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      ggRock FAQ

      This FAQ document is provided to try and address several common questions about ggRock.

      Q: What is ggRock?

      A: ggRock is a foundational diskless boot system. It allows you to run your entire eSports Center floor from one server. You can completely remove the hard drives from all Client Machines, and the data will be fed into them over Ethernet cables.

      Please refer to "How ggRock works" for more information.

      Q: How to open Debian Control Panel

      A: Proceed to Access Debian Control Panel.

      Q: Does ggRock comply with licenses of it's dependant packages?

      A: Team behind ggRock thinks through licensing of the packages and components we use. We have a clear understanding of what "Derivative Work" is and what GPL licensing means for closed/open source products.

      ggRock itself is a closed source product with open source configurator component. We stand beside our choices and take future compatibility with dependencies seriously.

      Any client willing to upgrade to Tier 2 support can request a report on the compliance with licences and we are eager to provide such services.

      Q: Is ccBoot Game Drives compatible with ggRock? Can I use the same games with ggRock that I have been using with ccBoot? 

      • No. ggRock uses a different format for all Game/System drives that are being mounted on the PCs for ultimate caching performance. This means that there is no way to use your current Games drive and you will need to reinstall them, preferably alongside a clean OS image. We are working on feature to import ccBoot Game Drive but that's a complex task and we have no ETA yet. 

      Q: Is ccBoot OS Image compatible with ggRock? Can I use the same OS image with ggRock that I have been using with ccBoot? 

      • A: Yes. If your ccBoot OS Image is in .VHD format you could use your existing OS Image with ggRock, but without Games Image (Drive) side by side all links for installed software would be broken, so we don't recommend doing this. 

      Q: How much RAM do I need for ggRock? 

      • Generally - as much as possible. ggRock utilizes RAM as global cache for all Machines connected to it at the same time. This means that RAM usefulness largely depends on the variety of games being played in the center at the time. 

      • Example 1 - 100 Machines are all booted up with Fortnite for a tournament. The resources requested by Machines are very similar, therefore, ggRock could provide optimal performance with 8GB RAM for all 100 Machines at the same time.

      • Example 2 - 100 Machines are all booted up with 100 different games requesting different resources. In this case, the resources requested are drastically different and bigger RAM will allow ggRock to cache more frequently used resources for every Machine efficiently. Therefore, you should consider your RAM choice in conjunction with how diverse your library is and how popular certain titles from it are with the gamers. 

      Q: Can I use AMD Ryzen/Threadtipper/EPYC CPU with ggRock?

      • An Intel Xeon Scalable (Silver as an example) is not mandatory. However, here are some requirements to consider when choosing a CPU/motherboard:

      1. We recommend Xeon because it's usually compatible with server-grade motherboards, which carry 10Gb NICs, have ECC RAM support (very important). Server motherboards also usually have IPMI and KVM support which will be especially useful with unsupervised installations.

      2. Intel is, generally, still couple steps in front of AMD in everything that comes to virtualization (Nested Virtualization and so on), hardware passthrough. We do expect AMD to do just as fine with ggRock, but we are not yet comfortable with recommending it outright.

      3. We are all taken with how AMD comes back and knocks past years out of the part on all fronts and how it might just as well be on track to overtake a significant market share. You can go AMD, but we would recommend checking with us and still have two go-to configurations, one for Intel and one for AMD.

      • Basically, we are confident in Xeon a 100% and confident in AMD at about 98%. We also don't have anything against "consumer" processors (i3, Ryzen 3000), provided there is a server-grade motherboard that has an AM4 or Intel-compatible socket to allow ECC RAM support.

      Q: Is there away to configure ggRock to run its website on a different port than port 80?

      • It is currently not possible to achieve this without extensive modification to the underlying architecture of ggRock.

      Q: My ggRock server uses close to 100% of its RAM at all times, is this normal?

      • Yes, the underlying technologies that power ggRock make extensive use of system RAM. There are settings within ggRock that permit adjusting the amount of RAM that is preserved for system/operating system usage, or VM usage. See RAM Settings for more information.

      Moreover, there are upcoming features for ggRock, which will simplify center operations, that could take advantage of more ram.