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What are the limitations one will come across when running a dedicated server from with a virtual machine on Steam?

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Why the close vote? –  Woot4Moo Jul 8 '10 at 16:46
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up vote 6 down vote accepted

The wonderful thing about virtual machines is that they are "virtually" identical to real machines. Assuming the host is a powerful enough computer, there should be no problems. However if you run it alongside other virtual machines you may run into the obvious problems such as bandwidth starvation (if multiple machines share one network adapter) or CPU starvation (as they all share one machine's CPU(s)).

There should be no problems that are unique to the fact that it's a virtual machine, though!

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In theory there'll be no limitations at all when it comes to the software, it'll all run just as it should. Unfortunately if you're running a game server inside a virtual machine you've got to consider that you'll be running 2 operating systems which means 2 large sets of processes, a dedicated machine inside one of those large sets of processes which is generating it's own set of processes.

However this is only a problem if the server is run from a private machine. If you are paying for a VPN service this will not be as big of a problem.

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VPN stands for "virtual private network" and has nothing to do with virtual machines. I think you mean VPS ("virtual private server")? –  SevenSidedDie Oct 23 '13 at 16:13
A virtual private network contains many virtual machines therefore if you are paying for a VPN service then you would have more resources at your disposal than you would if you were running the virtual machine on you own personal computer, at least this would be the case in most average scenarios. –  Nicholas_Moughler Oct 24 '13 at 15:29
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