Capturing logs from dedicated game server instances in a central location can be useful for troubleshooting, keeping track of instance runtimes and machine load, and capturing historical data that occurs during the lifetime of a game.
But collecting and making sense of these logs can be tricky, especially if you are launching the same game in multiple regions, or have limited resources on which to collect the logs themselves.
One possible solution to these problems is to collect your logs in the cloud. Doing this enables you to mine your data with tools that deliver speed and power not possible from an on-premise logging server. Storage and data management is simple in the cloud and not bound by physical hardware. Additionally, you can access cloud logging resources globally. Studios and BI departments across the globe can access the same logging database regardless of physical location, making collaboration for distributed teams significantly easier.
We recently put together a tutorial that shows you how to integrate Stackdriver Logging, our hosted log management and analysis service for data running on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS, into your own dedicated game server environment. It also offers some key storage strategies, including how to migrate this data to BigQuery and other Google Cloud tools. Check it out, and let us know what other Google Cloud tools you’d like to learn how to use in your game operations. You can reach me on Twitter at @gcpjoe.
