Source
r/Minecraft•
1338h4x

Minimum/recommended system requirements for a small private server?

Just for the hell of it I recently retrofitted an old old old desktop into a home server for various things, and figured I'd try to see if I could get a Minecraft server to play with a few friends. No dice, didn't even have the memory to start it up. I might end up upgrading it with my current old desktop once I replace that, but I dunno if that's good enough either. What are the bare minimum specs it'd take for it to run at all, and how much for it to be decently playable for a small handful of players?

Posted Dec 29, 2010, 3:02 AM UTC

912
fubz•

My buddy hosts a 5 man server on an old box. It is a P4 with 512MB of RAM. What helps the most is Verizon FIOS so he has 30Mb/s Up and down. With those specs I do not experience enough lag to complain about.

2
[deleted]•

I am looking for the same thing. I just want it to hold 5-6 people. Anyone have an idea? Note: For me, minecraft runs perfectly on normal, barely any lag on far, not eve noticable.

1
krowface•

wait, there's a way to install a SMP server on a laptop running in my living room? how?!?

1
CyberNixon•

the same way you'd run it on a "server".

All a "server" actually is, is usually just a computer (usually desktop style) that's powered on all the time, and connected to the internet. Technically, a "server" is just something that user(s) get information from. It doesn't have to be always powered on, or connected to the internet. Could just be your laptop running the minecraft_server.jar.

2
madonkey•

Try MCAdmin to make things a bit easier.

1
krowface•

thanks! i'm pretty excited about this.

1
lightcatcher•

I'm running a server running with tops 6 people on the 512mb linode slice. Not sure of the CPU on that, but its not a lot, and then 512mb of RAM and 100mbps internet connection.

1
scottynosabe•

I run a minecraft server with a max of like 8 players on a Linode 512.

this vps also hosts many of my web sites and a forum.

I give minecraft 256mb of ram to use (I know it says it needs 1024mb but it runs fine at 256 with 8 people.)

So overall I would say you don't need much.

1
BennyFackter•

Mine holds 6 very well, I've never tried any more than that. I have a pretty new win7 PC. 8GB RAM, 2.99GHz processing. I give minecraft 1GB to play with. Probably overkill.

1
interstitial•

Not the OP, but thanks! I've been curious about setting up a small server, too. The requirements are lower than i thought. Good news.

1
CyberNixon•

I ran a 5-6 user, private SMP server on my "old" "server" (see reply below for my definition of a "server"). It had a P3 700MHz with 512MB RAM. It mostly ran fine, but I'd run in to trouble when everyone decided to explore in different directions. I then found the BorderLands plugin, restricted the map, and deleted the chunks past a certain radius. That helped a lot, but when users would get around moving water, sometimes it'd lag.

Now I've upgraded to a P4 2.8GHz with 6G RAM. No more moving-water induced lag, now it's just my upload connection.

after using both setups, I've come up with these

suggested minimums:

  • 1Gb RAM available for the SMP server. With everything running that's normally running, make sure you have at least 1G RAM free.

  • 1.5Ghz proc. This is an arbitrary number. I think my lag problems before were more related to lack of memory than a slow proc. Minecraft loads everything visible to every player in the server's memory (I think). So, if 10 players are standing in the same 4x4 square, their all viewing (mostly) the same thing. But if just two players go exploring in opposite directions, your memory usage will go up quickly. Even with almost 10 people on the server, a blazing forest fire, moving water, water falls, lava... the memory usage didn't go above 1024M. You can see my memory graph at my server stats page.

See for yourself: join my server at largo.mine.nu:25569

1
asderferjerkel•

A friend runs an SMP server on my dedi, it has 20 slots but never gets near that. It's got a 1.2Ghz processor which seems to be enough, and uses about 1GB of RAM on a good day. RAM is probably most important, I'd recommend having 1.5GB+ to cover the OS etc.

1