jominer247

Common miss-understandings about MC servers and the hardware they run on.
 
I found a post similar to this on spigotmc.org which highlights misconceptions in minecraft server hosting. I thought i'd bring these to technic to help newbie server owners in deciding which server to get (mainly aimed at those with dedies).
 
I'm gonna make it as simple as I can, I will put this down in my own words but I am NOT going to go rambling on forever about alot of complex processor stuff.
 
Let's start.
 
The higher the CPU GHz, THE BETTER!
 
This is EXTREMELY common around server owners. I've heard people speaking about this quite often, and just decided to note it down. I'm going to use the same example as what was given on spigotmc.org.
Thread speed can vary between processors, and can be often differentiated not only by the processor GHz, but by the way the processor is built and handles operations.
 
Here is a prime example:
Intel Xeon X5698 (4.40GHz)  - scored 1,856 - low on Passmark's single threaded CPU tests.
Intel Xeon E3-1265Lv3 (2.5GHz)  - scores 2,175 - #14 on Passmark's single threaded CPU tests.
That's a big difference, the E3 would be faster then the X Xeon, even though the X Xeon has almost double the GHz! That's quite a difference! Remember minecraft servers do NOT run on multiple cores/threads. The actual minecraft server itself runs on one core. The garbage collection however is another story.
Disconsented posted about the MHz myth in the comments, not sure how it applies to processors myself but might as well include it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth
 
RAM is the most important resource for a minecraft server!
 
We all know a minecraft server of any kind will not start properly without dedicated RAM allocation (or burst). But RAM is actually one of the least important resource for a minecraft server. All resources i'd say are completely balanced, a minecraft server will not start without a CPU/RAM/BackingStorage. If I was to put it in order from 1-4. 1 being the most important:
1. CPU
2. Network Connection
3. HDD/SSD
4. RAM
Yes, RAM is one of the least important resources. A minecraft server has been hosted completely off of SWAP on an SSD VPS and ran fine with 3 players on!
Disconsented posted the following link:
http://www.computermemoryupgrade.net/memory-influence-on-performance.html
 
Homehosting is mostly fine!
 
HomeHosting is in most cases bad, some ISPs actually ban you from hosting a server on there network. You're home network is most likely not going to be powerful enough to run a minecraft server. The minecraft server, if loaded, may cause problems for anyone connected to the network. If your network is powerful enough, then your PC may not be powerful enough to handle the server without lag. Even if it can, you're risking the cause of fire in your house if you're leaving the server/machine on 24/7 as your house is most likely not setup and professionally monitored in the way a data-center is. Minecraft hosting is fairly cheap, and if you can't afford it, then just play on someone elses server.
 
DDoS protection is expensive, and for use by large servers only!
 
This is completely false. I don't have alot to say about this other then the fact, go and have a look at http://ovh.com/. They offer 460Gbps DDoS protection on all there servers, and even VPSs starting at $3/mo!
 
If your TPS is below 20, something is wrong.
 
Now, If you're running an MC server you should be running spigot anyway, it's much faster. But if you're server goes to for example (I'm talking 1.4.7 and over) 19.98 TPS. then you don't have a problem, it's most likely caused by thread inaccuracies. However, if you're on tekkit classic, thread inaccuracy is extremely rare. If your servers running at 19.696967 TPS then you may need to check that out, that's actually very noticeable.
 
If you are starting out a server, make it a hub from the beginning
 
Think about it, four servers connected to a hub means you'd need quadruple the amount of players to make up for the players you would have only needed to have on one server. Unless you're going to go mad with paid advertising, you should stick to one server.
 
Hosting your server off root user is fine.
 
I've been told myself a million times not to do this, yet i still do this today. It's often seen as a security flaw, even though I myself don't see any danger in doing it. Cx.
 
Thanks for reading.
 
If anything else needs added/changed. Tell me. 

Wow, wait really? I used 9MC, 6MC 5MC etc to help me find mods for the Deatrix Official modpack!
 
Thanks plowmanplow, i'll be sure not to use them anymore
 
And ozurr, don't use a mod that's suspect, It's easier to try and change it. When you get a crash you can diagnose the issue yourself by adding .disabled onto the mods, then starting the server and doing what you where doing before the crash, that is how I found out that it was infact, the extra battle towers or whatever that mod is called that was causing the crashes
 
If you want faster help feel free to add me on skype @ deatrix.joseph117

So could it be an enchanted item ON the skeleton thats causing this? Just wondering for future referance

Try changing the build of thaumcraft. Outdating it to (I was on a 1.6.4 client) 1.5.2 really helped for me.

Hmmmm, bear, add me on skype @ deatrix.joseph117, I'm good with modpack servers.

Damage Indicators has to go into the server to get the damage from the server else you'll end up with a broken indicator.
Rei's minimap doesnt tho, you can leave that out.

A "headless" setup is one in which you have no KVM (keyboard, video, mouse). In this configuration you would be managing your system through SSH terminals and SFTP/SCP file transfers (or Samba/CIFS if you are fancy). Be careful messing with niceness settings. "nice" levels in Linux refer to how a process' system calls are prioritized ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_%28Unix%29 ). IONice does the same thing for disk IO ( http://www.askapache.com/optimize/optimize-nice-ionice.html ). There are "gotchas", however, it can be VERY handy for things like backup operations so the server doesn't lag like a beast when running your periodic world backups. Running Forge/MC servers in a VM is extremely viable. Running servers in a shared hosting environment where resources are painfully oversubscribed is an enormous stack of suck. As long as you aren't oversubscribing (specifically memory) you can get great performance using VMs, especially when using a Type-1/bare-metal Hypervisor.