As the owner of a Minecraft server, you want your server to function optimally to ensure an enthralling, lag-free experience for the players. Lag and slowed-down servers usually lead to disappointment and disengagement. This article will walk you through some basic steps and techniques used to speed up your Minecraft server effectively. Remember that speeding up your server is rather crucial.
Buy a Minecraft server:
If you’re anything like me and don’t want to wrestle with trying to increase the speed of a Minecraft server yourself, then just use a hosting service. If you want to buy a Minecraft server, then ScalaCube is highly recommended. With fantastic uptimes and customer support at all hours, ScalaCube will get your server running without hiccups. It has a very simple setup process, and its interface is very intuitive. Thus, it can work perfectly both for beginners and experienced enthusiasts who just want to play Minecraft but do not want to get into the technicalities of running the server.
1) Pick Your Hosting Provider Carefully
Perhaps the most important factor is the type of hosting provider you end up deciding on. A good hosting provider should offer you fast, reliable hardware, high uptimes, and excellent customer support. Here’s what to look for:
RAM: Your server should be able to have enough RAM for how many players you feel you need in it. More RAM allows for much quicker data processing and makes gameplay much smoother.
Processor: A fast processor will have high clock speed and multiple cores, which improves server performance.
Data Centers: Go for a host that has data centers close to your player base. The closer the data center, latency will be low and hence will result in higher server speeds.
SSD vs. HDD: Go for a host offering SSD storage. SSD is much quicker in terms of speeds compared to conventional HDD. It will, therefore result in quick response times from your server.
2) Allocate Sufficient RAM to the Server
The amount of RAM your Minecraft server is running on will determine how fast the game plays. If your server is operating a little slow, then you should give it more RAM.
For small servers (up to 10 players), this will be 2 GB of RAM.
Larger servers (20-50 players) will require 4-8 GB of RAM.
Giant servers with many mods or plugins operating will require more than 8 GB of RAM.
To allocate more RAM, you can edit your server’s start-up settings in the command line as follows:
java -Xmx4G -Xms4G -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui
This command assigns 4GB of RAM to the server. You can change the values according to your needs.
3) Optimizing Your Plugins and Mods
Using too many or poorly coded plugins and mods can seriously lower down the speed of your server. Here’s how you can optimize them:
Remove unnecessary plugins: You shouldn’t use plugins unless you really need it. Every plugin takes a part of the CPU or memory.
Always keep plugins updated: Old plugins may run badly and can cause lags. Always try to update them to the latest builds.
Use lightweight plugins: If possible, use optimized or light versions of plugins.
Monitor plugins: Use utilities like Timings to diagnose which plugins are creating lag, then do something about it.
4) Lower View Distance
One of the most straightforward techniques to enhance performance on a Minecraft server is to decrease the view distance. The view distance is an option that dictates how far away players are able to see within Minecraft. The larger this view distance is, the more chunks the server needs to load and process; hence, it will slow down the server.
Recommended view distance: Keep your view distance between 6 to 10 chunks for optimal performance. You can change this in the server properties file. It’s in server.properties:
view-distance=6
5) Optimize Server Settings
Altering a few critical variables in the server configuration document can significantly improve the speed of it:
Entity Activation Range: The range mobs and animals are away from players in which the server starts to process them. Lower this will save a great deal of processing power. Place the following in it:
entity-activation-range: 24
Spawn Limits: Lower the amount of mobs allowed to spawn in the world. This will help improve performance overall. Open your bukkit.yml file and edit the following:
spawn-limits:
monsters: 50
animals: 10
water-animals: 5
ambient: 1
Tick Speed: Minecraft runs on a tick system, and reducing the speed of these ticks can help reduce server load. You can reduce it a bit without significantly affecting gameplay. Try setting it to:
Ticks-per:
animal-spawns: 400
monster-spawns: 8
6) Using Paper or Spigot
If you are managing a Minecraft server, then you may be interested in migrating from the default Minecraft server software-Vanilla-to Spigot or Paper. Such servers represent optimized variations of Minecraft, designed to be more resource-efficient and more flexible in handling settings.
Spigot: A lightweight variant of the Minecraft server that includes several performance enhancements and allows for custom plugins.
Paper: An even more optimized version of Spigot with even further performance improvements and additional features helpful for avoiding lag. Switching to Paper or Spigot is pretty straightforward, and you can see some amazing performance gains right off the bat.
7) Optimize Your World
As your server grows so will your world, and with it, potential performance impacts. Here are a few strategies for world optimization:
Pre-generate chunks: Utilize various tools like WorldBorder to pre-generate chunks inside an established border. This reduces lag when players explore new areas of the server. Trim unused chunks: If parts of your world are not used, take the time to utilize Chunky and trim those chunks, reducing world file size.
Limit Redstone: Redstone circuits are awfully resource-intensive. Limit large or complex Redstone mechanisms where possible.
8) Manage Player Behavior
Some of the time, the behavior by players is at fault regarding server lag, especially on larger servers. Here are some ways to manage player behavior based on performance:
Limit Large Farm Use: Large farms powered through automation can cause great lag on a server. You can set limits on how many entities or blocks can move /be active at any given time in such locations.
Impose a player limit: For those experiencing poor performance due to a large number of players in your server, it may be a good idea to put a cap on the total amount of players online simultaneously.
Resource usage monitoring: Make use of a server management tool or plugins which enable you to monitor what exactly the players are doing, therefore finding potential causes for lag.
9) Upgrade Your Hardware
If all of the software optimizations have been done and your server is still running slow, then it’s time to consider upgrading your hardware:
CPU Upgrade: Minecraft servers are pretty dependent on the CPU single thread performance. It might just help by upgrading your CPU to a higher clock speed.
RAM Upgrade: Increasing the RAM inside your server will let you run more players on your server, not to mention large or modded servers.
SSD Storage: As earlier mentioned, shifting from HDD storage to SSD will increase the access time of data, therefore improving general performance of the server.
10) Regular Maintenance
Finally, regular maintenance of your server is very important for smooth running of your server. Some of the things you can do include:
Regular restarting of your server: This will clear memory leaks and other minor problems. So, schedule automatic restarts during off-peak hours in.
Backup: The backup of your server will enable you to restore your server in the event of a crash or other problem, with at least minimal loss of data.
Server health – Monitor server performance with the help of server monitoring tools, which provide the following metrics: CPU, RAM, Number of players, and many others.
Conclusion
Doing this involves boosting both the software and hardware aspects of performance. By following the tips above, you will achieve improved performance for your server and a smoother experience for your players. Whether your server is private and small or public and large, these strategies will go a long way in helping your server realize peak speeds.
