Mindcrack Lag Complaints? Optimizing FTB Servers

[UgLounge]

So I own a Mindcrack V7 Server, and I can't help but notice the large amount of complaints regarding lag.
Most of the time it seems to be client-side, but the server is rather resource heavy. With around 20+
folks online, chances are the server will lag.

We rent through EnviousHost and at one point upgraded to their 4GB plan (which is the highest offered),
but that showed us the issue was tied to the CPU as opposed to the RAM. So what makes FTB/Mindcrack so CPU intensive? How are you guys keeping your servers low in lag without overloading the CPU?

All help, experience, and advice is appreciated.

 

[Yourdogsdead]

All them fancy machines probably put more load on it than a normal server.

 

[HaoSs]

minecraft don't know about multi core. a dual core running on 3ghz+ will outperform a i7 runing on 2 ghz . Is the same story with tekkit . pass 20 players, and the TPS goes down. So if you have the power . 2 servers running 30 slots is better then 1 server running 60

 

[NooBxGockeL]

HaoSs your quite wrong but right at the same time.
@UgLouge you should take a look at multithreading, its here in the admin area.
Its still WIP but it might help you.

Not only can the CPU be the bottleneck, every player needs a ton of uplink and downlink.
Especially with RP2 and Mystcraft.

 

[glasspelican]

On my server I changed some of the jvm flags to change it to incremental garbage collection and told it that when it does a full GC sweep to use all my cpu cores so it dosent suspend the server for as long.
Then I set it to use aggressive optimization and sse4.
I can help set it up if you want.
Note that this is mutually exclusive with the mod NooBxGokeL mentioned, the development of wich I am closely following.

 

[UgLounge]

http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...le-entity-ticks-and-other-optimisations.6498/

Anyone familiar with that mod above?

 

[nallar]

http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...le-entity-ticks-and-other-optimisations.6498/

Anyone familiar with that mod above?

It's not stable yet, but I hope it will be useful in future.

On my server I changed some of the jvm flags to change it to incremental garbage collection and told it that when it does a full GC sweep to use all my cpu cores so it dosent suspend the server for as long.
Then I set it to use aggressive optimization and sse4.
I can help set it up if you want.
Note that this is mutually exclusive with the mod NooBxGokeL mentioned, the development of wich I am closely following.

Those flags should work with TT - as far as I know the only issue is if you make the stack size too big.

 

[floh22]

i have 16Gb of ram and edited my startup to something similar like the guy said b4, but only with 16gb of ram and 8 cores. at 16 people, i start to lag... wtf?!

 

[glasspelican]

if you need help please open a thread in the tech support section and state exactly what the problem is, full system spec, and internet speed.
the more info you can give the better

if you are using the tick threading mod linked above please note that it is beta software, if you are using it you might want to go to that thread.

 

[floh22]

Harddisk 2x 2000 GB SATA 3,5" 7.200 rpm
CPU AMD Opteron 3280 Octacore
Barebone Fujitsu PRIMERGY MX130 S2
RAM
16x Gigabyte RAM

My internet speed is 100Mb/s and i tested it and its at 90mb/s. i am not using the mod linked above but i am using a custom startup. the problem is that the server is lagging at about 15 - 17 players, and it was just as bad at 8 Gb ram and 4 cores. thanks for your help.

startup script:

#!/bin/sh
BINDIR=$(dirname "$(readlink -fn "$0")")
cd "\$BINDIR"
while true
do
java -Xmx14G -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing -XXarallelGCThreads=1 -jar mindcrack.jar nogui -server -XX:+AggressiveOpts -XX:UseSSE=7 -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods -XX:CMSFullGCsBeforeCompaction=1 -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:+UseCMSCompactAtFullCollection -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XXarallelGCThreads=4
echo "If you want to completely stop the server process now, press Ctrl+C before the time is up!"
echo "Rebooting in:"
for i in 5 4 3 2 1
do
echo "$i..."
sleep 1
done
echo "Rebooting now!"
done

 

[nallar]

Harddisk 2x 2000 GB SATA 3,5" 7.200 rpm
CPU AMD Opteron 3280 Octacore
Barebone Fujitsu PRIMERGY MX130 S2
RAM
16x Gigabyte RAM

My internet speed is 100Mb/s and i tested it and its at 90mb/s. i am not using the mod linked above but i am using a custom startup. the problem is that the server is lagging at about 15 - 17 players, and it was just as bad at 8 Gb ram and 4 cores. thanks for your help.

startup script:
[SNIP]

"-XX:UseSSE=7" - SSE 7 doesn't exist, try 4.

 

[glasspelican]

you are also defineing

-XX:ParallelGCThreads

twice once its =1 and the other =4

 

[floh22]

thanks, il see if changing those fixes the lag. why does mindcrack lag so much anyway? i was running a tekkit server with the same specs and 60 people online with no lag.....

 

[lisim]

Tekkit is a year older then FTB as is its version of Minecraft it uses, there have been a bucket load of updates to the mods, forge and minecaft it self, so compareing the 2 is like apples and oranges,

to put it simple the amount of mods and what they do heavy affect tick rate as their all take time to proccess,

 

[floh22]

Tekkit is a year older then FTB as is its version of Minecraft it uses, there have been a bucket load of updates to the mods, forge and minecaft it self, so compareing the 2 is like apples and oranges,

to put it simple the amount of mods and what they do heavy affect tick rate as their all take time to proccess,

what you are suggesting is that minecraft code has gotten slower? cause tekkit didnt have as many mods, but i didnt lag at 60 players, and now i lag at 15-17. and the direwolf20 pack doesnt lag as much as well. i dont use it cause it doesnt have gregtech, though i dont think that affects the tick rate too much...

 

[Xaviorm]

What is your upload speed to the internet? (note NOT the network you are plugged into. You did mention hosting though) Assuming it's 100Mb you can still max it out with 10 players changing dimensions at the same time.. Wither fights also seem to jack the network load. If you are running linux find the tool nload and watch what is going on. htop is an nice tool to see what is going on with the procs

I see spikes of 11 megs when i zone into my base and all the texture/objects load. Multiply that with 20 people moving around and people will get block lag and disconnects.

A lot more has changed with the intel procs besides how many cores. Mainly how it moves data in and out of the CPU is a lot faster so an I7 or it's server equivalent will be better than a single core faster speed proc. Cache matters too. Disk speed also is a concern.

Also while MC is single threaded Java spins off threads to manage the networking. Limiting this to a single core makes it fight with MC. getting garbage collection to thread is also a REALLY good idea.

There are some sysctl settings you can set it if you can control the OS on the server but they are very environment specific. Google Linux tcp optimization and tweak for your environment.

MC Dev/Modders really need to look at the network thing. It's pretty stupid how it's working now and could be made much better if people worked on it.

 

[Delnaga]

what you are suggesting is that minecraft code has gotten slower? cause tekkit didnt have as many mods, but i didnt lag at 60 players, and now i lag at 15-17. and the direwolf20 pack doesnt lag as much as well. i dont use it cause it doesnt have gregtech, though i dont think that affects the tick rate too much...

Yes that is true minecraft is getting slower, well perhaps slower is the wrong word. Its getting bigger and bulkier. And its still only using a single core Minecraft is now at the point where for servers at the very least multi core support is needed. This is the the major bottleneck for performance right now, and i dont see any easy solution from our end. Mindcrack is the "beefiest pack" currently out but the other packs are felling the strain as well and its not just here at FTB, tekkits new stuff is also just as laggy and even good size vanilla servers are feeling strained.

 

[floh22]

Yes that is true minecraft is getting slower, well perhaps slower is the wrong word. Its getting bigger and bulkier. And its still only using a single core Minecraft is now at the point where for servers at the very least multi core support is needed. This is the the major bottleneck for performance right now, and i dont see any easy solution from our end. Mindcrack is the "beefiest pack" currently out but the other packs are felling the strain as well and its not just here at FTB, tekkits new stuff is also just as laggy and even good size vanilla servers are feeling strained.

im already using a multicore java startup though i know this has some confilicting issues. still faster than just one core

 

[Killer139]

What helps server side CPU load for Mindcrack are the following few point that need changing (If people want i can explain)

1) Disable Twilght Forest (Buggy)
2) Disable Chicken Chunks (No cost for chunck loading)
3) Set Fillers to destroy block not drop them
4) Reduce tick rate load of quarry's (Reduces lag ALOT)
5) A world border help (And using Fill to preload all the chunck in border so people roaming wont cause lag)
6) Personal and World Anchores (Make personal ones alot cheaper upkeep cost to reduce lag while they not on server)
7) Setup script to restart server and backup every 12 hours

My private server has about 15 people on at one time. Running for quite a while and load on the single core is around 24% avg. With 3GB of ram. World border set to 10k and all preloaded.

 

[glasspelican]

Killer139 could you post what CPU you are using for comparison?