Results 1 to 15 of 15
  1. #1

    Looking for a dedicated server for Minecraft Hosting

    Hi,

    For my hosting company I'm interested in what sorts of specs I need for a dedi server, in order to run lots of Minecraft Servers like all the other hosts.

    Thanks in advance,

    Peter

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    3,878
    You'll need to focus on a few key areas. CPU speed, higher clock rates are generally preferred for Minecraft. So any current quad core CPU with a good clock speed is a good start. Plenty of RAM, Minecraft likes to eat up RAM. More players = more RAM, so plan accordingly for what you offer. Disk I/O will also be an important factor. You might consider a minimum of 4 drives in RAID10 or possibly consider SSD Mirrors.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by peterbingbong View Post
    Hi,

    For my hosting company I'm interested in what sorts of specs I need for a dedi server, in order to run lots of Minecraft Servers like all the other hosts.

    Thanks in advance,

    Peter
    We've found that our Minecraft hosting customers want the following things:

    Plenty of ram. This is the key limiting factor in how much you can sell, and so one of the key metrics our customers look for is price per gb ram per month.

    A good CPU. If you look at cpubenchmark.net, then in general we've found anything that benches 6000 or higher works well for about 32gb ram worth of clients, which generally dictates an X3460, X3470, or E3-1230 cpu.

    If you have a few customers with really big worlds with tons of players, those can often chew through a ton of cpu. Because minecraft doesn't always scale well to multiple cpu cores, if a single world needs a ton of performance, then an E3-1230 cpu is pretty much mandatory. On the other hand, if, like a typical minecraft host, most of your customers are 2gb ram or less, then an X3460 will provide plenty of cpu for 32gb ram worth of customers.

    Disk I/O. You can sometimes get away with a single decently fast 7200rpm hard drive like a WD Black, but if you do this, the disk i/o can easily become a bottleneck. We've had great experiences with Intel SSDs that completely eliminate this bottleneck, so if you can afford it, that's the way to go. One of our customers has about a dozen 32gb servers that host minecraft customers, and slowly over time they've needed to upgrade those servers to SSD instead of regular hard drives. I'd say about half of their servers use SSD now because they were having serious performance problems on those specific nodes. The other half of their nodes, for whatever reason, are still performing fine with regular hard drives.

    IPs. Generally you need 1 ip per minecraft customer, so you need a host that will give you a decent number of ips. Anywhere from 20 to 30 ips is generally needed for a typical 32gb ram minecraft node.
    IOFLOOD.com -- We Love Servers
    Phoenix, AZ Dedicated Servers in under an hour
    ★ Ryzen 9: 7950x3D ★ Dual E5-2680v4 Xeon ★
    Contact Us: sales@ioflood.com

  4. #4
    Hi,

    Thanks for all the detailed replies!

    I was looking at a dedi with the following specs and wondered if this would be a suitable choice to use and if any other Minecraft Hosting Services use these kind of specs:

    Intel Xeon E3-1220 3.1GHz
    16GB DDR3 ECC RAM
    2 x 2TB SATA2 RAID HDD's
    Raid0 / Raid1 HARD P410
    1Gbit/sec
    Unlimited Traffic

    OR

    The following:

    2 x Intel Xeon E5620 2.4GHz
    24GB DDR3 ECC RAM
    2 x 2TB SAS RAID
    Raid0 / Raid1 HARD P410
    1Gbit/sec
    Unlimited Traffic

    Thanks in advance,

    Peter
    Last edited by peterbingbong; 03-05-2012 at 03:30 PM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    3,878
    I'd take the E3 with 16GB of RAM if it was for personal use.The E3 CPU is going to push harder in a Minecraft environment. However since you're going to be hosting things out, the RAM is more useful.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    132
    Ideal location?

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Posts
    1,161
    Personally, I'd get a custom quote from a provider for the following:

    A good AMD/Intel CPU (quad-core, current generation)
    16-24GB RAM to start
    SSD's - either get a few small ones or a larger SSD - or minimum 4 SATA HDD's
    100Mbps Uplink (or above)

    This should last you a good bit for Minecraft.
    Charles @ Nexeon Technologies - Have a question? PM or email me directly! - c[@]nexeon.com
    InstantDedis.com - Instantly delivered dedicated servers located in Chicago, New York, and more

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Posts
    386
    Do not go with someone that offers you 1gbps unlimited for less than 1000€/month.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Internet
    Posts
    1,161
    You'll want servers located in 2 or more locations if you want to maximize your business. Latency is very important for games so they need to have a server within the same country.

  10. #10
    Why would you need more than a few IP addresses ? Can multiple minecraft servers not be hosted on a single IP with different ports ?
    ★Owner of Corgi Tech Limited
    Unmanaged VPS with 99.9% SLA - Windows or Linux

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Kakashi View Post
    Why would you need more than a few IP addresses ? Can multiple minecraft servers not be hosted on a single IP with different ports ?
    Yes, you can run multiple minecraft servers on different ports, exactly the same way you can run multiple SSL websites on different ports and simply tell people "visit my website at https://mywebsite.com:9999". In other words, no, in practice you aren't going to run multiple minecraft servers on one ip.
    IOFLOOD.com -- We Love Servers
    Phoenix, AZ Dedicated Servers in under an hour
    ★ Ryzen 9: 7950x3D ★ Dual E5-2680v4 Xeon ★
    Contact Us: sales@ioflood.com

  12. #12
    I understand and you obviously have more experience than I do in this area. However from my own personal online gaming experience over the last 10 odd years is that using port numbers isn't that uncommon.

    I remember with Quake, CS, Ventrilo etc.. there was nearly always a port number associated with the IP that varied between hosts. It seemed the norm where as here with Minecraft you're saying that's the exception.
    ★Owner of Corgi Tech Limited
    Unmanaged VPS with 99.9% SLA - Windows or Linux

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Internet
    Posts
    1,161
    Quote Originally Posted by Kakashi View Post
    I understand and you obviously have more experience than I do in this area. However from my own personal online gaming experience over the last 10 odd years is that using port numbers isn't that uncommon.

    I remember with Quake, CS, Ventrilo etc.. there was nearly always a port number associated with the IP that varied between hosts. It seemed the norm where as here with Minecraft you're saying that's the exception.
    I'm doing support for a company that provides minecraft hosting, the people who buy these services aren't that bright, are very needy, and expect certain things to be in order and will cry if they aren't.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by LuckyAnonymous View Post
    I'm doing support for a company that provides minecraft hosting, the people who buy these services aren't that bright, are very needy, and expect certain things to be in order and will cry if they aren't.
    Very true. As well, with CS, etc, there is a server browser where the potential user can be totally oblivious to the port number and still connect without issue. With Minecraft, much like with a website, you have to know the IP or hostname you're connecting to in order to connect. That's hard enough without having to explain "ok it's myawesomeminecraftserver.com COLON 5045. Don't forget the COLON 5045". Good luck with that.
    IOFLOOD.com -- We Love Servers
    Phoenix, AZ Dedicated Servers in under an hour
    ★ Ryzen 9: 7950x3D ★ Dual E5-2680v4 Xeon ★
    Contact Us: sales@ioflood.com

  15. #15
    The first thing you need to figure out is what control panel you'll be using. If you want to offer VPSs, then you'll want something like McMyAdmin. You'd also want a fast CPU (E3-1230+ is good) and SSD(s). If you want to go the shared hosting route, you can use something like Multicraft. That route can work on a standard HDD, although SSDs are a huge selling point.

    EDIT: Oh, and get a server from IOFlood. That's where we started.
    RamNode - High Performance Cloud VPS
    SSD Cloud and Shared Hosting
    NYC - LA - ATL - SEA - NL - DDoS Protection - AS3842
    Deploy on our SSD cloud today! - www.ramnode.com

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 01-13-2012, 12:31 PM
  2. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 12-29-2011, 09:52 PM
  3. Looking for a dedicated server for Minecraft Hosting.
    By Ianm56 in forum Dedicated Server
    Replies: 42
    Last Post: 11-25-2011, 02:29 AM
  4. Minecraft Dedicated Server
    By rebel24 in forum Game Servers
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 07-06-2011, 05:07 AM
  5. Looking For Dedicated Minecraft Server
    By TheLonelyIsland in forum Dedicated Server
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 04-05-2011, 04:11 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •