprising:

monitoring metrics data of the online game environment including configurable thresholds and rules defined for a game title;

processing and analyzing the metrics data;

determining whether the metrics data indicates an over or under capacity of the server hosts in the online game environment;

sending a first request to locate, deploy, connect, and register additional game servers to the online game environment to support increasing load, when the metrics data indicates the under capacity of the server hosts; and

sending a second request to isolate, remove, disconnect, and un-register surplus game servers from the online game environment to make them available to support the player load in other game titles, when the metrics data indicates the over capacity of the server hosts.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the thresholds and rules defined for a game title include a player count.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the under capacity indicates increase in the player count and a need to add additional server hosts.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the over capacity indicates decrease in the player count and a need to remove surplus server hosts.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the second request to isolate and remove surplus game servers comprises

sending commands to isolate the surplus game servers to be de-commissioned and to initially remove the surplus game servers from a list of server hosts to idle in-progress games.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the second request to disconnect and un-register surplus game servers comprises

shutting down the surplus game servers when the in-progress games are idled.

7. A resource management system to manage resources of server hosts in an online game environment, the system comprising:

an online game environment controller configured to monitor and track players, games, and game servers in the online game environment,

wherein the online game environment controller supports external requests to change the state of the online game environment;

an online game environment monitoring and data collection service configured to monitor and collect system metrics data related to server loading;

an auto-scaling controller configured to process and analyze the system metrics data, and to make scaling decisions based on configurable thresholds and rules defined on a per-game-title basis; and

a server deployment service configured to control deployment, initiation, and termination of the game servers.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the thresholds and rules include a player count.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the server deployment service includes a registration module to locate, deploy, connect, and register additional game servers to support an increasing player load, when the player count increases.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the auto-scaling controller includes an interface that requests the online game environment controller to isolate, remove, and disconnect surplus game servers from a load balancing pool of available servers, when the player count decreases.

11. A non-transitory tangible storage medium storing a computer program for managing resources of server hosts in an online game environment, the computer program comprising executable instructions that cause a computer to:

monitor metrics data of the online game environment including configurable thresholds and rules defined for a game title;

process and analyze the metrics data;

determine whether the metrics data indicates an over or under capacity of the server hosts in the online game environment;

send a first request to locate, deploy, connect, and register additional game servers to the online game environment to support increasing load, when the metrics data indicates the under capacity of the server hosts; and

send a second request to isolate, remove, disconnect, and un-register surplus game servers from the online game environment to make them available to support the player load in other game titles, when the metrics data indicates the over capacity of the server hosts.

12. The non-transitory tangible storage medium of claim 11, wherein the thresholds and rules defined for a game title include a player count.

13. The non-transitory tangible storage medium of claim 12, wherein the under capacity indicates increase in the player count and a need to add additional server hosts.

14. The non-transitory tangible storage medium of claim 12, wherein the over capacity indicates decrease in the player count and a need to remove surplus server hosts.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein executable instructions that cause a computer to send a second request to isolate and remove surplus game servers comprises executable instructions that cause a computer to

send commands to isolate the surplus game servers to be de-commissioned and to initially remove the surplus game servers from a list of server hosts to idle in-progress games.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein executable instructions that cause a computer to send a second request to disconnect and un-register surplus game servers comprises executable instructions that cause a computer to

shut down the surplus game servers when the in-progress games are idled.