Server Specs?

[Sphinnxx]

Hi guys and gals,

I'm thinking about starting to host a private server from my home for me and my friends to jump onto, since P2P is fun and all but the server shuts down when the host shuts down his PC meaning no continues production from farms, quarries etc etc.

Mainly I want to be hosting either a DW20 Pack or the "Official" Forgecraft Pack made by Pahimar.
But now I wonder what kind of setup is best suited to run either pack, since i don't want to buy a setup blind and find out it can't handle the pack.

So my REAL question is: what are the specs best suitable to home-host the FC pack? Also to note is I'm looking for a affordable setup so please bear that in mind in your comments ( using this will be a guideline since my geuss is DW20's pack is "lighter" than the FC pack)

Thanks for your time and hope I get some good answers.

PS: please don't come by and only opt hosting-websites because if I wanted that I would have contacted a hosting company of my choosing.

Cheers!
Sphinnxx

 

[ryudeshi]

If you want very affordable, the best processor would be the Pentium G3258 as it has the absolute best single-core performance for the price range, and it is dual-core so it can handle some of the extra threads involved in running a MC server. It is also overclockable in case you need a little extra performance. If you want to spend a little more, than an i3 or i5 would be great too. 8GB of RAM Minimum. A small SSD to run the server on helps too, but a regular hard drive would be fine.

 

[Baaleos]

I would disagree on the Ram requirement to a degree.
If your hosting on a windows based box - sure 8 GB or more is really good to have.
If your hosting on a Linux environment, you can get away with less ram.
Minecraft servers don't load textures or models - or at least they shouldn't - so much of the ram usage that you see on your local machine when starting the game wont carry over to the server environment.

I've been hosting FTB Infinity on a 6GB Ram Machine with around 6-10 people online at peak times - no lag.
The SSD performance is probably one of the more important aspects for servers.
Eg: Loading unloaded chunks again from SSD requires a good read/write time for the HDD.
Ram is really only going to be needed for concurrency for high player counts.
The server I am using is a premium server designed to host 120 players - so assuming that 6GB can infact host the 120, or even half of that - I don't think you need to go as high as 8GB for a personal/friend server.

 

[ryudeshi]

Well, I guess I should have said more along the lines of 8GB, just not as a minimum, just because it would be silly not to get at least 8GB with how inexpensive an 8GB kit is now (~ $40 US dollars). It is much better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. My FTB Infinity Server with two players online currently is using 3.8GB on Ubuntu Server (no GUI) and easily exceeds that at peak at times (8-10 players). But you are right, I don't think I've ever seen it hit 6GB. I do also run other things on my box at times, so the flexibility of more memory is nice, though right now it is just my Infinity server.

 

[Baaleos]

I think the Ram Usage becomes more of an issue when you get players using a vast amount of chunk loaders.
Not forgetting that the server does save the state of the world / dimension / chunk - to disk when not in use, then loads it back when the player is around that area.
So - normally, per player the amount of ram used should be relatively low or at the very least, the amount of ram used should drop when players stray from their contraptions and bases.

Chunk Loaders however would keep chunks of land alive in memory - negating the inbuilt memory management of the server application.
A server population of 50-100 people using chunk loaders liberally - would probably start to see an escalation in ram usage.
That being said - I am just theorizing on the topic - based on my understanding, this is what I would expect to happen.