Bukkit on low end hardware (a netbook)

Hi everyone. I've been interested in running my own Minecraft server for a while, and I've done it in the past, with the stock software you can get from Mojang that I would host from the same desktop I played on, and it worked well enough, but now that Minecraft is out of beta, I want to put one up 24/7 for a few friends and I. We're talking like, five, maybe six players on at any given time, tops.

Now, I've got a question: Would Bukkit work well enough on a simple machine like a netbook? I would be doing a fresh install of Win Server 2k3, and only running Bukkit on it. I only considered a netbook, because if for whatever reason we needed to, we could simply take the computer with us and play, for example at school, where the connection isn't reliable enough to play Minecraft multiplayer over the internet.

The computer has an Atom (I know...) N455 at 1.66GHz, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 250 GB HDD. If I need to, I'd also be willing to use MineOS on the machine.

Thanks in advance!
LastHour1

 

Ok well the 2 GB of RAM is a bad idea right there. I play Minecraft on a 3GB RAM equipped Dell Laptop and it still lags a bit every now and then. Running a server on a netbook or a laptop is never a good idea because laptops are usually bought with integrated video cards that can not be changed, so that will bring down performance.

 

Laptops are not good to runs servers on.
You'd have to keep it on charge, and that could ruin the battery and they aren't the most efficient system.
You'd be better off renting a server or purchasing/looking into a desktop.

 

Yes. Desktops are the best because graphics/video cards can be switched out(preferably something better like a Nvidia)

 

The graphics card doesn't matter when you're running just bukkit, and the RAM beyond about 1GB only limits your player cap. The biggest limiting factor in this case is the processor. If you're serious about hosting a server, you need a very good processor (quad core or higher).

 

Then we could go on to say that Minecraft doesn't actually use those cores... (Properly anyway)

 

Honestly, I run my test rig with 4gb, as I feel that's typtical to expect of a multi-world server (I'm most likely wrong here...).

Rather than a netbook, you could build a small HTPC sized box that would auto start your bukkit server. I could see that working as sort of a Bukkit-in-a-box.

 

Plugins such as dynmap use them if configured correctly.

 

Someone should make a bukkitOS.

 

For fun, I once ran a Vanilla Minecraft server on a 500mhz 128MB Sony laptop from 2000. Although it constantly protested about unable to keep up and although it was rather laggy, it was somewhat playable with 3 players on simultaneously, and was even able to take the stress of exploding 20 TNT. (100 TNT killed it.)

 

I think it could handle it...

If you look at your ram usage on the server it is about 600mb to 900mb for 8 players and a good amount of plugins.

I mean I have a quad core laptop I use but I believe the single cor should work if it is just processing the server...

Sorry to bring up a old thread...