i3D.net Gain Competitive Advantage with Kingston

Опубликовано 17 апреля 2023, 7:39

i3D.net began in 2004 when the Managing Director put together his first server for gaming customers. Since then, he’s built a managed hosting provider company with thousands of servers on 6 continents. i3D.net offers solutions for game publishers, enterprises, IT service providers with worldwide hosting or connectivity demands.

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Business challenge
For gaming customers, performance translates into game servers that minimize lag times, but that's particularly important for twitch-game (first-person shooter) titles that rely upon prompt screen refreshes to deliver a satisfactory, multi-player game user experience.

With the release of new games and gaming platforms like Xbox® and PlayStation®, the technical engineers at i3D.net must continuously raise the bar on server capabilities. Previously, the high loads stressed out the servers. But since i3D.net upgraded them with Kingston memory and was able to double the number of gaming instances.

What were the benefits?
• Gained competitive advantage by offering flexible server configurations.
• Optimized servers (memory & SSDs) for performance, capacity and IOPS.
• Doubled number of instances gaming servers can run.
• Significantly increased number of virtual systems corporate servers can run.
• More easily meet 99.99 percent Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification to retain and gain customers.
• Slashed DRAM failures by 50 percent since standardizing on Kingston memory modules.
Durable, enterprise-class SSDs deliver 30,000 program/erase cycles — up to 10 times those of competing solutions.

Technology Solution
Maximizing server memory performance for gaming customers
i3D.net specialists worked with Kingston’s experts to identify the maximum memory speed supported by legacy server processors. They also reviewed chipset specs to understand the processor memory support rules. Then, they recommended the best Kingston memory modules and configurations to meet performance goals. To extend the service life of existing servers, specialists recommended the use of high-density modules that left memory slots available for future memory expansions.

More Virtualization with Kingston RAM
To support corporate virtualization requirements, it was necessary to upgrade servers to the maximum memory capacity they could support. To meet this need, Kingston specialists recommended the largest capacity memory modules the company provides.

"Our emphasis on markedly increasing IOPS was really driven by our customers’ demand for it. Kingston engineers showed us how to achieve that end using SSDs. When you replace the millisecond read-write times of HDDs with the microsecond times of SSDs, that adds up to a lot of IOPS per server." - explains the Managing Director.

Business Results
Kingston memory modules, SSDs and Ask an Expert services helped i3D.net realize a number of business and technical benefits.

Significant server performance enhancements deliver competitive advantage
i3D’s new online gaming platforms can accommodate 60–100 players per instance running on i3D.net servers. "We’ve been able to double the gaming instances from 32 to 64, with some servers able to handle up to 100. And we’ve done that while limiting lag to deliver an enjoyable user experience."

Enterprise-class reliability supports Service Level Agreements
Another key element to i3D.net’s success is its SLA guarantee of 99.99 percent availability. To ensure this standard, i3D.net technicians log and analyze device failure incidents.

"The Kingston solutions have definitely made it easier for us to meet our SLAs. The MTBF [mean time between failures] of their modules is incredible. Since we started using them, we’ve reduced DRAM failures by 50 percent. And because we use Kingston as our default brand, we don’t have to de-bug memory from different brands so we’re saving 10 percent in staff labor hours as well." - says the Managing Director.

These results stem from Kingston’s rigorous testing, and quality assurance procedures. Consequently, Kingston backs its memory products with a lifetime warranty while the Enterprise SSD product line is backed by a five-year warranty.

KingstonCare and Ask an Expert services deliver added value
Kingston offers a suite of free services collectively titled KingstonCare. These include hassle-free RMA (return merchandise authorization) plus RMA product cross-shipping and on-site device spares. Together, the services are designed to reduce customer downtime and promote the meeting of SLAs.

"At i3D.net, we only work with the highest quality A-brand hardware and partners. i3D.net and Kingston have been partners since 2004. Over time, Kingston has proven to deliver high-quality products." - COO at i3D.net