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Minecraft Servers. A bunch of questions!
Hey guys.. planning on setting up a minecraft server, but got a few questions which you may be able to help me with .
Here's some information on what services I currently have:
BuyVM 256/512mb OpenVZ
BuyVM 512/1024mb OpenVZ
ChicagoVPS 2048mb OpenVZ
My other VPS's would never in a million years be anywhere near good enough to run Minecraft.
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Ok, to the questions:
- How significant is ping? All my VPS services are based in North America. I'm based in the UK.
- I understand that minecraft will run better on xen than OpenVZ. Without having to purchase a new VPS, how well will Minecraft run on my current services?
- What is CPU usage like? I have a provider in mind who could supply this on a xen box, so long a CPU usage isn't mega-high
- What is RAM usage like? For OpenVZ and Xen if at all possible guys.. looking at usually below 6 online users.. never more than 8
- How would a VPS compare to some of the ready-built minecraft providers?
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Anything else I should know?
Cheers guys
Comments
For the ChicagoVPS, it should not have a problem for ~15 players as long as you run a 32bit OS.
Buyvm with 4 gb swap
Can you provide more info on this?
@Damian,
It's a JAVA-based server emulator; it just uses/requires more RAM in OVZ than in Xen.
None from that list. OpenVZ is horrible for Java and Minecraft. Also Minecraft uses a LOT of CPU, so you might get booted off the nodes. Also I have heard things that some hosts are actually going around the nodes and intentionally killing the Minecraft Java processes, since it hits their node so hard.
I would recommend Xen or KVM only.
Back in the day I used to be able to run up to 20 players with no lag on a 1536 MB Xen ThrustVPS, so most likely any other Xen VPS may work. Another thing that people underestimate is how much CPU Minecraft actually uses......it will gladly eat a whole core and a bit of the others if the plugins are multi-threaded... So just get a Xen one with 1 Gig+ RAM and decent CPU and you should be good for ~15 players.
Latency (ping) pretty much means nothing in Minecraft. Anything under ~160 ms and you will not notice it. I personally am from the central US and get ~160ish ping to my Hetzner box and I barely can tell.......sure there is a tad bit of delay, but it is more than 100% playable for even important PVP situations. Although some people on the West Coast have trash connections and because of the location higher latency, so they have some issues playing.
Ready builts should almost always perform better. The nodes they are on servers that are setup and optimized to host Minecraft servers. On a VPS, they are usually overloaded to hell, can't handle Minecraft too well and everything is shared. A VPS provider will usually suspend you for using too much CPU, but a ready built server host will not.
Minecraft is rather RAM and CPU hungry these days, and it tends not to do well on OpenVZ. Nevertheless, the best option for you if you only have those three options would be ChicagoVPS.
Minecraft has ALWAYS been a massive CPU hog.
That said, I run a Minecraft server on my ChicagoVPS 2GB OpenVZ, and it works great. CPU and RAM usage vary wildly based on mods being used, processor on your VPS, and other such things - but CVPS's hardware appears to be able to handle it.
If you're talking about the Java based MineCraft servers Vanilla/Bukkit, then yeah, it's a complete RAM hog.
If you're not too fussed with the features, it might be worth looking into the alternative MineCraft servers: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Custom_servers
Drastically reduced memory usage on most of them.
Well, there's something for you to consider
I used it on Chicagos offer of 2GB, no problems so far
I ran a minecraft on my ChicagoVPS for a few months, it was fine. Put your world in a ramdisk (and back it up often), for a nice speed up. OpenVZ is fine for minecraft, sure memory allocation is a bit wonky, but you don't need a Xen VPS for it.
The custom minecraft servers aren't really usable. They are all lacking a lot of features, and most are dead/zombie projects. There is one project that is pretty far along in Java and has bukkit support, but the project isn't really active . Memory usage is a bit less than the official MC server, but cpu usage is drastically lower.
mine works without ramdisk... lucky?
Of course it'll work, notice I said for a nice speed up.
sorry, i'm @ work, so little time to look here
You can set limits on RAM when starting your server with the following command:
java -Xmx1G -Xms1G -jar minecraft_server.jar
where Xmx#G is your maximum usage in gigabytes, and -Xms#G is your minimum usage. Minecraft will always obey these limits - though naturally this won't help you if your issue is CPU usage.
You usually don't need to set Xms params, you can let the JVM decide on that.
@JTR You don't have to - but I'm just going off what's recommended on the wiki: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server
It's what I do, and it works for me; it also allocates all of that RAM when you start Minecraft so that you don't run into issues later on with it trying to use RAM you don't have (because something else is using it).
Cheers guys . Got it all setup now, just gonna make a few configuration changes, but it works .
Used that command , cheers .
Hopefully this will run ok for a good few users .
Okay then.. looks like I'm set up . Anybody around in a bout 20 minutes (6:30PM BST) who can hop on my server to see if it runs ok?
sure, Send me a PM with the IP, Etc..
PM sent .. Anybody else wanna join? Just let me know here or PM me and I'll give you the details
So what kind of disk space does a typical Minecraft server owner use?
Around 5GB, if you delete your server.log from time to time.
Starting Minecraft is pretty easy. Just get a VPS, and slap on SpaceBukkit, and your ready to go.
A pretty small amount. Large sized worlds are around 150mb, can probably go a bit bigger, but all of the minecraft files itself, plus a huge world is going to be under 500mb (even with multiple worlds I was able to run bukkit + a ton of plugins, around 8 people online, and fit all the minecraft files into a ramdisk on a 2GB ChicagoVPS).
@Kairus
@dmmcintyre3 interesting, never seen a world that big, how long has that one been around?
@Kairus since beta 1.8 when griefers took over and my backups were broken.
I'm new in Minecraft, so I would like to ask this :
If I'm not a premium user, can I run a Minecraft on my own VPS? I already install it in the VPS, but not able to play it.
You can run the server yes, but you need to own the client to access it.
You can run the server, but you have to set:
online-mode: false
in the server.properties.
You can log in as 'Player' and if someone has your server info, they can destroy the server quickly. However to log in as player, you have to have a client that can run in offline mode that doesn't require player authentication.
It's advised to just purchase the game. $25 will save you a hassle and it's not even monthly.
I find it funny that kids will get their parents to buy WoW for $15/month but when its a one-time fee of $25, all hell breaks loose.
At the risk of encouraging piracy, AuthMe/AuthDB are great for this purpose..