Are these specs OK for a 300 person server?

I'm hosting a build-off competition for my K-12 school district. We have 300 kids registered for the event. I'm assuming they won't all be on at the same time - maybe 100-150 MAX at a given time I'd imagine. I was wondering if you could provide any input as to server lag, stress-testing, etc


We're using the plotme plugin, which is essentially flat land, 51x51 blocks, with "roads" in between. We have world border limiting the world. TNT is disabled, as are mine carts.


Any ideas/suggestions as to how many people we can host on one server?
Server specs:
Intel Core i7 2600 @ 3.4ghz
16GB RAM (14.5 GB dedicated to the MC server)
128GB SSD
100mbps/100mbps up/down stream internet.


I've had some feedback that this will be fine with 100-150 people, while a few others say no - but given the simplicity of my chunks/server-size, do you have any suggestions or input? We'd prefer to keep all 300 users on one server. I know it's not a server-class processor, but it's just an extra machine sitting around in our tech department. If we need to spin up another server, we can - I would just like to keep on one if the specs will do.

The event page/photos of what the plotme plugin looks like:
http://minecraft.cusd200.org
Thanks

 

I'm not very good with server specs, but as for RAM/internet I think you should be able to hold about 170 people at one time, and that is capping it off. As for the processor I have no clue. Also to get more people responding to this I would suggest making the title a little easier for some people. Maybe "Are these specs ok for a 300 slot server?" or similar? Hope I helped!

 

You'll do just fine.

 

So the Core i7 2600 @ 3.4ghz, 14.5GB RAM, and 100mbps/100mbps should be able to handle 100-150 online at one time? I don't want to start the server and have to start a 2nd one after a couple days, since kids will start to claim plots and build on them.

 

Wait woah... Your school allows MC? Were the fuck do you live.

 

i7, 16GB RAM, 100mbps upload speed? That's kinda like Usain Bolt on speed. You should be able to handle 100 players no problem

 

Haha well I'm part of the tech department and have been wanting to do this for a while, since I craft myself. I decided to create a contest for the kids' winter break (2 full weeks of creative competition!). We have some crazy prizes to give away - a laptop, usb drives, lots of food gift certificates, movie gift cards, minecraft gear, etc. It's going to be great - as long as the server holds up haha.

If this goes well, I plan on leaving a MC server up year-round for the kids to use after school.

What about 150 players at once? I want to be prepared in case 50% of the players are on at once - which I doubt, but is possible.

Also, what about redstone builds? I got rid of TNT and Minecarts, but I'm assuming a crazy redstone build can cause lag for people. I don't want to get rid of though, since there are a lot of possibilities with it. Is there a mod or something that allows us to track down where a CPU intensive/laggy redstone build is?

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

Chances it it more than likely will lag at some point. First 50 or so players will be good, but 150 will deffo start to lag.

Not that I'm aware of, but there is a command with Essentials that stops all intensive server activity, but I forgot the command

 

Dude I want to go to your school!

 

That sounds awesome hope it works out well for you

 

I'm in IT, and these specifications sound good for around 210 players. The processor speed matters, not how many cores are available. 4 cores would be decent because craftbukkit is a single threaded operation. The other 3 cores can go to databases, the operating system, and other processes. The ideal clock speed is from 2.6-3.8GHz for a minecraft server. If it is a temporary server, go ahead and use the SSD. But be careful, the reading/writing of continuous chunk data can burn sectors of the SSD extremely fast. I would recommend having it FTP a backup to a local media server, if you do not want any work to be accidentally lost. Especially because of the amount of players on the server at once, and building, chunk data is going to skyrocket. If all else fails, proxy in another server and have rsync create a parallel server for you, in case anything should go wrong or your machine cannot handle that number of players. That's it for my advice.

 

If the server starts lagging I suggest doing this:
(If WorldSync doesn't work through multiple servers (it might not because I didn't look too much into it) but let's say it does for now >.<)
1) Install bukkit on the second server
2) Set PlotMe to use the same database as the other computer
3) (This is the part I'm not sure about and if this doesn't work then the whole thing wont work) Basically install WorldSync on both servers and link the who worlds together.

Now this should work, you could also try installing some lag decreasing plugins such as LagClear or something that would remove all drops on the floor =)

 

Thanks for the info. They are brand new SSD's. Will it really kill it in a matter of 2 weeks? If so, will there be that noticeable of a difference between the SSD and a regular SATA hard drive?

 

80 players in all reality, you dont know the proper running shell scripts to make it run smoothly. After 100 it would lag.

 

If you're hosting it on one computer, you might have to do server hosting. Might get you up to speed but if you have 16GB you'll probably do fine like Lax said.

 

Been running my server on a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD for 3 months now. So far so good, if you're really that paranoid about your SSD breaking, try making a daily backup to another server.

 

I'm not too worried about the SSD I guess. I have it run backups with the Backup 2.0 plugin every 30 minutes (is that too often?). I also have a spare identical machine sitting ready in case I need to start up another in in the event of the first one dying.

I'm more worried about how many people I'll be able to support - some say 100-150 and I should be fine with a little lag. Then others say I'll be at 80 max. That has me worried - I can't have 80 max. I can deal with 150 max - which won't be the case ever I'm guessing.

Debating whether or not to start up 2 servers for the event - but I want to have a good amount of people active in one server rather than have multiple servers and few people active on each. It will be easier for us to monitor everyone on one server as well.

 

GC + auto restart every 6-12 hours or so, you'll be fine handling 300 players 24/7.

 

What are your plugins?
I have ran with 120-150 players and upwards of 45 plugins without a problem on a comparable CPU. And when I had problems it was mostly related to plugin shortfall or griefers.

 

That's a pretty bold assumption... not like he can't look them up if he needs them. He works in a tech department.

Tweaking java is not exactly rocket science.

 

Thats not even close to what i mean, the java start-up is a piece of cake. Its coding the computer in C++ to run smoother that is the hard part...Plus if he has a GUI on the computer that will slow it down, if anything else other than an operating system, java, and server files are installed, then the server will run significantly slower.

 

A headless linux server is easy to setup... and I'm not sure about you but i'm quite sure many people run servers without having to recompile their kernal (or whatever you are think you are talking about). I've only ever had a half dozen times i've had to recompile any of the system code, and those were DEFINITELY not as a result of a minecraft need.

Considering he's using a solid state drive, a lot of his tweaking wont even be required, as the bulk lag inducer is almost eliminated because of it.

On a side note, I would love to know what mean by "coding the computer in C++ to run smoother"...

 

Lax - what does "GC" mean? I may be a bit behind on my MC terms.

In regards to the other comments, yes - I work in I.T. and manage 5000+ machines throughout my school district. I've been working on computers since the days of 286/386/486 machines - so I'm not a complete noob. However, I'm not a linux guy. Yes, there are a bunch of Linux GUI OSes out there that are probably easy to run things on, but I'd rather just stick with an OS that I know inside and out. While some of you may freak out, I think Windows 7 Pro 64bit should be fine for this. It's not like I'm running a server for years or require 80 mods. This is a contest for elementary kids, middle school kids, and some high school kids for 2 weeks.

I'm also a little lost by "coding the computer in C++ to run smoother". That doesn't seem to make any sense...but whatever. If there is something I can do to vastly improve performance, I can figure it out - everything I know is self-taught. However, the performance increase over an OS such as CentOS versus Windows 7 x64 isn't THAT much different I would think.

There isn't anything being run on Windows other than Teamviewer, so that I can remote into it from home if needed.

I'm using MCMYADMIN to configure and run the server, so that I can easily manage permissions and other things via a web interface. I've already enabled 14.5GB of RAM to be dedicated to the MC server.

With that being said, here are my plugins:

Backup 2.0
ChatManager
ChatUtils
DynmapPlotMe
Essentials
EssentialsSpawn
BukkitCompat
Modifyworld
NoItems
PermissionsEx
PlotMe
WorldBorder
WorldEdit
dynmap
Noitem

(The kids don't have access to Worldedit - it's there for for emergency admin use)

I haven't done any tweaking to dynmap yet. I wasn't aware that it could be, since I first used it a while ago while it was in its infancy. It's almost a necessity for us, as we need to monitor kids' builds almost 24/7 to make sure they aren't building any NC-17 material since it's a school sponsored event.

 

AKA C++ = windows code, You just change certain ways it runs using C++...

edit - Well just read that he was using linux. My bad, disregard everything i said about C++. Linux will run much smoother than windows.

 

In Java (and also other garbage collected languages like those than run on the .NET CLR), GC stands for garbage collection (or garbage collector), which is a way that the JVM (Java virtual machine) allocates and frees memory to processes running on it. It's called a garbage collector, because it attempts to reclaim memory used by objects that are of no longer in use by processes running on the JVM, or if objects become out of scope. The memory used by these objects is "garbage", since the objects aren't doing anything. Once the memory is reclaimed, it can be used for other tasks.

In applications written in languages such as C, C++, and Rust, the developer uses the opposite of garbage collection (actually, in garbage collected languages, the developer does nothing at all) and has to manually manage memory by allocating and freeing various amounts of memory to and from their program. While this may be considered a nuisance by many programmers, manual memory management can be more efficient than garbage collection. In my experience, in Java the GC likes to butt in at completely random and arbitrary times and uses up resources attempting to free memory. Of course, you can't control this because you're using a Minecraft server (Bukkit) written in Java.

The Garbage Collector in Java is run automatically when needed, but it can also be executed manually from running Java code.

Many of the users here are Linux aficionados. While Linux will maximize your resource usage and allow you to use more memory than Windows (actually, if you don't have a UI the performance difference is a good difference), I respect your preference towards Windows. The Java Virtual Machine is very platform-agnostic and should run similarly on Linux and Windows.

Also, Essentials is a giant resource hog.

 

thats false. it uses as much as a medium plugin. please dont go out on random statements.

 

Lax - Thanks for the detailed explanation - it makes much more sense now.

Given my use of Windows 7 x64, should I still be able to handle 150 active players at once? Or would that only be accomplished if running an OS such as CentOS?

If I stay with Windows 7, should I be setting any sort of Processor Affinity settings for the various cores to separate java onto its only core and keep everything else off that core?

 

Windows 7 should do fine for the amount of players you are hosting, however I would do this:

• Make sure you're running only what you need in plugins (what you have right now seems very reasonable)
• Make sure you're only using one world (disable nether and end)
• Make sure you have a technical border around the world area so that world generation cannot occur

What is a "medium plugin" supposed to be?

 

Thanks, Sushi.

• I am running the plugins that I only really need. WorldEdit probably won't be used unless it's an emergency.
• I only have one world.
• I'm using WorldBorder plugin and limiting the world to 1000 blocks away from spawn - limiting it to a square border that doesn't allow players out of it. I have also pre-rendered the chunks in this area.

Will lowing the viewing distance help alot as well?

 

yes it will set it to maybe 7