Need Smart Opinions!

Just need some opinions from people who know more about this than I do.

I run a 24/7 server off of a desktop I built.

12Gb Ram, 8 allocated for java
dual 3.4ghz core.

My internet claims 15Mbps down, and 5 up. I don't know if I am actually getting that though. Either way, I am getting some good donations and am wondering if I should invest it into my internet. My users occasionally complain about lag once the players count reaches about 20-25. I imagine its the internet holding it back, the cpu usage and physical memory is not maxing at all, and I don't get many "Can't keep up...." messages in the console. For only $15 more, I can get 25 up / down. Is this the right way to go to fig this "lag?" I have never seen it lag, even when I connect from my laptop so I am not sure. But, my friends with top of the line computers claim they get some lag when the players count get high.

Opinions????

 

It would help to know what plugins you are running in case the lag is being caused some something else.

15$ for 25 megs up is worth it if that is accurate. The best I can do around here is 250$ a month for 100 down / 5 up, but that also includes cable tv

 

The heavy plugins would be worldedit, worldguard, logblock, stats, lwc, afk booter

 

Here are some ideas to improve performance:

- Start using MySQL for logblock and any other plugin that supports it. That should help a lot.
- Start using a RAM disk for your server and world data. That should help quite a bit as well.
- Try disabling AFK booter. An AFK user probably uses less resources just idling there then the plugin uses in timing resources to track all your users.
- change your java garbage collector to the consecutive mark sweep collect
- look into the craftproxy plugin and see if your users would be willing to use a proxy. using 70% less bandwidth might be better than getting 70% more bandwidth.

If I had more specific details about your setup I could make more specific recommendations.

 

Ive read about the ramdisk, but not sure how that works. Can you explain the last two a little further?

 

It would help to know some basic information first before I spend any more time asplanin things

What OS are you running? windows, linux, 64 bit?
What hard ware are you running on? CPU, RAM, HDD specs

You can see a small guide I wrote for tuning the garbage collector here: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/ho...24gb-dedicated-server.3967/page-2#post-184208

If you are running windows, you can use Dataram Ramdisk. The free version supports ramdisks up to 4 gigs in size, which is more than enough for our needs. It is a very easy to use program, and if you follow the setup instructions you should have no problems. It can save the disk to your hdd before shutting down your computer and remount it automatically at boot. it can also save the contents of the ramdisk to the hdd on a schedule. default is 5 minutes. you'll probably want to increase that to 15-30 minutes.

MySQL is easy to setup. really it is. creating the databases for the plugins is a little more complicated, but I can point you in the right direction.

craftproxy is a bukkit plugin that is being developed that allows the client to save world data directly to hteir local hard drive, that way you don't have to constantly resend world data all the time. the proxy asks your server if data has changed, if it has, the server resends the new data, if it hasnt, the client just uses the cached data.

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

 

64bit, 12 gb of ram, dual 3.4ghz, java 7. Ive been using remotetoolkit to start it up. I used your code, and tried to modify it but it just automatically went off once I started it. I don't know about java commands at all.
This is what I would run if not using remotetoolkit. I don't know how to modify garbage collection from there.

Code:

@echo off
"%ProgramFiles%\Java\jre7\bin\java.exe" -Xincgc -Xmx8G -jar craftbukkit-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
pause

 

windows7? xp? server 2008? core i7? help me out here.

if you add a PAUSE to the end of your tweaked bat it should leave the window open so you can see what java 7 didn't like about the line.

I would also recommend against using Java 7 at this time. it is incredibly buggy at the moment. Hence the pre-release status. Performance is described as "no better than 1.6. and possibly worse" at this time also, so there is really no gain from using it.

If you only change one thing, I suggest you switch garbage collectors. instead of -xincgc use this:

Code:

:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=50

You shouldn't get any complaints from that.

 

I highly recommend running a routing platform such as pfSense that can show you real-time usage graphs or statistics. You could then tell at a glance if your line is saturated or not.

 

Even looking at the networking tab of performance manager will let you see your usage patterns. You can get more useful information out of it if you make a couple adjustments.
1. under options menu, tick tab always active and show cumulative data
2. view > select columns.. and add bytes sent/interval and bytes received/interval
3. under view > network adapter history > check all three available options to add sent and received data to the graph instead of just total aggregate throughput.