Running a game server

Question

First off, let me admit that yesterday the only thing I had ever heard about Azure was the name: I am completely new in this area so please pardon my ignorance if this is a stupid question or if I am totally misunderstanding the Azure platform.

Basically, I would like to know if it's possible to use Azure to run game server software that clients connect to, such as a Minecraft server (http://www.minecraft.net, http://www.minecraft.net/download.jsp).

The Minecraft server software can be run as either an executable or a .jar.  Is this something I could accomplish by following instructions like these:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariok/archive/2011/01/05/deploying-java-applications-in-azure.aspx ?

If accepted into the VM role beta, would it be possible to run the executable from there?

I would greatly appreciate any insight into this scenario, especially if I am totally off base and should be looking into different avenues.   

Thank you very much for your time!

Answer 1

The most fundamental thing to keep in mind as you investigate Windows Azure is that everything needs to be stateless and runs behind a load balancer.  (Those are actually quite related.)

I don't know anything about minecraft, but I suspect you can probably run it (most things that work on Windows can run in Windows Azure), but you may run into trouble if Minecraft stores data on the local system (not in SQL or some other central location) or if Minecraft can't run on several servers behind a load balancer (e.g. specific clients need to contact specific servers).

I hope that helps get you started... keep posting here as you have more questions.

Answer 2

Were you able to host a Minecraft server on Azure?

I've been looking for information on how to do this, but have only found information WRT AWS hosting. 

Answer 3

I found this and have started reading but it DOES seem possible. =)

http://docs.com/HXRU