Game Server Hosting Company

Overview

Starting in 2018, I founded and operated a game server hosting company providing managed game server instances to customers. The business combined technical infrastructure operations with customer service, billing, and community management.

This wasn't a hobby project—it was a real business serving paying customers who expected uptime, performance, and support.

Features

• Multi-Tenant Provisioning - Isolated game server instances with AMP panel management
• Automated Monitoring - Prometheus metrics with Grafana dashboards and Discord alerts
• Hybrid Infrastructure - Distributed across home servers and VPS for cost and security optimization
• Customer Self-Service - Web panel for server management, restarts, and configuration
• Billing Integration - Payment processing with subscription and one-time purchase options
• Community Support - Discord-based support channels with ticket workflows

Technical Highlights

Control Plane

AMP (Application Management Panel) provided the multi-tenant foundation:

• Instance provisioning and lifecycle management
• Resource allocation and limits per customer
• Web-based management interface for customers
• API for automation and integration

The panel abstracted infrastructure complexity, letting customers manage their servers without needing Linux expertise.

Monitoring Infrastructure

Production game servers demand visibility:

• Prometheus scraped metrics from all instances
• Grafana dashboards showed server health, player counts, and resource utilization
• Discord alerts notified me of issues before customers reported them
• Custom exporters tracked game-specific metrics

This monitoring stack caught problems early and enabled data-driven capacity decisions.

Hybrid Hosting Model

The infrastructure spanned multiple locations:

Home Infrastructure:

• Higher-capacity hardware for cost efficiency
• Direct control over hardware and networking
• Lower latency for geographically nearby customers

VPS Instances:

• Geographic distribution for customer proximity
• Additional capacity for demand spikes
• Separation of public-facing ingress from home network

Traffic routing ensured customers connected to optimal endpoints while my home infrastructure remained protected behind controlled ingress.

Security Architecture

Multi-tenant hosting requires strong boundaries:

• Customer instances isolated from each other
• Management interfaces protected from public access
• Ingress controlled through allowlists and firewalls
• Regular security updates and patching

A single compromised customer instance couldn't affect others or access infrastructure.

Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph customers [Customers]
        Players[Game Clients]
        Admins[Server Admins]
    end
    
    subgraph frontend [Frontend]
        Store[Storefront]
        Panel[AMP Panel UI]
    end
    
    subgraph control [Control Plane]
        AMP[AMP Controller]
        Billing[Billing System]
        Provisioning[Provisioning]
    end
    
    subgraph data [Data Plane]
        subgraph home [Home Infrastructure]
            HomeInstances[Game Instances]
            HomeStorage[World Storage]
        end
        
        subgraph vps [VPS Infrastructure]
            VPSInstances[Game Instances]
            VPSStorage[World Storage]
        end
    end
    
    subgraph observability [Observability]
        Prometheus[Prometheus]
        Grafana[Grafana]
        Discord[Discord Alerts]
    end
    
    Players --> HomeInstances
    Players --> VPSInstances
    Admins --> Panel --> AMP
    Store --> Billing --> Provisioning --> AMP
    AMP --> HomeInstances
    AMP --> VPSInstances
    HomeInstances --> Prometheus
    VPSInstances --> Prometheus
    Prometheus --> Grafana --> Discord

Business Operations

Customer Lifecycle

The customer journey:

1. Discovery - Marketing and word-of-mouth referrals
2. Purchase - Storefront selection and payment
3. Provisioning - Automated instance creation
4. Onboarding - Panel access and initial configuration
5. Operation - Self-service management with support available
6. Retention - Subscription renewals and upsells

Support Workflows

Customer support through Discord:

• Ticket channels for issue tracking
• Knowledge base for common questions
• Escalation paths for complex problems
• Response time expectations and SLAs

Good support was a competitive differentiator. Customers stayed because problems got solved quickly.

Capacity Management

Balancing resources across customers:

• Monitoring utilization to identify over-provisioned instances
• Fair resource allocation preventing noisy neighbors
• Capacity planning for growth
• Cost optimization without sacrificing performance

Scale

At peak operation:

• Multiple game types supported (Minecraft, various others)
• Concurrent players across the platform reaching 100+
• Paying customers with recurring subscriptions
• Staff team helping with support and moderation

Lessons Learned

Running this business taught me:

• Multi-tenancy is hard - Isolation, fairness, and security require constant attention
• Monitoring is non-negotiable - You can't run what you can't see
• Support is product - Technical excellence means nothing if customers can't get help
• Automation enables scale - Manual processes break at customer volume
• Business ops matter - Billing, communication, and process are as important as infrastructure

Current Status

The business continues on an intermittent basis. The infrastructure and operational knowledge remain valuable, and the experience directly informed my approach to professional platform and DevOps work.

The skills built here—multi-tenant operations, monitoring, customer-facing service delivery, and business operations—transfer directly to enterprise platform engineering.