Cloud Hosted FG

[Mavrik6666]

We have just put a copy of FG running on an Azure hosted machine, so its always on and available, for players to log in, update character etc,

I wonder if anyone else has done similar, and encountered any issues,problems or concerns ?

Mav

[Trenloe]

It's been talked about before. The main issue is how is this used by the GM? Do they remote desktop or similar into the cloud based instance of FG and does that provide OK screen update performance? Or, when you want to game, do you shut it down and transfer the files locally to the GM to setup another instance with the data from the cloud? Or something else?

[Mavrik6666]

as its a virtual instance of a Windows machine, its used in the same way... you attach, desktop is running, FG app is running and players connect with a web address as opposed to an ip address or alias, so no refresh to worry about and is actually quicker than most peoples internet upload if they are running as a DM

[Trenloe]

If your GMs happy with the window size and screen refresh rate for their remote desktop connection then you should be fine.

How do the 3D dice rolling look for the GM?

[Dakadin]

The hard part with hosting is the DirectX support. If you have that working then it shouldn't be usable but I would be surprised if as Trenloe asked that the 3D dice would be smooth. RDP usually isn't very good with refresh rates with video.

[damned]

I have a couple of servers on 400mbps connections. i can watch HD youtube videos on them at acceptable frame rates over RDP.
With Azure - the only thing Id be concerned with is ensuring you provision sufficient graphics capability to the VM.
Otherwise I dont see that you should have any issues.

[skj310]

I'd be interested in knowing how you setup the port forwarding rules through the azure portal, and also what is the "webaddress" used that was mentioned? Wouldn't the alias work as normal?

The attached inline image is my attempt at port forwarding using network sercurity group in azure portal. I've goofed cause its not working

[skj310]

Don't know where my head was at, but I almost had it with the post above.
What's needed is JUST the inbound security rule, remove the outbound rule, and I also had associated my subnets (which was the main mistake). So after removing the association, removing the outbound rule, i then did a stop/deallocate of the azure VM. When I restarted it, the inbound rule was working and i was able to client connect with FG running on the azure VM.

One more point. Within the windows server 2012 azure VM, I also had to allow/permit the FantasyGrounds.exe through the windows internal firewall. Which is simple 'nough to do, just open the firewall config and add a new inbound rule for the FG executable! I allowed for the private/public/domain bits of the firewall, and I did not specify the port (i.e. i used ANY).

With that done, I was happily able to run FG on the azure VM!

[Erlu]

Was thinking to do this also. How has this worked out for you long term?

[skj310]

not great, but this was over a yr ago. it was too slow, too too slow. I used it as I was running a weekly campaign and I was traveling, so I needed something when at hotels and wasn't able to port forward. it did work but wasnt enjoyable and ended up being totm as the speed was a huge issue when the 4 players joined.

all aside I coulda set things up wrong, but I wasn't willing to deal with slow nor the monthly cost of azure.

hope that helps