What to look for in a dedicated server host for Minecraft

There are many Minecraft hosts out there. Most of the hosts that specialize in Minecraft servers are great for a starting server, but they are not cost effective for large servers, and don't give you full control of your settings.

When you get enough people playing on your server, you will come to a point where the only way to expand is to look into a dedicated server. This guide assumes you know the basics of minecraft servers.

If you are looking for tips on starting a large minecraft server, check out my other guide here.

Pros:

• Freedom to pick and change your own settings like what kind of server you want to run (bukkit/tekkit/the experimental spout) and how many slots you want to set from 1 to 100000(if you wanted).
• Run multiple Minecraft servers on one machine. You can have a main Minecraft server and a Minecraft test server, or several servers with different themes (creative/survival/pvp/etc). The number of servers would depend on the hardware you go with.
• Host other services on the same machine. You can host your own website, forums, voice communications, and more! Most of the software out there to do this is free, so you don't need to pay additional money.
• More cost effective performance for large servers. You don't have to worry about being charged based on the number of slots, and if you know what you are doing you don't need to pay for managing services.

Cons:

• You need to know how to run a server, and it's best if you know how to use a unix command line based operating system.
• The cheaper hosts don't have a support team to help you if you have trouble unlike the standard Minecraft hosts.

5 things to look for in a dedicated host for Minecraft servers:

1. Pick a server with a high clock speed vs # of processor cores. Minecraft is not multi-threaded, so 16 core processors are wasted on a Minecraft server. Instead you should pick the option with the highest GHz.
   
   
2. Pick a server with SSDs. Minecraft reads a lot of information from the hard-drive and it can be one of the biggest bottlenecks. The server host I use comes with a free 60GB SSD option which is more than enough space for a Minecraft server. Optionally you can look into RAMDISK for your server which is very powerful but very dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.
   
   
3. Make sure to get enough RAM for your server. If your server stays under 100 players at any given time, then 8gb should be enough for you (if you use a lot of plugins you will be pushing it though). You should have at least 16GB for more than 100 players and at least 32GB for more than 200 players. Also if you plan on using RAMDISK take the extra RAM requirements into consideration.
   
   
4. Bandwidth: 10TB bandwidth should be more than enough for a server of around 100 players, there is no need to pay extra for unmetered unless it's for a 1000GBs bandwidth port.
   
   
5. DDoS protection: DoS DDoS attacks are becoming more and more common, and if you have a popular server you can count on someone, be it an unhappy player or competing server, to try to take you down. Unfortunately protection can be expensive, and some hosts don't provide it. I suggest trying CloudFlare, which is free but only provides limited protection, or if you have a really large server looking into http://staminus.net

Tip: Get something with an online backup option, or at least backup your files onto your computer whenever possible because you never know when disaster will strike.

My Preferred Host: http://www.razorservers.com

I went through 3 different dedicated server hosts before I found one that I decided to stick with. I like this host because you can configure a cheap option that goes well with Minecraft servers. For $99 a month you get:

• 3.2GHZ processor. Most hosts I saw had servers with 2 2.4GHZ processors with multiple cores (remember we don't care as much about cores as we do about GHZ)
• Option to replace the standard hard-drive with a SSD for no extra cost (it has a small capacity, but we don't need that much for a Minecraft server unless you plan on having multiple huge maps). Also, it's pretty cheap to add an extra hard-drive for backup if you want.
• 8 GB of RAM with the option to upgrade to 16 or 32
• 5 IP addresses if you plan on running multiple servers.

My first few hosts were actually ~$150 and they were actually not as efficient for Minecraft as this one (although they would probably be better for other things).