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
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

AWS Architecture - GDC 2014

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to AWS Architecture - GDC 2014

Similar to AWS Architecture - GDC 2014 (20)

More from Amazon Web Services

More from Amazon Web Services (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

AWS Architecture - GDC 2014