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This is a guide on how to set a TF2 server up on Amazon Web Services where you can rent by the hour for cents!

This setup is one-time, as you can save an image of the server and just click a button to launch it days later.

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, which provide servers of various sizes that you can rent by the hour for pretty cheap. I find this ideal for running a server for my team or for my friends because I only have to pay for it for the hours that I’ll be using it. The Amazon servers have really nice connection and are used by a ton of corporate endeavors like Netflix Instant, so quality is great. It took me a couple of tries to get one of these running because of some trouble with dependencies, so I’m trying to make it easier for everyone else who wants to take advantage of a great opportunity!

I have the basic guide up, but this is still a work in progress. If you have any suggestions, please comment! I’m not going to go over how to set up and SSH into an Amazon server, or set one up, as you can find that with Google.

Here are some links!

Setting up the instance.

Connecting.

The guide!

1. Create a security group with ports 27000-27050 open on both UDP and TCP protocols

2. Open a m3.large server.

3. Download and unzip SteamCMD with these two commands.

   wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

   tar zxf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz

4. We can’t run steamcmd.sh yet because we need a couple dependencies. Run these two yum commands to install the libraries. The yum commands will everything for you; it’s really quite magical. You just have to say “y” when prompted.

   sudo yum install glibc.i686

   sudo yum install libgcc_s.so.1

5. Now we can run steamcmd.sh! This will download and install some updates.

   ./steamcmd.sh

6. Now you should have the Steam> prompt. We login as anonymous to be able to download the server.

   login anonymous

7. Now, to download the server. It should finish in less than 10 minutes because AWS servers have insane connection.

   app_update 232250

8. With the server installed, you can quit out of SteamCMD and run the server.

   quit

   Steam/steamapps/common/Team\ Fortress\ 2\ Dedicated\ Server/srcds_run

9. Finally, to be able to connect to the server, you have to start up a map.

   map <my map>

10. Now you can connect! Use the connect command from TF2 with the “Public IP” Amazon gives you on the AWS page.

connect <my ip>

The main attraction of AWS is that you can save an image of your server after you’ve shut it down. Set up is one time, and you have total control over the server. I might go into how to make these servers competitive ready in the future, but I haven’t actually done any of that yet. I was able to figure out installing metamod and sourcemod in one go, it’s not that difficult.