Will the Linode 360 be enough?

I don't know too much about game servers, but I don't use a lot of bandwidth on my Linode hosting my Rails and PHP apps. If you do run out of bandwidth, you can always upgrade to a bigger Linode, keeping your data and IPs.

SRCDS uses about 60MB on startup and can grow to nearly 200MB or more. It largely depends on how many slots you are running, the amount of precached content, and how many people are actually playing. Also be aware that Valve has been known to release updates with horrible memory leaks (I've seen an instance take > 500MB).

You'll likely be fine with bandwidth and cpu. Most stock installations of srcds and hlds don't require large amounts of cpu time. Bandwidth is reasonably low (less than 10Kbytes/sec per player).

You can always try a 360 and upgrade later if you need more resources. I haven't tried running srcds on a linode yet so I really don't know which level package is required for it to run reasonably well.

Okay, thanks! I think I will stick with the 360, and upgrade if needed. :D

Once you get those servers up and running let me know. Ive installed a CSS server on my Linode 360 running Ubuntu and Ive had performance problems.

If you get it running PLEASE let me know how it works and some more information (Xen/UML, OS, Server conf, etc)!

If I can get it up :? I'm a newbie to virtual servers, so I might have a bit of trouble myself. But I plan on using Debian, since it takes so little space, and is considered a great Linux distro.

Consider Ubuntu, it is very similar to Debian (still apt-get, similar /etc layout etc), but have newer packages in many cases.

Regarding "virtual servers" - there is no difference, you admin vps just like normal remote machine. The only exception is that you can't change your kernel or kernel modules.

@John King:

If I can get it up :? I'm a newbie to virtual servers, so I might have a bit of trouble myself. But I plan on using Debian, since it takes so little space, and is considered a great Linux distro. The setup is trivial, you just pick your distro and the VM is imaged with a system that's ready for you to set up whatever you need. It's much easier than installing Linux on a real machine.

If you know your way around once it's up and running, you'll be fine.

@Mekk:

The only exception is that you can't change your kernel or kernel modules.

Xen kernels have module loading support