Server hardware discussion. Any server Owner Must Read !

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Staxed

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Jul 29, 2019
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Initially it will just be for MC. Although at some point I'll probably let my parents have it (They've done enough for me lol).
And I'll probably put Windows 7 on it, just to keep it the same as the other machines in the house. Never tried Linux before.


Go with the 120 then.
 
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Staxed

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Thanks so much for all the help, and all the time you've taken to reply. I really do appreciate it.


Not a problem :)

I run my family server (with 4 people...) on a Dedicated Server :), I like overkill...(though I plan to make it public again one of these days)

Intel Xeon E3-1240v3, 32GB RAM (1600mhz), 256GB SSD, skeleton install of linux with only the essentials to run MC.

fast is good :D
 

Indie

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Jul 29, 2019
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Not a problem :)

I run my family server (with 4 people...) on a Dedicated Server :), I like overkill...(though I plan to make it public again one of these days)

Intel Xeon E3-1240v3, 32GB RAM (1600mhz), 256GB SSD, skeleton install of linux with only the essentials to run MC.

fast is good :D

Haha. I agree, fast is good. But after spending over £1000 and my new PC, I'm struggling to justify a MC Server. I blame the kids ;)
 

Staxed

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Jul 29, 2019
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Haha. I agree, fast is good. But after spending over £1000 and my new PC, I'm struggling to justify a MC Server. I blame the kids ;)


lol, I justify the expense as a "training method for bettering my coding skill"...plus the wife enjoys building stuff, along with my brothers, getting my daughters into it...and trying to convince my mother...but she's convinced she's too old to mess around with those new fangled contraptions of mine...:)

Gotta love MC for family time :)
 

Indie

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well, it's ordered. I'll let you know how it goes once I've got it up and running.
 

Indie

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Jul 29, 2019
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Got my new server.

Intel i5. 8GB RAM. 120GB SSD. Win7 64bit with Java 7 64bit.

I've changed the values in the batch file to -Xms1G -Xmx4G. Is that the right thing to do?
 

Darklord__

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well the company I work for just got 4 dedicated machines that we got put in a data centre I don't know the full specs but I know together is 1/2 a tb of ram
 

systemv

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Jul 29, 2019
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Oke this thread is about the "Hardware" part of servers and server hosting.

Hard Drive or SSD ?
So this is something most of the people i talk to don't even want to go into. The response i get is "Man it is way to much overkill". This is NOT the case. It is very simple and easy to see why. A HDD is a "Hard Drive Disk" This means it is a Spinning disk with a moving reader head, so if you want data from point A and then data from point B, your HDD speed will be as fast as the Reader arm can move from point A to point B. So this is more of a "Analog" system of data storage.
But a SSD "Solid State Drive" is a solid drive. It is a Storage Drive that has NO moving parts. Like a "Digital" data storage, this means you are not limited to the speed of your Disk spinner motor and your Reader header moving to the point it needs to. Also a SSD will have multiple "Threads" it will be able to read and write data to the drive, on different locations at once. With a HDD it cant be done since you have only 1 Reader arm. This is called "IOPS" or "Input/Output Operations Per Second".


Your analogy for "analog" system of data storage is misleading, and a bit dated.

There's cache on modern HDD controllers. Huge caches. There's multiple heads on modern HDD. The disk can read multiple blocks simultaneously. HDD geometry is an abstraction in modern HDD.

I won't argue that the disk is moving, but this isn't 1987 anymore. Gb/$, can't beat a HDD.

SSD has some limitations that weren't mentioned -- wear leveling. Enterprise grade SSD is expensive for a reason.

A SSD does not itself have threads. The application that uses persistent storage may have threads, and those threads are mediated by the OS to make access to persistent storage. In an OS that has protected memory (Windows, Linux, etc..) the OS controls access to the underlying HW, and in this case memory -- that's one of it's main functions. But the issue of threads is a red-herring and has nothing to do with the performance of the actual device.

SSD is faster to access data because the seek time (the Achilles heel of HDD) is practically irrelevant. So, if you run a process that's multi-threaded it could conceivably read different blocks of data faster IF the blocks are not used by other threads. But maybe not. Depends on what each thread is trying to do (and which block each thread wants). Google Dining Philosopher's problem.

The Minecraft game is already loaded into RAM anyway. The use of persistent storage to save player data, or update a plugin is happening at a frequency much lower than reading and writing data allocated by the server's handling of player actions.

It feels faster to have SSD, but in the grand scheme (esp if your budget is low), HDD is fine and your users will not notice. The latency of the network connection is far bigger than ANY latency in HDD/SSD debate.

I think SSD is better since I can afford it. But if I couldn't, I know HDD's are just fine. No huhu.

...Food for thought, maybe Spaghetti (if you read the Dining Philosopher's link you get the joke)
 

systemv

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Jul 29, 2019
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Finally someone has some sense. Also, RAM is volatile, so if your server crashes for some odd reason, you just lost a whole lot of data! Just because its faster, doesnt mean its the best tool for the job.
If you use Dynmap, that can take up an enormous amount of space, especially in HD mode. It can easily reach 10gb.

He's talking about FLASH (SSD), not RAM.

Your point I think was if you don't sync the data to SSD then you'll lose it. Agreed. Setup your server to auto-save often as you can bear to deal with the lost work without saving. Up to you.

But that's the story using SSD or HDD or clay tablets.
 

fraidy_cat

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Jul 29, 2019
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Honestly in 1.4.7 large AE networks could murder servers, even more so when it was doing autocrafting. One of the best solutions that all the big servers still on 1.4.7 is Tick Threading, without it there is almost no way to keep a big server from really bad tick lag.

https://github.com/nallar/TickThreading

Tested it out on 1.5.2 Server! Oh my God. This mod is simply amazing. Got rid of most my lag. My TPS went from 3 ticks over 4~5 sec cu 16~19/sec.
 

DZCreeper

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Jul 29, 2019
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Please keep in mind that Tick Threading is no longer being worked on. This means if you find any problems they may never be fixed unless someone else start maintaining Tick Threading.
 

Harvest88

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Jul 29, 2019
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Please keep in mind that Tick Threading is no longer being worked on. This means if you find any problems they may never be fixed unless someone else start maintaining Tick Threading.

and highly unstable as the post stated and isn't for 1.6.4 and guys here how to find the CPUs performance on a single threaded apps like Minecraft http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html The Intel Xeon E3 1270v3 should be sold by some hosting companies.
 

opus-13

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Jul 29, 2019
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Got a build question for the fine folks here. I'm building a small Linux machine to be both a home server (some media, data, and backups) and a Minecraft server for me and a few friends. Ideally, I'd love to host both a Vanilla server and a FTB server on the same machine. Only running about 9 people max on each one. This is the build I was looking at and I'm hoping for some feedback.

CPU: AMD FX-4350, 4-core 4.2GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600
Board: MSI 760GMA-P34(FX) Micro ATX AM3+

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/opus-13/saved/2ZAG

Will that serve me well? Or am I asking too much from a build like that? If so, what can I change to improve things? Thanks so much for the help!
 

DZCreeper

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Jul 29, 2019
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First off, that's more than enough memory but the processor is completely underpowered for what you want to do.

Second, that is not a complete build. Things you need to take into account for a Minecraft server are the disks you use and the internet upload and download speed.

Third and lastly, I have lots of experience helping people run servers and build computers. If you give me a budget I will give you an ideal parts list in your budget. If you live outside North America or Europe, add $100 for shipping and/or markup.
 

opus-13

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Jul 29, 2019
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Excellent! That's the kind of information that I'm looking for.

Internet is supposed to be 10 Mbps up and 50 Mbps down although Comcast doesn't always deliver those speeds. I'll be using disks that I have here at home for the time being. I have a 128 GB SSD for the system and programs (Minecraft) and then two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drives for the media and general data.

Is that too much RAM for this build? Would it be safe to drop down to 8GB or should I stick with 16? Also, what are some processors you would recommend? I know Minecraft doesn't get much benefit from extra cores so I was avoiding the 6 and 8 core chips. Figured 4 would be plenty for Minecraft plus additional tasks.

Budget is about $450 for this little guy. The home server aspect is easy so I'm really only worried about Minecraft. And that's only going to host 9 or fewer people per server; maybe 12 total at a time.

EDIT: Also, already got a case for the computer. So it's really just the "guts" that I'm missing: board, cpu, RAM, power supply. And if I can get by with the stock cooler for a while, then I can put that extra money into the core components as well.
 

DZCreeper

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Jul 29, 2019
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Sounds good. 10mbps upload should be enough for 12 people at a time on vanilla, it might struggle a little bit on FTB.

For the memory, go with what you can afford. 8 gigs should be enough, but having 16 will give you more headroom should decide to any video encoding on the machine or if the players make some insane builds. For the processor, 4 cores might even be overkill. You basically want the best single threaded performance you can get. Here is a good guide for picking chips that fit that criteria: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

This build is ideal: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2fPZP

It goes slightly over your budget, but the processor has great single threaded performance, there is a reliable power supply, and you get 16 gigs of memory. If you absolutely need to stick to the budget of $450 I would suggest the following build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2fQ6w

It has only 8 gigs of memory but a slightly faster processor. Please note that on both builds I did not include the cost of an OS, I would suggest using a Linux distro, all of which are free. Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are popular choices for server operating systems.

If you have any more questions or would like long term help with setting up and running the server, you can find me by this name on these forums, Steam, Skype, Reddit, and probably several other places, although the ones I haven't listed are visited infrequently by me.
 

opus-13

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Jul 29, 2019
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Thanks so much for the info! I'm going to wait a few extra weeks to build the server so that I can get the better processor and extra RAM. It doesn't really need to be killer, but I'd like to get as much value out of it as I can. Pretty excited to try it out! Also, do you have any preference for a Linux variant? I was planning on going with Ubuntu, but I don't know what the various distributions have to offer in terms of advantages / disadvantages.