Looking for a Co-Owner

[mmorton89]

Hello, my name is mike. I am 23 years old and I have been playing minecraft for around a year.

I am fairly new to Feed the Beast and Modding, I have only been playing feed the beast for around a month. I used to run a bukkit server but after playing around on feed the beast I decided to make the switch.

I have a public mindcrack server up and running for around a month and I think I got the hang of running a feed the beast server.

I do have some issues though, which I hope to resolve with this thread.

I do not have any friends that play minecraft or trusted players on my server.
I really don't have a "community" on the server either, it is just a bunch of random people.
I also am getting tired of paying the whole monthly bill myself for the server.

I would like to find someone who would want to split a server with me. It does not have to be the server I am currently renting, it can be from another company. It could also be a server you already have.

I am very willing to make changes also, like different modpack, private server, or what ever else you might prefer.

There is 1 thing that I will not change though, I want good hardware.

I like to host because I know that I will have a lag free server that I can play on whenever I want. Most public servers have bad block lag or might be down when I want to play. I can eliminate this problem by hosting my own server.

For hardware I would like something similar to my server.
Xeon E3-1230v2
64GB SSD
16 GB DDR3 RAM

So please let me know if your interested and what your thinking and we can talk. Thanks for your time.

 

[Guswut]

I do not have any friends that play minecraft

A non-issue, as offline ("real life") friends usually aren't the best people to have on your server, as they'll often try and get away with stuff because they think that, just because they know you, they deserve special treatment.

or trusted players on my server.

This requires time, patience, and a willingness to trust people. This also often leads to hardship, as you likely have already found.

I really don't have a "community" on the server either, it is just a bunch of random people.

I assume that means that most everyone is "playing single player online", right? In which case, you should start thinking about organizing a server-wide megaproject, such as making a spawn city (which then gives people the feeling that it'd be nice to have other people join the server to use said spawn city more often/etc).

I also am getting tired of paying the whole monthly bill myself for the server.

Have you considered asking your members for donations? Assuming your bill is 40$ (US), and you have eight people, if each person donated 5$ that would pay for the server. 5$ is likely too much to ask, but 2$ isn't too bad, which then covers a bit under half of the bill.

Requiring donations, though, will likely drive away people.

Hopefully some of those points are useful to you. Good luck finding a server partner!

 

[Azzanine]

Have you considered asking your members for donations? Assuming your bill is 40$ (US), and you have eight people, if each person donated 5$ that would pay for the server. 5$ is likely too much to ask, but 2$ isn't too bad, which then covers a bit under half of the bill.
Requiring donations, though, will likely drive away people.

0_0 WTF! Lucky yanks (I assume)... 16 Gigs of DDR3 ram for 40$ a month? That's cheap as...
Are these servers local to the US or do you have to use some Asian dealo?
Because us Australians are gouged $100+ for even 6 gigs of ram that and our bandwidth is capped on top of that. But sadly if we want 150 ms pings we kind of can't use any servers not in the oceanic zone.

 

[Guswut]

0_0 WTF! Lucky yanks (I assume)... 16 Gigs of DDR3 ram for 40$ a month? That's cheap as...
Are these servers local to the US or do you have to use some Asian dealo?
Because us Australians are gouged $100+ for even 6 gigs of ram that and our bandwidth is capped on top of that. But sadly if we want 150 ms pings we kind of can't use any servers not in the oceanic zone.

I was pulling a number out of a hat (and I don't own any hats, so pip pip), and as I host my own server myself, I don't know the exact pricing structure of modern server hosts, but the US cost shouldn't be more than fifty dollars at the most for a server designed to support a decent population, and so it does appear that your server prices are a bit outrageous.

Are you even saturating your memory bandwidth limits, though? The recommended amount of RAM per user is somewhere between 500mb to 1GB, and that is usually a fairly gross overestimate for vanilla. In FTB, that likely sits much truer to the mark. But if you are hosting the server yourself, then the only cost to you is the hardware cost (which is likely outrageous as well, eh?).

 

[mmorton89]

Spoiler

A non-issue, as offline ("real life") friends usually aren't the best people to have on your server, as they'll often try and get away with stuff because they think that, just because they know you, they deserve special treatment.



This requires time, patience, and a willingness to trust people. This also often leads to hardship, as you likely have already found.



I assume that means that most everyone is "playing single player online", right? In which case, you should start thinking about organizing a server-wide megaproject, such as making a spawn city (which then gives people the feeling that it'd be nice to have other people join the server to use said spawn city more often/etc).



Have you considered asking your members for donations? Assuming your bill is 40$ (US), and you have eight people, if each person donated 5$ that would pay for the server. 5$ is likely too much to ask, but 2$ isn't too bad, which then covers a bit under half of the bill.

Requiring donations, though, will likely drive away people.

Hopefully some of those points are useful to you. Good luck finding a server partner!

Thanks for the great tips! I really like the idea of a server mega-project and I think I will try to organize that with my players.

I am unfortunately paying more than double what you guessed each month and one thing I learned from running a craftbukkit server is not to depend on donations or subscriptions. I always see donations as extra money to help with the bill and I have never had a month where there servers bill was paid for totally with donations.

I also forgot to mention that yes, I am american and the server is also in america. I guess that would have been some useful information. lol

Thanks again for the tips and ideas!

 

[Guswut]

Thanks for the great tips! I really like the idea of a server mega-project and I think I will try to organize that with my players.

I am unfortunately paying more than double what you guessed each month and one thing I learned from running a craftbukkit server is not to depend on donations or subscriptions. I always see donations as extra money to help with the bill and I have never had a month where there servers bill was paid for totally with donations.

I also forgot to mention that yes, I am american and the server is also in america. I guess that would have been some useful information. lol

Thanks again for the tips and ideas!

Well, to work on cutting down the costs, I'd suggest looking at what you actually need as far as hardware goes. First off, I am assuming that you are not getting a dedicated server (although at 80$+ a month, you should be), so you shouldn't have a problem getting a different package as needed.

How many users are you seeing at the max.? And how large is your entirely world? Also, how many backups are you trailing?

I'd say, at the VERY most, assume 1GB per user (in reality, I'd say go with 500MB per user as this is where most server hosts make the most money, and one of the places that is the largest variable).

Secondly, if your world isn't 64GB, why are you paying for 64GB of space? I can understand paying for said space for backups, but why the heck are you STORING your backups on an SSD versus FTPing them offsite? Create your world backup, and then FTP it over to your home computer, or look into buying an FTP service (it shouldn't be more than 1$ per GB of space with a hosted FTP solution, which will likely be a good deal of savings). I can understand if the smallest SSD drive space they are willing to offer is 64GB in a dedicated server, in which case you may want to think about a shared server.

Also, how stable is your home internet connection? Do you have a computer you can use to host the server at your home, as it'd likely be a LOT cheaper to pay a few hundred dollars upfront to build a small server to dedicate host your MineCraft server off of your own internet connection. Most modern broadband internet connections will be perfectly fine handling a MineCraft server, although if you are using an internet system that gets horrible latency, this won't work.

Let's see if we can help you get that server bill under control before you go and have to start sharing the throne with another person, ok?

 

[mmorton89]

Well, to work on cutting down the costs, I'd suggest looking at what you actually need as far as hardware goes. First off, I am assuming that you are not getting a dedicated server (although at 80$+ a month, you should be), so you shouldn't have a problem getting a different package as needed.

How many users are you seeing at the max.? And how large is your entirely world? Also, how many backups are you trailing?

I'd say, at the VERY most, assume 1GB per user (in reality, I'd say go with 500MB per user as this is where most server hosts make the most money, and one of the places that is the largest variable).

Secondly, if your world isn't 64GB, why are you paying for 64GB of space? I can understand paying for said space for backups, but why the heck are you STORING your backups on an SSD versus FTPing them offsite? Create your world backup, and then FTP it over to your home computer, or look into buying an FTP service (it shouldn't be more than 1$ per GB of space with a hosted FTP solution, which will likely be a good deal of savings). I can understand if the smallest SSD drive space they are willing to offer is 64GB in a dedicated server, in which case you may want to think about a shared server.

Also, how stable is your home internet connection? Do you have a computer you can use to host the server at your home, as it'd likely be a LOT cheaper to pay a few hundred dollars upfront to build a small server to dedicate host your MineCraft server off of your own internet connection. Most modern broadband internet connections will be perfectly fine handling a MineCraft server, although if you are using an internet system that gets horrible latency, this won't work.

Let's see if we can help you get that server bill under control before you go and have to start sharing the throne with another person, ok?

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I do have a dedicated server. I have had a lot of issues with minecraft server nodes, mostly with lack of control and over selling.

I also have a 500GB HDD which I use for backups, I am currently not doing backups though because I need to either find a new backup script or do a re-write of the one I currently have.

I do not have good enough upload speeds to host a server from my house. My connection speeds are tested at 30 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload from speedtest.net.

I set the max slots to 25 players mainly because at 25 players my load average will get close to 1.00. I don't see any lag at 25 players but I feel if I push the server any harder I will start to see lag. During the weekdays there is usually less than 10 players on at any given time, On the weekends the server will usually get close to full.

 

[Guswut]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I do have a dedicated server. I have had a lot of issues with minecraft server nodes, mostly with lack of control and over selling.

Yeah, shared server hosts will often oversell, and lead to suffering, in most parts of the server time renting area. Dedicated servers are much better for that reason, but the cost is fairly massive.

I also have a 500GB HDD which I use for backups, I am currently not doing backups though because I need to either find a new backup script or do a re-write of the one I currently have.

I'd suggest looking into Forge Backup for a good backup solution, then just script an offsite FTP of the backups every now and again.

I do not have good enough upload speeds to host a server from my house. My connection speeds are tested at 30 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload from speedtest.net.

Feel free to tell me if you'd rather not answer any of my questions, but could you be spending some/all of the money you are spending on your dedicate server to get a better internet connection in regards to upload speed? Sixteen down should be enough, but yeah, one up will choke on four to eight players normally.

If you can upgrade your internet connection or switch to a better provider for a chunk of how much you pay monthly for your hosted server, I'd think it would make a lot of sense to seriously think about doing that, and then running the server off of your computer or even building your own dedicated server (if you need help pricing out a box for this, I can assist you there as well).

The biggest thing is trying to maximize what you get for a minimal cost, and you really cannot get anything better than self-hosted dedicated server as far as power goes. 120$ for a 128GB SSD, around the same for 16GB of DDR3 at 1333mhz, and likely 200$ for a motherboard/cpu/case/power supply package. Maybe spend a bit more on a better power supply, and maybe even invest in a uninterrupted power supply as well. You'll likely end up being out a few hundred dollars, but the value in savings is worth it. And if you have a TV in your livingroom, you can connect the unit out there and use it as a media box as well as for your server needs.

I set the max slots to 25 players mainly because at 25 players my load average will get close to 1.00. I don't see any lag at 25 players but I feel if I push the server any harder I will start to see lag. During the weekdays there is usually less than 10 players on at any given time, On the weekends the server will usually get close to full.

That is surely over where you'll want to be with a shared server, as you already know, and so dedicated really is the place to be. If you are really unable to make a self-hosted dedicated setup work, then I'd think you'd likely want to try and find a reason for someone else to want to invest in your existing server enough that they'll be willing to put down half of the monthly hosting cost.

 

[mmorton89]

Yeah, shared server hosts will often oversell, and lead to suffering, in most parts of the server time renting area. Dedicated servers are much better for that reason, but the cost is fairly massive.



I'd suggest looking into Forge Backup for a good backup solution, then just script an offsite FTP of the backups every now and again.



Feel free to tell me if you'd rather not answer any of my questions, but could you be spending some/all of the money you are spending on your dedicate server to get a better internet connection in regards to upload speed? Sixteen down should be enough, but yeah, one up will choke on four to eight players normally.

If you can upgrade your internet connection or switch to a better provider for a chunk of how much you pay monthly for your hosted server, I'd think it would make a lot of sense to seriously think about doing that, and then running the server off of your computer or even building your own dedicated server (if you need help pricing out a box for this, I can assist you there as well).

The biggest thing is trying to maximize what you get for a minimal cost, and you really cannot get anything better than self-hosted dedicated server as far as power goes. 120$ for a 128GB SSD, around the same for 16GB of DDR3 at 1333mhz, and likely 200$ for a motherboard/cpu/case/power supply package. Maybe spend a bit more on a better power supply, and maybe even invest in a uninterrupted power supply as well. You'll likely end up being out a few hundred dollars, but the value in savings is worth it. And if you have a TV in your livingroom, you can connect the unit out there and use it as a media box as well as for your server needs.



That is surely over where you'll want to be with a shared server, as you already know, and so dedicated really is the place to be. If you are really unable to make a self-hosted dedicated setup work, then I'd think you'd likely want to try and find a reason for someone else to want to invest in your existing server enough that they'll be willing to put down half of the monthly hosting cost.

I really wish I could but home hosting is not an option, the best connection I can buy from my ISP is 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps Up.

I am not trying to sell my current server setup, I am trying to find a partner to host a server with. I think it would more fun and easier on the wallet to run a server with a partner. we could make our objectives (what type of server, how it works, ect) and build and play together, with some friends (whitelist) or with some random players (public).

Quite honestly with the server I am renting right now, I could run 2 servers, giving each one 6-7 GB of RAM. My only concern would be the bandwidth, the server gets 12-15 Mbps Upload, I don't know if this could handle 2 FTB servers easily.

Also thanks for the Forge Backup solution! It works way better than the script I was using.

- edit - I think I may be looking in the wrong area? Maybe I should have posted this in the server admin area? or somewhere else?

 

[Guswut]

I really wish I could but home hosting is not an option, the best connection I can buy from my ISP is 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps Up.

Five up is easily enough to deal with a twenty-five person server (I run three [MineCraft, FTB, and a theme server] servers out of my home, and I've seen populations greater than twenty-five across all three at the same time). But that plan is likely a whole bunch more than you can afford to spend, right? Ah well, it was worth thinking about.

I am not trying to sell my current server setup, I am trying to find a partner to host a server with. I think it would more fun and easier on the wallet to run a server with a partner. we could make our objectives (what type of server, how it works, ect) and build and play together, with some friends (whitelist) or with some random players (public).

I'm sorry if I made it seem like I thought that you were going to sell the server. What I meant is that you need to show someone the reason that it makes sense to invest in your server. You need to "sell" the concept of being a co-owner with you, and show people where the value come (being able to assist a medium sized community grow, etc).

Quite honestly with the server I am renting right now, I could run 2 servers, giving each one 6-7 GB of RAM. My only concern would be the bandwidth, the server gets 12-15 Mbps Upload, I don't know if this could handle 2 FTB servers easily.

Seeing as how it is a dedicated server, you should monitor your bandwidth saturation. I know a good way on Windows, but I'm not too sure about Linux (I know they'll have a good way to do it, but I do not know what it is). If possible, leave your bandwidth monitoring solution running for a week or two to log data, and then check and see what you hit on the weekends.

Also thanks for the Forge Backup solution! It works way better than the script I was using.

No worries, I spent a few days trying to find the best backup solution. I can confirm that this one works perfectly well (not that it should be a surprise as it is just offloading a copy of the world and config folder, but I have used it a few times before with no issues).

- edit - I think I may be looking in the wrong area? Maybe I should have posted this in the server admin area? or somewhere else?

I believe that area is for technical help, but I am not entirely sure as it does not detail either way in the forum's description. Either way, best of luck to you, and I hope you can get the situation resolved to your satisfaction!

 

[MrZwij]

Voice communication is a great way to speed up the process of making friends on servers. I'd suggest you push your players to use voice, and use it yourself as much as possible (and be friendly ).

 

[Guswut]

Voice communication is a great way to speed up the process of making friends on servers. I'd suggest you push your players to use voice, and use it yourself as much as possible (and be friendly ).

Vocal communication is great when you are actively dealing with someone, and need to be in constant communication, as it can give you a much faster reply than text can without having to stop doing what you are doing.

Textual communication is great when you don't need constant communication, as you are able to take your time to think your answer through and don't need to hear the constant chatter that people have going on, be it background noise or whatnot.

But yes, a voice communication server is vital to a server to make sure it can grow.

 

[the_j485]

Hey, I'm not sure if I could afford to help you pay or if I want the responsibility for a server, but I'd love to help as an admin!
I can give you my word that I would never be irresponsible, and as I am from the UK, I can moderate when you might be sleeping. I have a decent knowledge of most mods, and I will never jump to conclusions without sufficient proof of goings on.
Hoping you could consider me!

 

[redman68]

So mmorton89, how is this project going for you currently?