Creating and Managing OpenSim Grids

You could download a copy of Outworldz DreamGrid https://outworldz.com/Outworldz_installer/Grid/ and install that. This works for a while and you can run a very small grid on a Windows home computer.

However, I have found it does not scale very well. After you have uploaded a couple tens of thousands of prims and created a couple of var regions it starts to run very slowly. I’ve seen this happen on a very nice home gaming computer with lots of CPU horsepower, memory and NVME drive. I suspect that the reason for the poor performance is the toy SQL database it comes with. Also a home PC may not have the bandwidth to handle lots of visitors to your grid. You could probably install a real database on your PC, but my solution is to rent a Linux computer in the cloud that has everything: CPU horsepower, memory, nVME drive, high speed Internet and Linux with a real MySQL database.

It is possible to set up a small to medium sized grid with tens of var regions (hundreds of SL equivalent regions) on a cloud server that will put you back only around $20 a month. (In 2023). A small fraction of the cost of a single region in SL and less than renting a single region from some OpenSim grids. If your grid grows out of a single server, it will be easy to spread the load between multiple servers and scale the system.

After managing servers with OSGrid regions on them (a good first step to learn) and then setting up a couple of complete grids, I started to think this was easy. But when I added up all the steps it did look intimidating, so I decided to write down all those steps. This document is the result.

• Rent a server from someone like Contabo.com or OVHcloud.com
• Setting up a Linux System to Run OpenSim
• Configuring a database for OpenSim to use
• Setting up an account for OpenSim
• The Complex Set of Initialization Files to Run OpenSim
• Editing the Robust.ini file for OpenSim and starting Robust
• Editing the OpenSim.ini and other files for starting your first region
• Setting up and starting your second region which will be much easier
• Updating Your Grid when a New Version of OpenSim comes out
• Managing an OpenSim Grid on the Bare Metal
• Installing the Money Module on an OpenSim Grid
• More Than One WEB Page or Grid on the Same Server