Scalable Gaming with AWS - GDC 2014

AWS Gaming Solutions | GDC 2014
Scalable Gaming with AWS
Or, How to go from 1,000 to 1,000,000 users without starting over
Nate Wiger @nateware | Principal Gaming Solutions Architect

What's In It For Me?
•  Why AWS for Games?
•  Core Game Backend
•  Scaling Data with DynamoDB
•  Low-Latency Multiplayer with C3
•  Mobile Push Notifications

Gratuitous Logo Slide

Traditional: Rigid AWS: Elastic
Servers
Demand
Capacity
Excess Capacity
Wasted $$
Demand
Unmet Demand
Upset Players
Missed Revenue
Pay As You Scale

Pay As You Scale

10 Regions
51 CloudFront POPs
Continuous Expansion
Global Is Good

Game Backend Concepts
•  Think in terms of API's
•  Get friends, leaderboard
•  HTTP+JSON
•  Binary asset data
•  Mobile push
•  Multiplayer servers

Core Game Backend
ELB
S3
•  Choose Region
•  Elastic Load Balancer
•  Two Availability Zones
•  EC2 for App
•  RDS Database
•  Multi-AZ
•  S3 for Game Data
•  Assets
•  UGC
•  Analytics
Region

Scale It Way Out
ELB
S3
•  Auto Scaling Group
•  Capacity on Demand
•  Respond to Users
EC2EC2EC2
Region

Scale It Way Out
ELB
S3
•  ElastiCache
•  Memcache
•  Redis EC2EC2EC2
Region

Scale It Way Out
CloudFront
CDN
ELB
S3
EC2EC2EC2
Region
•  ElastiCache
•  Memcache
•  Redis
•  CloudFront CDN
•  DLC, Assets
•  Game Saves
•  UGC

Big picture slide

Elastic Beanstalk
•  Managed Container
•  Git Push or Zip Upload
•  ELB, EC2, RDS
•  Web Dashboard
•  Same Performance
•  So Yeah, Use It

Hill Of Beans
ELB
S3
•  Beanstalk Manages
•  ELB
•  EC2
•  Auto Scaling
•  Monitoring
•  RDS
•  Add Other Services
•  S3
•  CloudFront
•  ElastiCache
•  SNS
EC2
Elastic Beanstalk Container
EC2
CloudFront
CDN

More CLI bell
cd
MyGameAPI

eb
init

eb
start

vi
app.rb

require
'sinatra'

get
'/hello.json'
do

{message:
"Hello
World!"}

End

git
commit
–m
"app
updates"
app.rb

git
aws.push

•  Initialize everything
•  Write code
•  Commit to git
•  Push to Beanstalk
•  Coffee / Beer
•  Repeat

Region
Writing Is Painful
Availability
Zone A
Availability
Zone B
S3
EC2
•  Games are Write Heavy
•  Caching of Limited Use
•  Key Value Key Value
•  Binary Structures
•  Database = Bottleneck
ELB
EC2
CloudFront
CDN

Sharding (Not Fun)
Availability
Zone A
C2

DynamoDB
Availability
Zone A
Availability
Zone B
S3
•  NoSQL Data Store
•  Fully-Managed
•  Highly Available
•  PUT/GET Keys
•  Secondary Indexes
•  Provisioned Throughput
•  Auto Scaling
EC2 EC2
ELB
CloudFront
CDN
Elastic Beanstalk Container

Leaderboard in DynamoDB
•  Hash key = Primary key
•  Range key = Sub key
•  Others attributes are
unstructured, unindexed
•  So… How to sort based
on Top Score?

Leaderboard with Secondary Indexes
•  Create a secondary index!
•  Set hash key to Game Level
•  Set range key to Top Score
•  Can now query by Level,
Sorted by Top Score
•  Handles any (sane) gaming
use case

Python Leaderboard
table
=
Table('scores',
schema=[

HashKey('user'),

RangeKey('level')

],

throughput={

'read':
5,
'write':
15

},
global_indexes=[

GlobalAllIndex('highscore',

parts=[

HashKey('level'),

RangeKey('score',
data_type=NUMBER)

],

throughput={

'read':
5,
'write':
15

}

)

])

new_score
=

Item(table,
data={

'user':

user,

'level':
level,

'score':
score

})

new_score.save()

topscores
=
table.query(index='highscore')

for
ts
in
topscores:

print(ts['user'],
ts['score'])

G2 Instance
•  NVIDIA Kepler GPU
•  Game Streaming
•  Rendering Assets
•  Build Servers
•  AppStream!

C3 Instance
•  High packets per second
•  Very low latency, jitter
•  Intel Ivy Bridge CPU
•  SSD's
•  Built for games
•  15 cents / hour

Enhanced Networking (SR-IOV)
Before:
Hypervisor
After:
Hardware

Multiplayer Game Servers
EC2EC2 EC2
Region
•  Beanstalk App
•  Core Session
•  Matchmaking
•  Public Server Tier
•  Direct Client Socket
•  Scale on Players
•  CloudFront CDN
•  DLC, Assets
•  Game Saves
•  UGC
EC2

①  Login via Beanstalk
②  Request Matchmaking
③  Get Game Server IP
EC2EC2 EC2
Region
EC2

④  Connect to Server
⑤  Pull Down Assets
⑥  Other Players Join
EC2EC2 EC2
Region
EC2

④  Connect to Server
⑤  Pull Down Assets
⑥  Other Players Join
⑦  Game Ends
⑧  Update Stats
EC2EC2 EC2
Region
EC2

Multi-Region Game Servers
E2
Region
EC2
Region

Messages and Queues
ELB
S3
•  Simple Notification Service
•  HTTP
•  SMS
•  Mobile Push
EC2EC2EC2
Region

Messages and Queues
ELB
•  HTTP
•  SMS
•  Mobile Push
•  CloudWatch
•  Monitoring
•  Alerts
EC2EC2EC2
Region
EC2
PUB

Messages and Queues
ELB
EC2EC2EC2
Region
EC2EC2
•  HTTP
•  SMS
•  Mobile Push
•  CloudWatch
•  Monitoring
•  Alerts
•  SQS
•  Background Tasks
•  Avatar Resizing
•  Score Processing

Messages and Queues
ELB
EC2EC2EC2
Region
EC2EC2
•  HTTP
•  SMS
•  Mobile Push
•  CloudWatch
•  Monitoring
•  Alerts
•  SQS
•  Background Tasks
•  Avatar Resizing
•  Score Processing
PUB

Wrap It Up Already
•  Start Simple With Beanstalk
•  Go Directly to DynamoDB, Do Not Pass Go
•  CloudFront + S3 for Download and Upload
•  Add Multiplayer - Hybrid
•  Use the EC2 C3 Instance
•  SQS to Decouple and Scale

Cheers – Nate Wiger @nateware

Scalable Gaming with AWS - GDC 2014

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