Game Servers

What this page covers

A game server is one container running one game for one customer. This article covers the list of them, the per-server management screen your staff use, and the matching screen the customer sees in their own portal. Where a control exists on only one of the two, that is said.

How to reach it

Open VPS → Game Hosting → Servers. The page is titled Game Servers, subtitled “Every game container, whether billed or adopted”.

Servers are also listed per machine on a node's own Servers tab — see Game Nodes.

How a game server comes into existence

By an order. There is no create-a-server button in this module: the module's Create → Game server entry opens the order form filtered to game products, because a game server is something a customer owns, with a service, an invoice and a billing cycle behind it. See New Order.

A server also appears here when an existing container is adopted onto the platform. Those arrive unlinked to any billing service until you link them.

The server list

Columns

Column	What it shows
Server	Its name, with its short identifier underneath.
Status	What the panel is doing with the server.
Game	Whether the game itself is up — a different question from the status.
Node	The machine it runs on.
Runs	The catalogue entry behind it.
Memory	The memory the server was built with.
Slots	Player slots, where the game uses them.
Client	The customer's email address, or Not linked to a billing service.
Created	When the record was made.

Filters sit above the table and ride in the page address, so a filtered view can be pasted into a ticket: status, node, and billing link (Billed or not, Linked to a service, Not linked to a service). The search box matches server name, short identifier, node name, game and the customer's email address. Dashboard alerts link straight here already filtered.

Status

Panel status

Status	Meaning
Creating	The record exists and the build has been asked for.
Installing	The machine is downloading and laying down the game's files.
Install failed	The install did not finish. This attempt is over; a retry starts fresh.
Running	The container is up.
Stopped	The container is down.
Suspended	Stopped deliberately, with file access revoked, usually for non-payment.
Error	Something went wrong and needs a look.
Orphaned	The panel holds a record and the machine does not. Nothing can be done to it until that is reconciled.
Terminated (files retained)	Ended. The record and the customer's files are kept; the ports have gone back.

Game state

Separate from the status, and deliberately so. The container being switched on is not the same as the game being up. Values are Up, Down, Starting up, Crashed, Unknown (the machine looked and could not tell) and Not reported yet (nobody has looked — normal on a freshly created server).

Where the container is running and the game is not, both panels say so in words: that is usually a crash, a bad configuration file, or not enough memory, and the console holds the last lines it printed.

Unbilled and unbuilt

A banner appears above the list when servers are running that nobody is being billed for. Each is either an adopted container that was never linked, or a service that was terminated while the server stayed up.

Below the table sits the reconciliation report, Unbilled and unbuilt — “Game servers nobody is being charged for, and services nothing was ever built for”. It is generated on its own and stamped with the time it was checked. Four sections:

• Running, billed to nobody — deleting a billing service leaves its server running. Link each one to a service, or terminate it.
• Running on a closed service — the customer's service is cancelled or terminated, but the container is still holding memory, disk and a port.
• Paid for, never built — services being invoiced with no game server at all. Provision them or refund them.
• Not heard from — the machine has not reported on these servers for hours, so the state on screen is one nobody has confirmed.

Each row offers Link to a service or Open the server. When everything is in order the report says so.

The server page

Click a server to open it. The header carries its name, its status, its game state, and a marker when it is not linked to a billing service. Directly under the header sits the power strip, above the tabs — because the moment power is wanted is usually while looking at something else, such as a console scrolling nothing.

Ten tabs, and the tab rides in the page address so a view can be linked to: Overview, Ports, Variables, Activity, Settings, Console, Files, Mods, Backups, Schedules.

The last five are drawn from what the server can actually do right now. A tab that cannot work is shown, visibly disabled, with the reason stated — never as a tab that fails when opened. The reasons are a closed list:

Why a surface is unavailable

Reason shown	What it means
The server is still installing its files.	It becomes available once that finishes.
This server is suspended.	Access is deliberately revoked while it is.
This server has been terminated.	No longer available.
The panel cannot reach the node this server runs on.	An infrastructure problem, not a plan problem.
This node is frozen by the game node licence count.	It refuses to reconfigure anything; servers already on it keep running.
The plan this server was sold on does not include this.	Upgrading adds it — backups are the usual case.
The game node runtime is in stub mode.	Nothing is being asked of any machine. See Game Settings.

Power

Start, Stop, Restart and Force stop. A power action is queued on the machine and the state updates when the job comes back — the panel says so rather than pretending the change is instant.

Warning: Force stop kills the container outright. The game is never asked to save and quit, so anything since its last autosave is lost. Stop and Restart both give the game the configured shutdown window to save. Force stop asks for confirmation.

A staff member holding only the view permission sees the buttons read-only, with a line saying their role can watch this server but not change it.

Overview tab

Four tiles: Memory (with the swap allowance, or No swap allowance), CPU share (percent of one core, enforced by the container runtime), Disk (enforced by a filesystem quota, not a periodic size walk) and Player slots (priced, and written into the game's own configuration).

Where it runs lists the node, panel status, game state, connection address, extra ports and last seen. What it is sold as lists the plan, the catalogue entry, the billing service with the customer's email, the short identifier and the creation date.

Banners appear here for a suspended server (with its reason) and for a terminated one (with when the files are scheduled to be wiped). A further line appears when the catalogue has newer content for this server's game and the server is still on the version you approved, with a link to review the pending change — see Game Catalogue.

Ports tab

The address customers connect to, and every extra port the plan paid for. Columns: Purpose (the main connection, or an extra port, with a Primary badge), Address, Protocol and Notes.

Ports are assigned when the server is built and are not editable here. Re-check on the node asks the machine to confirm the mapping; the answer appears on the Activity tab.

A server with no primary port has no address to give players. The page says plainly that this is a provisioning fault rather than a configuration choice.

Variables tab

What the game exposes as start-up settings, and the values this server was built with. Each variable can carry three markers: Customer may edit, Reaches the installer and Secret.

A secret shows only whether a value is set; typing replaces it. Changes are written into the container's environment and take effect the next time the server starts, not immediately — the tab says so above the fields. An unsaved-changes count sits by the Save button. A game that declares no variables says so rather than showing an empty form.

Activity tab

Every action that touches the container becomes a job here, with whatever the machine said about it. Columns: Job, Status, Queued, Took and Detail. Statuses are Queued, Claimed, Running, Completed, Failed, Timed out and Cancelled.

Job types are named in plain words: create the server, power action, apply new limits, file operation, mod operation, take a backup, restore a backup, publish port mappings, refresh file access keys, reconcile with the node, probe the node, apply the network fence, delete the server.

This is the first place to look when something did not happen: a job stuck at Queued means no agent has picked it up.

Settings tab

Identity holds the server Name (required), Tags, and Internal notes — staff only; the customer never sees them. Nothing saves until you press Save.

Billing shows which service the server is billed through, or warns that it is not linked to one so nobody is being charged for it.

Power and lifecycle carries five actions:

Lifecycle actions

Action	What happens
Suspend	The container is stopped and file access is revoked. The ports and the world data are kept, so an unsuspend brings the customer back to the same address. Takes a reason shown to staff.
Unsuspend	The container is started again and file access restored. The customer comes back to the same address.
Terminate	The record is kept and the customer's files are left on the machine. The ports go back to the pool after the reuse cooldown. You must type the server's name to confirm — the panel checks it, not just the dialog.
Link to a service	Attaches the server to a billing service. The customer starts being charged on that service's next invoice. A service can back only one game server.
Unlink from the service	The server keeps running and nobody is charged for it. It appears in the unbilled report until it is linked again or terminated.

The link dialog searches by service, product or customer, and says when it is showing only part of the matches so you narrow the search rather than assume the rest do not exist.

There is no reinstall, no resize and no delete on this page. A server's size changes by add-on or upgrade path; a server that must genuinely go is terminated.

Console tab

A live view of what the container is printing, with a box to type commands into. Selecting the tab is what opens the session and leaving is what closes it — nobody holds a console open against a machine by leaving a page parked.

On attach, recent scrollback is replayed and a line marks where it ends and live output begins. States are shown as Not connected, Connecting, Attached, Live, Reconnecting, Disconnected and Connection error, with a Reconnect button. After repeated reconnects it stops trying and asks you to reload.

Clear clears your screen only; nothing on the machine is touched. Arrow keys walk back through commands you have already sent. Jump to the newest line returns to the tail.

Two protections show up as notices:

• Output throttling. A server printing far more than usual is warned in strikes, and a server that will not stop printing is stopped automatically — almost always a crash loop or a broken configuration file. Where the browser falls behind, output is held back or lines are dropped, and the panel says how many rather than hiding it.
• Input limits. An over-long line is not forwarded, and sending too many messages at once disconnects the socket.

Disconnect everyone closes every live console on this server, including the customer's own. They can open a new one unless the server is also suspended.

Opening a console needs the view permission; typing into one needs the edit permission, and that is re-checked on every attach. A watch-only session is labelled as such and its input box is disabled.

Files tab

A browser-based file manager rooted at the server's own folder, with a breadcrumb path. Columns: Name, Size, Permissions, Changed and Actions.

Operations: Edit, Download, Rename, Change mode, Create archive, Extract here, Delete, New folder and Upload. Multiple items can be selected. Deleting warns that there is no undo from here and suggests a backup first; extracting warns that files with the same name are overwritten.

The editor opens text files in place. Where a file is longer than the editor loads, saving is turned off and the panel says why: saving would cut off everything below what is on screen. Use file transfer for the whole file. A file too large for the browser is refused with the same advice.

Some files are protected on some games. That is a panel filter, not a file permission — the file is still the customer's over file transfer. Files are read-only while a server is suspended or installing, and for staff holding only the view permission.

Where a restore was interrupted, the customer's previous files are left in a clearly marked folder rather than deleted, and both panels explain what it is and that deleting it frees the space.

File access

The Files tab also carries the file-access card. It holds the SFTP host, port, username and a ready-made connection string.

The password belongs to that server alone and is never the customer's panel password. It is shown once, at creation, in the welcome email; nothing here can read it back. Reset password mints a new one, shows it once, and pushes it to the machine.

Warning: Resetting disconnects anyone currently connected with the old password immediately, including any tool set to sync automatically. Tell the customer before doing it to a live server.

File access is revoked while a server is suspended or terminated, and a client will simply be refused. A server that is not linked to a service has nobody to issue access to; link it first.

Mods tab

The mods installed on the server, where the game supports them: what is installed, from which source, at which version, with a checksum. Show removed reveals previously installed ones. Remove deletes the file from the customer's server; any world data the mod created is left alone, and the server needs a restart before the change takes effect.

There is deliberately no install control on the staff side. Installing a mod is the customer's own action on their own server. On the customer's side, the tab searches the mod sources you have enabled, filtered to versions that work on their server, and installs the chosen one; a file already uploaded into the server's mod folder can instead be registered by name.

No mod file passes through the platform: the panel resolves a download and the machine fetches it directly, checking it against the published checksum. Where a source publishes no checksum, the first install records what was downloaded and every later install is checked against that. Where an author has switched automatic downloads off, or a source cannot be searched, the customer is told so on the row and offered the manual route rather than watching it fail.

Which sources exist, and which need a key, is covered in Game Settings.

Backups tab

Every archive the server holds, and both of the ceilings its plan sells. Tiles: Backups held, Storage used, Failed backups and Kept as — the storage form is chosen from the machine, never from a request. The storage ceiling is labelled with where it came from: set on the plan, from the module default, or no ceiling at all.

The table lists each backup with Backup, State, Size and Taken. States are Waiting for the node, Being taken now, Ready to restore, Being restored, Removal queued and Failed. Where the machine reported a failure, its own words are shown under the table rather than squeezed into a cell.

Take a backup asks for an optional Name — blank uses the time it was taken — and an optional list of paths to leave out, one per line. The machine does the work; the panel only asks for it. The machine stops writing once the plan's storage ceiling is reached, so a backup that would go over it fails there rather than filling the disk.

Lock keeps a backup from being cleared away automatically. It still counts against both ceilings. A locked backup must be unlocked before it can be deleted.

Restore stops the server and replaces its files with the backup's contents. Everything on the server since the backup was taken is lost; the backup itself is kept, and who asked is recorded. The customer's own restore dialog asks them to type the backup's name and offers one option: delete the current files instead of keeping a copy. Normally the current files are moved aside while the backup is unpacked, which needs room for two copies at once; the option exists for a plan that does not have that much space free, and it warns that if the restore then fails there is nothing left to put back.

Delete asks the machine to remove the archive; the row stays, greyed, until the machine confirms the files are gone — so space is never shown back while it is still in use.

Refusals a customer may meet: the plan includes no backups, every backup slot is used, the backups already fill the space the plan includes, a backup or restore is already running, or the server is not built on its machine yet.

Note: Backups are stored on the same machine as the server. They protect against a bad update, a broken mod or a wipe nobody meant to run — not against the loss of the machine. There is no download button; restore a backup to bring its files back, or fetch individual files over file transfer.

Schedules tab

What the server does on a timetable. Up to 25 schedules per server.

Schedule fields

Field	What it does
Name	What it is for, such as Nightly restart.
What it does	Start the server, stop the server, restart the server, or take a backup.
When it runs	Five fields — minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. For example 30 5 * * 1 is 05:30 every Monday.
Only when the server is up	Skip the run instead of starting a server the customer stopped.
Clean shutdown window	Seconds the game is given to save and exit before it is stopped by force.
Active	Turn it off to keep the schedule without running it.

The list shows Last run, Next run and State, with Pause, Resume, Run now, Edit and Delete. Run now runs it immediately and does not affect the next scheduled run. Deleting stops it from now on; nothing it has already done is undone.

Schedules are checked every five minutes, so a run can start up to five minutes after the time you set, and two runs cannot be closer together than that — anything more frequent is refused rather than quietly running late. On the staff side all times are UTC. On the customer's side, times they type are read in the time zone you publish, next runs are shown in their own, and the panel says which is which.

A run that is due but cannot happen is recorded as skipped, with the reason: the server was not up and the schedule only runs when it is; the server was still being built; the machine had not checked in; the server is in an error state; the server or its service has ended; or the service is suspended.

Repeated failures are surfaced. A schedule that has failed several times in a row shows a failure count and its last error here, and raises an alert on the module dashboard — a backup schedule that has silently failed for a month is how customers lose worlds.

Some schedules are marked From the game calendar. Those were switched on for the plan or the server by you, their timetable comes from the catalogue, and they cannot be edited on the server. Switch the event off instead — see Game Settings.

What the customer sees

The game surface appears on the service in the customer's portal — see Managing Your Services. From top to bottom:

• Server status — the panel status and the game state side by side, each explained, with the power buttons. Where the container is up and the game is not, a note explains what that usually means.
• Connect — the address to give players, copyable, with the additional ports underneath, each named for what it is: game, server query, remote console, voice chat, file transfer. The address stays the same while the service is active, including through a suspension.
• Your plan — memory, processor, disk, player slots, backups and the location, in the customer's language rather than in machine units.
• Upgrade this server — the add-ons attached to their product, grouped as Resources, Players, Network, Backups and Support, with per-month or one-off prices. Buying one adds it to an invoice; the server is upgraded as soon as it is paid. Charges are pro-rata to the end of the current billing period and then renew with the server. Add-ons that need a restart say so. Nothing is drawn when a product has no add-ons attached.
• Server settings — the variables the game marks as customer-editable. Sensitive values carry a warning that they are stored on the server and can be read by anyone with access to it.
• File access — their SFTP details and a password reset.
• A tab strip — Console, Files, Backups, Schedules, Mods. A tab their situation does not allow is still clickable, carries a padlock, and opens onto one honest sentence explaining why.

While a service is suspended, every control that would fail is greyed and the page says what settling the invoice will do: the server comes straight back with everything as they left it, at the same address.

Provisioning outcomes

When a build succeeds

The service goes active, its delivery is timestamped, and the welcome email goes out with the connect address and the file-transfer credentials. Nothing before that point marks the service active — an enqueued build is not a delivered one.

When a build fails

The service is marked Provisioning failed with the reason written on it, the ports reserved for the attempt are handed back, and no welcome letter has gone out, so nobody has been told an address. The customer's own page carries a matching sentence and, in every case, the assurance that nothing has been charged for a server that does not exist.

Refusal reasons

Reason	Fix
Game hosting is switched off on this installation.	Enable the module before selling game servers.
No game node can take this server right now.	Every candidate was full, draining, unreachable or out of addresses. Use the plan's placement preview to see which and why.
This node has no free port to give the server.	Seed more port inventory, or move the order to a machine that has some.
The product names no game plan, or one that no longer exists.	Point the product at a live plan.
The plan has been deactivated.	Reactivate it, or move the product to a live plan.
The plan gives less memory than this game needs to start.	Sell the game on a larger plan.
This game is waiting on approval of newly published content.	Review and approve it on the catalogue page.
The build itself failed.	The specific reason is on the service record.

One outcome is not a failure. Where the chosen name was already taken on that machine, the server is built under a differentiated one and everything else is exactly what was ordered. The name is a label only — the container and the file-transfer account are keyed on the server's short identifier, so nothing collided.

Retrying and cleaning up

Open the service and use Retry deployment — see Service Details. Fix the cause first. A retry never builds a second server for a service that already has one, and a failed install is a terminal attempt, so the retry starts fresh rather than being told the service is already provisioned.

Where a record exists here but nothing exists on the machine, the server shows as Orphaned and nothing can be done to it until that is reconciled. Where a container is running that nothing bills, use the reconciliation report to link it to a service or terminate it.

What this module does not do

• No reinstall control and no per-server resize control.
• No plan change between different games or versions — that is a new server.
• No player list, no kick or ban, no whitelist management. Player slots are a number sold and written into the game's own configuration.
• No sub-users on a game server; access follows the account that owns the service.
• No backup download and no off-machine backup destination.
• No manual port reassignment. Ports are allocated at build time and can only be re-checked.
• No scheduled console commands. Schedules start, stop, restart or back up.

Related: Game Hosting Overview, Game Nodes, Game Plans, Game Catalogue, Game Settings, Services.