Minecraft Forums

I am interesting in starting up my own server, but I have no idea what the recommended system specs are.
I don't want to spend all ths time setting up a server to find out my computer isn't good enough to run it!!!
So please, any basic ideas?
Thank you.

You can run nearly any server, it all depends on the map you use. Any graphics card with a 512 Ram and atleast a 1.0 Ghz processor could probably run a 128 map or less.

Well that sounds promising.
I take it multimap servers require more?

btw, in case you were wondering:
Intel Core 2 T5600 - 1.83GHz
1022 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300
Total Graphics Memory: 383 MB - Dedicated Video Memory: 128 MB Shared Sytem Memory: 255 MB
Windows Vista 32 Bit

That sounds like it could run a 256 map just fine.

Running multimap/worlds doesn't require much effort, hell the server doesn't even take up much ram period even by running a 256/512 map on my end. Last i checked (It was a 256) i ran the original software and it only ran up to 10k usage max on a 256 clean flatgrass.

It's all about the maps and if your ram can handle it, and network.

ok thanks for the help!
When you are talking about 256, 512 mapss etc are you referring to file size? As in 512 mb?
one more quick question: My internet connection has a limit of about 21gb a month. How much would a server use approx. per hour? Thanks!

To be honest, i aint sure. It all depends on your traffic.

Oh by the way, 256 and 512 mean map dimensions. Usually ex: 512x512x512, all maps need to be the size of the power of ^2

Acceptables:
32
64
128
256
512
1024

Hmm on my server (256 x 256 x 256) the cmd.exe isn't using much RAM (less than 1MB), but the java.exe is using ~125MB and 15-30% CPU on one core (dualcore 1.9GHz AMD)

Java does that when you run the game, the server is fine by itself.

The game has never been run on the server. But in order to run the .jar-files java has to be installed.
I use the original "start server.bat" to run my Minecraft server. Maybe there's a better way?

Let's not listen to LG_Legacy.

You don't even need a graphics adapter to run the server. Both the server and client are programmed in Java, and Java is horrible in all regards. For the most part, it has high resource usage. Notch's server will heavily utilize the processor with no players even on the server. If you can, look into running a custom server. I can't recommend any, but most will have relatively low resource usage.

Let me reword this: "Any graphics card you could have, with a 512 Mb RAM in your system, and atleast a 1.0 Ghz Processor could probably run a 128 map decently." I wasn't trying to say you needed a video card to run a minecraft server, but it may help in the long run if you want to play it too.

But that was never inferred in the slightest, hell he may even may be wanting to run it out of a separate box... Lep is right also, A server I would suggest would be myne or MCsharp, for a server though I would use something around 1.8ghz and around 1-2GB of ram depending on the software.

Thanks for the advice on MCsharp. It's using 0% cpu and around 10MB RAM with no players connected. MUCH better than the original server :smile.gif:

I thought I'd chip in with my server experience. My setup:

HP a1129n
OS: Windows XP Pro
CPU: AMD Athlon 2.2GHz Single Core
RAM: 1GB DDR 400
GPU: GeForce 7200 GS (I had to install this for the DVI connector, even though it now runs as a headless server.)

I use MCSharp and even with 8-9 people the CPU usage only averaged 5-10% I believe (it doesn't generally show usage except maybe 1-2%.) The map changes are hard on it but only for a split second (longer with maps above 256^3.) Using /cuboid on chunks larger than 10,000 blocks will put the CPU at 100% for the duration though 30k blocks only caused me about 4-6 seconds of lag.

Note: I would highly recommend you not try to generate a new map within the server with the size 2048 32 2048 :? At least at specs like mine, it took about 10 minutes of maxed out CPU and pushed the computers RAM usage to about 700MB (it idles at 300MB, this is total RAM used though, not the RAM used by the server.)

In terms of bandwidth used, I'm not completely sure yet, I started recording right after I first saw this post so it's only had one full day to run. The bandwidth used for April 9th was 102MB (46 down, 56 up.) If you used that as a reference then it should use about 3GB/month total. I would probably overestimate it at 2x-3x that to be on the safe side though. I don't know if your 21GB cap is upstream, downstream or both though. If it's both, then 3-9GB is a large chunk for a single application I would think. My networking knowledge is limited so I may be wrong on these calculations though.

First: BlazeShaman if you feel I'm hijacking your thread say so. I'll go away and make a new one :smile.gif:

My system specs is:
I-Build-It-Myself system (Asus MB)
OS: Microsoft Server 2008 Standard (soon Server 2008 R2 Enterprise)
CPU: AMD BE-2300 1.9GHz dual core
RAM: 2GB PC2-5300 (soon 4GB)
GPU: Dunno. Some on-board S3 crap. It's a server you know? :smile.gif:

Original server software was running just fine on this - but the strain on the cpu/ram (even without clients connected) was horrible!

MCsharp uses a fraction of those resources. Nice :smile.gif:

Next thing: I had a map from the original server (server_level.dat iirc) - is there any way to import/convert it for use with MCsharp?

Quote from ShutEye »

First: BlazeShaman if you feel I'm hijacking your thread say so. I'll go away and make a new one :smile.gif:

My system specs is:
I-Build-It-Myself system (Asus MB)
OS: Microsoft Server 2008 Standard (soon Server 2008 R2 Enterprise)
CPU: AMD BE-2300 1.9GHz dual core
RAM: 2GB PC2-5300 (soon 4GB)
GPU: Dunno. Some on-board S3 crap. It's a server you know? :smile.gif:

Original server software was running just fine on this - but the strain on the cpu/ram (even without clients connected) was horrible!

MCsharp uses a fraction of those resources. Nice :smile.gif:

Next thing: I had a map from the original server (server_level.dat iirc) - is there any way to import/convert it for use with MCsharp?

I could say go check the MCSharp thread but I'll go ahead and link the datconverter (sorta.) However if you do have trouble using the converter, please check the [Server]MCSharp thread. I'll try to add the info on the dat converter to the wiki later.

This is awesome :biggrin.gif: this means I can run a server on my computer relatively well, hopefully.
However, I probably wont end up doing it because I would have to have my computer on for ages at a time... Thanks for the help.

Quote from BlazeShaman »

However, I probably wont end up doing it because I would have to have my computer on for ages at a time... Thanks for the help.

Yeah that's why I build a dedicated server with low power consumption in mind.

@SN3AK: Thanks! I'll go read up on that ...

I can make a testimony that the MCsharp server really doesn't require much of a computer. It is runnin gon a crappy laptop that has no use.
Specs:
Old Toshiba Portege 3000
OS: Windows XP Pro
CPU: Intel Pentium III 1.33 GHz
RAM: 256mb
GPU: Yeah right.

Server runs lag free except for when there is heavy physics usage at 20k ram and 2% CPU.