So I had $100 left over on my Amazon AWS account and I decided to use it to host a Minecraft server since it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I don't plan on having more than 10 people on at once and currently there has only been about 4-5 people on at one time. CPU utilization is low and I have allocated 2-3GB of RAM for the server. I try to reboot it once a day when nobody is on because after a while RAM usage gets up to around 80-90% even with nobody on. I originally started with a t2.small instance, but it was really lag for both me and my friend. I have since switched to a t2.medium instance and it has been performing relatively well. I don't seem to hear many complaints about lag from the people on the server. I on the other hand have been having pretty bad block lag just about every time I'm on. Sometimes just opening a chest or a furnace takes around 15-20 seconds. Coming back from the nether always lags as well, taking a long time to reload the chunks whether I'm coming from or going to. I'm wondering if this is just a problem with my internet connection or if it's something I can fix on the server. I pinged my server from my laptop and it only showed 60-80ms of ping which shouldn't result in this much block lag. Has anybody else had a problem like this before or had experience with hosting a Minecraft server on the EC2 platform? If so, I would like to get some input on this issue.
Edit: The lag has only gotten worse and this morning it was so bad that some chunks weren't even loading. I tried walking into the invisible chunks and ending up falling completely through and basically flew all the way down into a mineshaft that was visible from the side of a loaded chunk. I ran a debug file from the server during this time, but I'm not really sure how to read the Minecraft debug files or what I would do to fix this problem. Here is the output of the file.
---- Minecraft Profiler Results ----
// Maybe if you treated it better then it'll have more motivation to work faster! Poor server.
Time span: 259968 ms
Tick span: 5200 ticks
// This is approximately 20.00 ticks per second. It should be 20 ticks per second
Huge surprise. Amazon AWS is in no way made for gaming, and in no way should ever be used for it. The hardware is loaded to the brim so they can make a quick buck, you have highly limited IO, and it's simply not optimized for it.
Don't go with Amazon just because Realms uses it - Realms has the same issues, period.
That might seem a little harsh, but the Amazon AWS system is designed for website, file, media, and streaming applications - not game servers that require high CPU power and constant read/writes.
Hmm. I figured as much. The only reason I really went with Amazon is because I already had $100 on the account to make use of. Is there a better option by any chance that works similarly to AWS? As in, I can simply test out a server to see if it's adequate and then upgrade if I need to? I like the ease of AWS, but it's really not suitable for even a small Minecraft server. I'm looking to spend around $15 a month or less if possible since less than 10 people max will be on the server.
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Quote from TheFieldZy »
Nobody's perfect, so neither is Hannah Montana Linux, but it's pretty great.
Quote from BC_Programming on Operating Systems »
They all suck. They just suck differently. Sort of like prostitutes.
If you're willing to spend $15/month, just take a peek at some of they shared hosting providers here on MCF. This isn't really the place to make offers, but feel free to PM me if you'd like to learn more about our hosting services.
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Head of Operations - HostVenom, LLC dba Ready2Frag
I really can't be bothered to dig through the forums here when it's just a spamfest of every kid with a server. I would like to use a server that's actually been around long enough to be reviewed by many and compared to other services by a reputable source. So far my best option seems to be BeastNode based on pricing and reviews. I've taken a look at GGServers and their support seems pretty bad already. I'm not even going to bother with MCProHosting since their website is hardly even functional. I really like the freedom that AWS gives me but even on their higher end instances Minecraft likes to lag.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from TheFieldZy »
Nobody's perfect, so neither is Hannah Montana Linux, but it's pretty great.
Quote from BC_Programming on Operating Systems »
They all suck. They just suck differently. Sort of like prostitutes.
Edit: The lag has only gotten worse and this morning it was so bad that some chunks weren't even loading. I tried walking into the invisible chunks and ending up falling completely through and basically flew all the way down into a mineshaft that was visible from the side of a loaded chunk. I ran a debug file from the server during this time, but I'm not really sure how to read the Minecraft debug files or what I would do to fix this problem. Here is the output of the file.
---- Minecraft Profiler Results ----
// Maybe if you treated it better then it'll have more motivation to work faster! Poor server.
Time span: 259968 ms
Tick span: 5200 ticks
// This is approximately 20.00 ticks per second. It should be 20 ticks per second
--- BEGIN PROFILE DUMP ---
[00] levels - 99.60%/99.60%
[01] world - 99.96%/99.57%
[02] tick - 98.99%/98.56%
[03] entities - 91.71%/90.39%
[04] regular - 99.65%/90.07%
[05] tick - 95.77%/86.26%
[06] travel - 36.71%/31.67%
[07] move - 77.52%/24.55%
[07] unspecified - 12.00%/3.80%
[07] rest - 10.47%/3.32%
[06] ai - 21.28%/18.36%
[07] newAi - 94.17%/17.29%
[08] unspecified - 32.44%/5.61%
[08] goalSelector - 22.06%/3.81%
[09] unspecified - 48.75%/1.86%
[09] goalSetup - 44.35%/1.69%
[10] unspecified - 99.87%/1.69%
[10] pathfind - 0.13%/0.00%
[09] goalTick - 6.90%/0.26%
[08] controls - 19.75%/3.41%
[09] unspecified - 71.24%/2.43%
[09] look - 12.07%/0.41%
[09] move - 10.20%/0.35%
[09] jump - 6.49%/0.22%
[08] targetSelector - 15.64%/2.70%
[09] unspecified - 72.79%/1.97%
[09] goalSetup - 18.37%/0.50%
[09] goalTick - 8.85%/0.24%
[08] checkDespawn - 3.92%/0.68%
[08] navigation - 2.45%/0.42%
[08] mob tick - 1.96%/0.34%
[08] sensing - 1.77%/0.31%
[07] unspecified - 5.83%/1.07%
[06] unspecified - 15.37%/13.26%
[06] push - 15.30%/13.20%
[06] entityBaseTick - 2.70%/2.33%
[07] unspecified - 88.36%/3.03%
[07] portal - 11.64%/0.40%
[06] livingEntityBaseTick - 2.70%/2.33%
[06] move - 2.15%/1.86%
[06] headTurn - 0.57%/0.49%
[06] chunkCheck - 0.44%/0.38%
[06] mobBaseTick - 0.41%/0.35%
[06] looting - 0.28%/0.25%
[06] rangeChecks - 0.27%/0.23%
[06] rest - 0.27%/0.23%
[06] jump - 0.26%/0.23%
[06] portal - 0.00%/0.00%
[05] unspecified - 3.64%/3.28%
[05] remove - 0.59%/0.53%
[04] blockEntities - 0.24%/0.22%
[04] remove - 0.08%/0.07%
[04] unspecified - 0.03%/0.03%
[04] pendingBlockEntities - 0.00%/0.00%
[04] global - 0.00%/0.00%
[03] tickBlocks - 7.34%/7.23%
[04] unspecified - 49.98%/3.61%
[04] tickBlocks - 25.96%/1.88%
[04] getChunk - 5.48%/0.40%
[04] tickChunk - 4.79%/0.35%
[04] iceandsnow - 4.05%/0.29%
[04] checkLight - 2.93%/0.21%
[04] thunder - 2.70%/0.20%
[04] moodSound - 2.66%/0.19%
[04] playerCheckLight - 0.96%/0.07%
[05] unspecified - 62.34%/0.04%
[05] getBrightness - 34.00%/0.02%
[05] checkedPosition < toCheckCount - 3.66%/0.00%
[04] buildList - 0.50%/0.04%
[03] mobSpawner - 0.61%/0.60%
[03] chunkSource - 0.16%/0.16%
[03] unspecified - 0.11%/0.11%
[03] tickPending - 0.04%/0.04%
[04] unspecified - 76.29%/0.03%
[04] ticking - 14.91%/0.01%
[04] cleaning - 8.80%/0.00%
[03] chunkMap - 0.01%/0.01%
[03] village - 0.01%/0.01%
[03] portalForcer - 0.01%/0.01%
[02] tracker - 0.98%/0.98%
[02] unspecified - 0.03%/0.03%
[02] timeSync - 0.00%/0.00%
[01] unspecified - 0.04%/0.04%
[00] save - 0.17%/0.17%
[00] connection - 0.08%/0.08%
[01] unspecified - 95.95%/0.08%
[01] keepAlive - 4.05%/0.00%
[00] jobs - 0.07%/0.07%
[01] unspecified - 90.17%/0.06%
[01] travel - 4.23%/0.00%
[02] move - 39.28%/0.00%
[02] unspecified - 34.96%/0.00%
[02] rest - 25.76%/0.00%
[01] entityBaseTick - 2.07%/0.00%
[02] unspecified - 92.51%/0.00%
[02] portal - 7.49%/0.00%
[01] livingEntityBaseTick - 1.17%/0.00%
[01] ai - 0.72%/0.00%
[02] unspecified - 67.03%/0.00%
[02] newAi - 32.97%/0.00%
[01] rest - 0.55%/0.00%
[01] move - 0.52%/0.00%
[01] push - 0.30%/0.00%
[01] headTurn - 0.17%/0.00%
[01] rangeChecks - 0.06%/0.00%
[01] jumps - 0.05%/0.00%
[00] unspecified - 0.06%/0.06%
[00] tallying - 0.00%/0.00%
[00] players - 0.00%/0.00%
[00] tickables - 0.00%/0.00%
[00] snooper - 0.00%/0.00%
--- END PROFILE DUMP ---
Huge surprise. Amazon AWS is in no way made for gaming, and in no way should ever be used for it. The hardware is loaded to the brim so they can make a quick buck, you have highly limited IO, and it's simply not optimized for it.Don't go with Amazon just because Realms uses it - Realms has the same issues, period.
That might seem a little harsh, but the Amazon AWS system is designed for website, file, media, and streaming applications - not game servers that require high CPU power and constant read/writes.