Minimum server requirements for casino software

In order for our products to be able to run smoothly on your website, the following server configuration is mandatory:

Software Requirements

Operating system (mandatory)	Linux (Almalinux, Red Hat, etc.) Windows Server is compatible, but not recommended unless you have very powerful hardware
Web Services (mandatory)	-Apache 2.4+ (or LiteSpeed WebServer) with mod_rewrite, mod_deflate; IMPORTANT: Apache MPM Prefork (Multi-Processing Module) must be used for Thread Safety (do not use MPM Worker); -PHP 8.2; -Server API for PHP: PHP-FPM(FastCGI) or LSAPI(this is newer and better); -MySQL 8; - Memcached Daemon on port 11211; -SSL certificate for HTTPS connection (if not using CloudFlare);
PHP Extensions (*mandatory - ignoring any of these will cause improper functionality)	- *mysqli - *PHP GD - *PHP XML - *PHP cURL - *PHP ZIP - *PHP OpenSSL - *PHP GMP - *PHP OpCache - *PHP Intl - PHP Memcached Extension - *Source Guardian Loader 14 (for PHP 8.2) NOTE: SourceGuardian 14 is available through cPanel and EasyApache; (tutorial for manual installation of SG can be found here)
Additional server settings (mandatory)	-PHP short_open_tag=On -MYSQL Strict mode must be turned Off (sql_mode="")
SSL Certificate (mandatory)	You will need to have installed a SSL certificate for your web domain.

Other Recommendations

-spend 20 minutes to order a Dedicated Server: We advise you to rent a server which is placed in a secure datacenter, in order to avoid any problems caused by power loss or internet downtime. The servers should be located in a country which is closer to the area from which most of your players are located. EG:If you mostly target players from USA, then your server should be in USA. The servers should be fully managed by the hosting company. In this case if you need tweaking or some settings modified, you would just need to write them a ticket and they would do it. We recommend www.FastComet.com for this.

-spend 10 minutes to write a support ticket to the hosting company: ask them to install the extensions above (just show them our link) and to also ask them to enable using OpCache, Varnish and APC for dynamic content caching (this makes the PHP code to be executed faster and optimises server response time and decreases the server memory usage). We can send you the exact text to write in your ticket.

-spend 15 minutes to create an account on CloudFlare: CloudFlare can be used for security, SSL certificate, firewall and to speed up website loading by caching static content. All you need to do is to create an account and add your domain there and then we can help you with the configuration.

Website Performance

The response time of the games is the most important asset of any successful online gaming business. The players cannot tolerate waiting "for the games to think". That is why, when we designed our platform and games, our goal was to make this as fast and efficient as possible. We are using the latest technology, with advanced caching, efficient queries and optimised code to ensure maximum performance.

The response time is influenced by the amount of users playing at the same time and by the power of the server hardware. Since the code and software are optimized, it is now the job of the server to have a good amount of resources from the hardware, to keep up with the requests. Below you can find multiple server recommendations based on the maximum number of players that you expect to have. All these recommendations are based on real tests that we performed on our software that we installed on various servers. CWSAPISOFT.com is our test domain used exclusively for server testing.

Tests

The tests below should help you understand what server to purchase based on the expected number of players.

Server Type	RAM CPU Cores	Concurrent Users	Average Response Time (seconds)	Peak Concurrent Users	Response Time at Peak (seconds)	Replay Test	Server Cost/Month	Cost per 100 users	*Potential profit
VPS	8GB 4cores	100	0.484s	192	1.112s	View test replay	100$/mo (FastComet.com)	1.0$/mo	1,658,880$/mo
DS	4GB 2cores	150	0.248s	299	1.110s	View test replay	41$/mo (CloudWays.com)	0.3$/mo	2,583,360$/mo
DS	8GB 4cores	200	0.404	400	1.509s	View test replay	200$/mo (CloudWays.com)	1.0$/mo	3,456,000$/mo
DS	16GB 8cores	320	0.214s	522	0.727s	View test replay	320$/mo (CloudWays.com)	1.0$/mo	4,510,080$/mo
DS	16GB 8cores	330	0.293s	635	0.727s	View test replay	320$/mo (CloudWays.com)	1.0$/mo	5,486,400$/mo
DS	32GB 16cores	500	0.247s	823	0.682s	View test replay	500$/mo (CloudWays.com)	1.0$/mo	7,110,720$/mo
DS	32GB 16cores	700	0.457s	900	1.688s	View test replay	500$/mo (CloudWays.com)	0.7$/mo	7,776,000$/mo
DS	64GB 32cores	1000	0.373s	2000	0.479s	View test replay	847$/mo (CloudWays.com)	0.8$/mo	17,280,000$/mo
DS	128GB 64cores	2500	0.494s	4000	0.580s	View test replay	1680$/mo (CloudWays.com)	0.7$/mo	34,560,000$/mo
DS	128GB 64cores	3000	0.665s	5000	0.815s	View test replay	1680$/mo (CloudWays.com)	0.6$/mo	43,200,000$/mo

Conclusion

The software is scalable vertically (by increasing CPU/RAM). Since we are using PHP-FPM, the server API automatically adjusts the workers (number of connections that it can handle) so you won't need to bother with handling the server configuration. The ratio between RAM, Users and Server Costs is almost the same, meaning that for every 1$ spent you can allow 1 more concurrent user, so spending 100$ can let you handle 100 concurrent users. As your server becomes larger, the RAM&CPU costs decrease, so you will be able to handle more users for a cheaper cost. EG: handling 500 users on 16GB RAM costs around 1$/user, whereas handling 3000 users on 128GB RAM will cost around ~0.57$/user.

IMPORTANT: The tests were performed using loader.io. We define "concurrent users" in our tests as being players who click SPIN in the exact same second. So 1000 concurrent users means 1000 players clicking SPIN every second in a slot game for example. However, in most games, after the player clicks SPIN/DEAL/PLAY the animations play for around 1-2 second so only at peak time you would have 1000 concurrent requests from 1000 users.

*Potential profit/month is estimated with a 2% house edge, assuming that players play 1$/spin and they click SPIN once every 3 seconds and that these events happens for only 12h/day (we exclude completely any low peak hours when players are not usually online, even if during those times you'd still have activity)

Recommended hosting companies: www.FastComet.com if you need someone to help you with managing/monitoring the server, otherwise CloudWays.com if you have a developer to manage/monitor the server.

FastComet	vs	CloudWays
They use cPanel and this makes server handling easier for the developers, but it uses more server resources and slows the server by around 15-20%		No cPanel, servers are more efficient, but harder to manage because no cPanel or built-in tools
Support helps a lot with all sorts of things (investigations, updates, monitoring, problems, etc.)		Support also doesn't install any extensions/services and you need a developer experienced in server management, to do most things.
Scalability is only up to 128GB and takes several hours		Servers can be scaled up to 384GB and takes 10 minutes

Gaming Statistics

A top social casino has around 6 million users monthly, according to statistics gathered by statista.com.
According to statistics from casino.org, a player loses around 38$ in average, at slot games. If a player plays 1$ per round in any game, he would need to play at least 800 rounds, on a 95% RTP in order to lose 38$.

A careful monitoring of the response time, server uptime and server resources will ensure a pleasant experience to your players and will tell you when it's time to upgrade to better hardware.

We recommend that your server is monitored in the first few weeks of activity (by the hosting company) to ensure that there are no memory limitations or connection limitations put in place by the hosting company that could cause the games to respond slower. More specifically, depending on the number of users that you will have, you may need to have more RAM, more CPUs and/or a larger value for the apache "workers" and "children" settings.