[Help] Server Purchasing

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by cTJx, Apr 15, 2016.

  1. Hey there community, this post may be illegal, and if so, staff should close this thread immediately. Just a heads up ;)

    I want to purchase my own server, as a testing server for some of my coding ideas. My old host was shut down, so I need a new one. I have found the host, but I also want to do some recording for my YouTube channel on it.

    Question:
    About how many GB of server should I buy, for the server to be able to sustain the following:
    • Custom code
    • Forge and tekkit servers
    • Adventure maps
    • Redstone machinery
    Thanks!
    ShelLuser likes this.
  2. I would recommend at LEAST 2 gb. For forge mod packs maybe 4-5. I run my outpost build server with 2 gb on an old machine.
  3. Thanks for your help. I'll try and get some other responses before I buy.
  4. Make sure to change the world from default ;)
    Crazy_TJ likes this.
  5. It seems the forum no longer allows me to quote posts and respond to them, so I have to resort to adding manual quotes. That's where the different looks come from in case you're wondering.

    I'm obviously not staff, but I still have a good / decent understanding of the rules. You may be stretching it a little bit but you shouldn't worry. The main problem is if you're advertising other servers. There's not much harm done in talking about the possible configuration of one.

    Memory is of course important, no argument there, but don't focus on memory consumption alone. The speed of your storage (HD) as well as your network connection is just as important; in some cases it can really make or break your setup.

    Here's the thing: of course there's a memory requirement and more = better. How many players do you expect to welcome on your server? Because that can influence things a lot. Please note that my experiences only go as far as a (private!) test / playing server which I setup and which is mainly shared with my gf and some friends of mine. I sporadically play with one other player over there, and in a rare occasion 3 or 4.

    So here's the thing: when players start to spread out in the world then your server will require more resources. For example: I share a nice hardcore map with my gf and it has 3 main locations in the overworld: the main base where I started playing, an underground / underseas mine which I found and a 3rd location where the both of us started to build a water-side house. Memory consumption is quite different if we're both playing around the house or if she's around the house while I'm back at the first base: both areas would have to be loaded in the server memory in order to "work". So if we're in 2 different areas then both of them get loaded. Which means more server resources are required.

    Redstone is another thing. It gobbles up server resources such as memory as well, but the main culprit is server responsiveness (server ticks). Because all those contraptions "do" something they all demand a little attention from the server to make things work, and that could also become an issue if you have huge machineries. That is not something you can easily fix by throwing more memory at it, but instead you'll have to try and balance things out a bit. An example could be Aikar's change in the way hoppers work on EMC: by delaying them just a little bit he gained more server resources in the overall. If a chunk had (example) 400 hoppers then a small delay ("x") could mean that he gained 400x server ticks (there is more to it than that, but just to give you a rough idea here).

    And well, coding can also gobble up its share of requirements, depending on how you plan to code (using an IDE or a mere text editor and commandline compiler).

    Finally there's also the server OS itself which will also require some resources of its own.

    So my advice would be to start with 4Gb memory as a minimum, but if possible I'd definitely consider going to 8Gb or maybe even a little more. But like I said before: don't focus yourself only on memory alone: your network & storage speed are just as important!
  6. Wow. That's a lot to take in, but it's really helpful! Thank you.