Monster Server Admins

[Johnson]

I'm curious from the other admins out there running Monster servers on how your doing. I'm current running Monster 1.0.9 with MCPC and everything is great up until around 30+ players and the TPS starts to tank pretty hard.

What kind of experiences have you all had? Also, if you're willing to share, what kind of hardware are you running CPU(#Cores), Ram, Hard Drive(HDD or SSD) and VPS/Dedicated? Which host do you use?

Thanks!

 

[HaoSs]

30 players is also my limit. CPU can't handle it, even if its a i7. you need some good ghz. like 3.5 - 4 ghz to even get here

 

[DZCreeper]

Your mad to try running more than 20 players on anything but a dedicated machine in a datacenter that is heavily overclocked. # of cores means nothing except for garbage collection, your limited to 1 core over 90% of the time.

MCPC+ helps a bit but is not a miracle. Tick Threading is of course but that's 1.5.2 or earlier and its buggy.

 

[Johnson]

@DZCreeper How large would you say the difference between a SATA drive and a SSD drive is?

 

[DZCreeper]

Both regular hard drives and solid state drives use the SATA interface. The difference is that a modern SSD will saturate a SATA 2 interface which is why SATA 3 is now very common. A traditional hard drive will rarely saturate a SATA 2 interface unless in a RAID 0 or 10 configuration.

What you probably mean is the size difference. The average SSD that consumers buy is 128 to 256GB of space. They are available up to sizes as large as 1TB but those cost nearly $1000. Traditional hard drives are slower but cheaper, with the typical hard drive being 1TB for $100 or less, and sizes available up to 4TB for just under $300.

The main weakness of a traditional hard drive compared to a SSD is simply speed. SSD's have no moving parts and this makes them extremely fast, particularly when dealing with small files and sequential read/write operations. Simply put, a SSD is a great upgrade to improve things like startup times and chunk loading speed, provided your processor can keep up.

 

[Johnson]

Sorry, I should of been specific on this one. So are far as a dedicated server, there would be a worthwhile performance improvement using an SSD over a traditional hard drive.

 

[DZCreeper]

Not in terms of tickrate but if the rest of the setup is capable (bandwidth, processor performance, disk IO, memory) then your players will notice a significant improvement in chunk loading times when exploring or switch dimensions. For small servers its complete overkill unless your like me and your players are extremely dedicated and overachievers.

For a large server, which I would say is above 10 or 15 people, the benefits outweigh the cost. I know the personal server section of OVH that was launched in recent months offers machines with SSD's instead of regular hard drives for minimal cost increase.

 

[Goshen]

30 players is also my limit. CPU can't handle it, even if its a i7. you need some good ghz. like 3.5 - 4 ghz to even get here

We have been running Monster since the day it was release, and we have always the 30 player wall.

We upgraded our dedi to an overclocked 5ghz liquid cooled 8 core processor with overclocked ram and an ssd and it didn't help. Everything up to 27 players sped up quite a bit, but once it hits 27 each additional player tanks tps. It almost feels hard coded.

It has been a never ending source of frustration for us, and one of these days I plan to disable one mod at a time to se if we can pinpoint where the bottleneck is coming from.

In an effort to deal with this we have decided to go to a multiple server setup with a bungee cord link. We are currently working to link the player files so they can carry their items from world to world. Note: bungee cord setups are not for the idle server owner, they will eat up many days of your time to learn and set up.

Would like to see this thread continue, as it is a really big impediment to running a large server.

 

[HaoSs]

may wan't to start by doing some java profiling, small guide how to start here: https://github.com/nallar/TickThreading/wiki
also opis should help
'
also read this : http://www.sk89q.com/2013/03/improving-your-minecraft-servers-performance/ but don;t take whats there word by word. its a 1 year old post . take the general idea.

p.s. small tip! you can also force users to use ender quarry/pump and not the BC one.

 

[Goshen]

may wan't to start by doing some java profiling, small guide how to start here: https://github.com/nallar/TickThreading/wiki
also opis should help
'
also read this : http://www.sk89q.com/2013/03/improving-your-minecraft-servers-performance/ but don;t take whats there word by word. its a 1 year old post . take the general idea.

p.s. small tip! you can also force users to use ender quarry/pump and not the BC one.

opis: already done
Tickprofiler: already done
sk89q's article, read several times
Ender quarry/pump only- already done

 

[HaoSs]

then what's opis saying ? where you have long ms on tick ? tps starts to go down once you have tick's taking longer then 50 ms or so

 

[Evilshallwin]

opis: already done
Tickprofiler: already done
sk89q's article, read several times
Ender quarry/pump only- already done

Do you have Mariculture installed? Apparently it can cause major lag if you have too many people on at one time. Try testing on a separate server without it.

 

[Redruzerkruzer]

I currently run Monster 1.1.0 with a fully dedicated server. I can support over 25 people without hardly any ram or cpu usage. My TPS usually hovers around 19.996 too. I had about 30 plugins running too.

I strongly suggest, for those that can, is to put java parameters on the server. It helps a lot, so much so that it affects performance.

Myself and my staff also use OPIS constantly. To monitor every single item that is causing issues. This also helps us stay at 20 tps. Makes a huge difference over time.

My host info is here http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/server-hosts-a-host-review.43340/

Protip: For modded servers, only use SSDs, and nothing else. If you use HDD for modded servers, you will experience massive lag and many things not working properly, such as chunk loading. I know because i had tried running the Horizons modpack on a server with Raid-1 SATAIII, and holy crap was that a pain in the butt.

 

[FtbTooHard]

This is a good thread, I was also wondering what you Monster Server admins have added/changed to the configs of the mods to make monster more stable/less lag/less crashes.

Thanks in advance for any input on what kind of changes I should apply to the Config folder.

 

[Shaylyndark]

here is what I know from the mods running in general on a monster server that should help lower lag or obliterate it
all tests were perfomed on the same server often wiping the map for the next rounds of tests and they were also measured in differences(i would set up a test bed leave it running a day and those were the results for the controlled any changes is what was recorded

please also note that the testing server is small it in its self is more ment for 5 people i used a small server so the effects are easier to see

I am sorry for any and all lack of grammer as when this was typed it just comes spilling out of my brain i am autistic if some one can actually make sense of all this please i beg of you make it so others can understand it

large me systems needed more then 100 eu a tick(this includes conected quantum rings) over all (so an me system with a properly installed quantum ring will take 244 eu min) will cause massive amounts of lag(not so much that 1 me system will bog down the whole server but enough that 10 people with an me this size will start) on any server (monster or not) removing power requirements brings the me systems down to a dull roar compare to their usual ear bleeding roar it takes 80 me systems of equal size to cause the same around of lag as just 8 running at 250 eu a tick (this is a small effect when running a small server i would not bother on servers capped out at 30)

limiting users to no more then 10 solar of any type or banning them entirely will bring lag down exponentially 2 high voltage solar can actual out lag a single 2 turbine 3x3x4 with a 3x3firebox(no solar based heating this is using solid or liquid fuel) boiler set up(please note this set up the turbines are right on the boiler no pipes) set ups were both tested for 24 hours each with all support mechanics contently loaded using spot loaders and a mass fab(sucking up about 30k eu a tick) porting uu to oblivion meaning i had an oil fabrication and refining system and a tree farm making charcoal running at the times of both solar and boiler tests this was to make sure that all tests happened under the same conditions (liquid fueled boilers running off refined oil appears to be the least laggy of boiler setups just because of the support mechanics) these tests were also conducted in massive numbers(2 stacks of solar and eu equivalent of boilers(in unleashed it was found that ultamits gave off the same lag measurements as that of a hv solar or an mv solar or an lv solar meaning regardless of the solar they all produced the same amounts of lag)
However in a boiler system that used even 1 piece of piping to move steam from a to b was actual found to be twice as laggy as equal solar eu generation

using 1 quantum gen on default settings to 1 hv solar the quantum regardless caused less lag then the solar

personal my self i am inclined to ban solar and offer free liquid fuel in exchange for the solar

Magmatic is next to be tested when i get round to it

quarry sits at the top of my list particularly on monster of things to extremely limit given all data above i could only run 10 quarrys (quantum to upgraded electric eng = 100 mj a tick) with out tanking the whole thing and yet i was able to run a boiler setup that can match the eu generation of 2 stacks of solars however i was later able to turn around and have 15 times the ore yeild off my steam set up using mining drills



often times its not so much the mods that are making lag but how they are being used steam is a good example

more tests and data to come

 

[HaoSs]

well. in my lag list, even on old ultimate pack, was the hoppers ) some setups can eat more then 10 bc quarrys