Servers/Hosting
Server Hosting
Servers have many hosting options, it's up to you to select what best fits your needs:
- Dedicated Hosting - pricey, but very customizable and supported;
- Shared Hosting - a cheap solution, but select the service with care;
- VPS Hosting - cheap and customizable, but may look quite scary to beginners.
Check out our sponsor Physgun and use coupon code "generations" to get 30% off all plans!
Things to keep in mind:
- Stay within your means, start low. You do not need a $200 dedicated machine to host 10 players. Spend that money on custom features and upgrade to a better host/machine when you begin hitting your limits
- Unlimited SSD/Storage options are a lie, you will likely see a few of these advertised when looking at shared hosts. Realistically you'll probably have 100-200GB to work with, but we recommend you avoid these as they do not explicitly state what you have. If a machine runs out of space while your server is online, expect player data and widespread chunk corruption. Check their TOS, as they may indicate a specific amount there under a fair use clause, or ask them before placing an order. A common pitfall is jumping in with a large world border- a 25k world is over 100GB in size. Use this calculator and ensure you have plenty of additional space for player files, databases, plugin data, Ultra Space world, etc
- DDOS Protection is a must in this day in age unfortunately. Keep an eye out for services that indicate Null Routing for DDOS Protection. Null Routing is even worse than no DDOS Protection at all. With Null Routing, if your host determines your server is being DDOS'd, they simply shut off access completely for a specified time, leaving your server offline for longer than the period of time the DDOS lasts
- Minecraft still mostly relies on single threaded operations, meaning a large core count machine will typically be fairly useless and often times perform much worse. Check out the top performing CPU's on single threads here and compare when shopping
So, what should you be looking for? Let's check out the options.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated Servers are all yours to do and install anything! An entire machine, just like the PC you're playing Generations on. The downside is they can be quite pricey, but decent ones to hold 100+ players can be found for between $80-150/m.
Dedicated servers are a must have for large networks. A word of warning however, and this is true of VPS hosts as well, unmanaged bare metal dedicated servers are not for system admin beginners. The only thing your host is responsible for is network uptime and hardware maintenance. Data corruption, backups, software installation, updates and software maintenance- all fall onto you, and typically in a command line only environment. If you cannot figure out an issue yourself, your server data may become inaccessible.
Just as with VPS hosting, you will have to select an OS and install everything yourself, however certain Managed dedicated server hosts out there will provide full support on initial setup at an extra cost or higher monthly fee.
Shared Hosts are fantastic for getting started! They're super cheap and simple- most have plans that can run Generations starting at $5/m.
These companies buy a large machine with plenty of RAM, storage, and CPU capacity to fit as many servers on as possible- which results in a lower price for you.
How? If they buy a $100 machine with 32GB of RAM, they can sell 32 1GB spots for $5 each and make a small profit, as a rough example.
Shared hosts provide a panel for you, commonly Pterodactyl or Multicraft for easier setup as well. VPS and Dedicated options do not, and you need to install one yourself.
You may notice many Shared Minecraft hosting services offer a Buget and a Premium option:
- Budget: Typically a lower end CPU to drive the price down. This is generally fine for Vanilla servers, but be careful when selecting them for a modded server
- Premium: A bit more expensive, but often comes with a better CPU
Avoid companies that do not display what CPU their shared hosting servers are running on. The CPU is the most important part for modded servers. Look up benchmarks for the CPU's and pay close attention to their Single Thread rating. The bulk of Minecraft operations are operated single threaded. Use this rating to compare to others when making your selection.
Higher single thread rating = smoother gameplay for your players.
Useful Addons
Most Shared Hosts offer a couple addons you may find useful:
- Dedicated IP means players can connect to your server directly without entering a port. For instance, if you opt for one you can direct your players to join your server with the IP
yyy.zzz.com, whereas without one they'll need a port as well such asyyy.zzz.com:25567 - Backups. Don't forget your backups. It isn't a matter of if your server will corrupt, but when. It will happen.
VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting can be thought of as a cross-breed of Dedicated hosting and Shared hosting. Cheap, as with shared hosting. Customizability as with dedicated hosting. Alongside your Generations server, you can also host your own Web server, Discord bots, E-mail systems, and much more all at once.
They're a great value! The downside is they can be a bit more complicated, as you will need to install everything yourself.
As with shared hosting, keep on the lookout for CPUs. VPS hosts will typically include core/thread counts in your plan, we recommend you opt for 4.
VPS hosts will often ask you which OS you'd like. While Windows is often tempting as most of you are well familiar, keep in mind this will significantly hurt performance as well as raise the price due to licensing fees. We recommend Ubuntu for the best performance- no bloatware and very optimized. Unfortunately with Ubuntu, all you will receive is a SSH terminal with a command prompt- so it can be quite scary for beginners but everything you could possibly need for setting up a Minecraft server on Ubuntu is well documented all over search engine results with copy/paste commands.
There are some Managed VPS hosting where your host will install everything for you, but it will cost extra.
