aws architecture - 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

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region


Scale It Way Out

ELB

S3




• ElastiCache

• Memcache

• Redis EC2 EC2 EC2

Region


Scale It Way Out

CloudFront

CDN

ELB

S3

EC2 EC2 EC2

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'])


Big picture slide


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

EC2 EC2 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

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2






④ Connect to Server

⑤ Pull Down Assets

⑥ Other Players Join

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2






④ Connect to Server

⑤ Pull Down Assets

⑥ Other Players Join

⑦ Game Ends

⑧ Update Stats

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2


Multi-Region Game Servers

E2

Region

EC2

Region


Big picture slide


Messages and Queues

ELB

S3

• Simple Notification Service

• HTTP

• SMS

• Mobile Push

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region


Messages and Queues

ELB


• HTTP

• SMS

• Mobile Push

• CloudWatch

• Monitoring

• Alerts

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2

PUB


Messages and Queues

ELB

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2 EC2


• HTTP

• SMS

• Mobile Push

• CloudWatch

• Monitoring

• Alerts

• SQS

• Background Tasks

• Avatar Resizing

• Score Processing


Messages and Queues

ELB

EC2 EC2 EC2

Region

EC2 EC2


• 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

aws architecture - gdc 2014

Technology

aws gaming solutions

git aws

rigid aws

scalable gaming

stats ec2ec2 ec2 region

sane gaming use case

assets game saves ugc

game ends