It’s fun to play games like Minecraft with your friends, and having your own game server can give you a perfect place to do whatever you want on your own terms. However, there are a lot of technical terms that you might encounter when you search for the perfect place to host your server. My goal is to try to explain some of those terms to make it easier for you to start playing. With this article, we’re going to talk about memory and storage space, with Minecraft as an example, using an analogy of a kitchen. After that, there will be a brief Q&A on the most common memory questions about Minecraft servers.
RAM Mountain
What is memory?
Memory is like a kitchen countertop. The larger the kitchen counter top, the more elaborate meals one can prepare. Some meals, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, are simple and don’t require a lot of space to prepare. All of the excess counter space isn’t being used. On the other hand, baking a cake requires much more counter space, from measuring the ingredients to decorating. If the counter is too small, some ingredients may not fit and crash onto the floor. Therefore, it is important to have the appropriate amount of counter space for what you plan to do.
What is storage space?
Storage space is like a refrigerator. It holds ingredients and finished cooking projects. If there is not enough space, one would need to leave some food out, and it’ll spoil.
How do memory and storage space relate to my Minecraft Server?
On a technical level, a Minecraft server uses memory as a temporary holding spot for the chef (CPU) to process its recipes (computer code). For example, it may have the number of connected players, your home base, and other areas in the world to manipulate. After it finishes processing all of the details, it’ll put them into the storage space (refrigerator). That way, you can stop and start your server and see everything the same as before.
How much memory do I need?
Every game is going to be a little bit different. Most games will have pretty standard requirements. So for those, you will want to check in advance to see how much is necessary to run the server by asking our support team or looking at the minimum requirements we have listed.
Minecraft, however, is unique for several reasons. Each version of the base game is different and will have different requirements. And if you decide to play a modded version of the game, such as a Forge modpack like All The Mods, the requirements can be even higher. The vanilla game uses a lot less memory than modpacks.
However, it is often difficult to estimate the amount of memory necessary. The list of modpacks on our Minecraft modpacks page offers a rough guideline. When in doubt, the Hero Tier plan with 4000 mb of memory should be enough for most modpacks, while the Basic plan with 2000 mb should be a good starting point for the base vanilla game. Some modpacks in our system have increased memory requirements to ensure stability and performance.
If you run into an issue with lag and you think that it might be memory related, contact support and we’ll run diagnostics on your server. We can help determine the cause of your issue and offer solutions so you can get back to playing.
Will having more memory increase Minecraft server performance?
Will having a huge kitchen countertop help you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich faster?
There is a common misconception that more memory results in better Minecraft server performance. Once you have enough memory, having more will not result in any stability or performance gain. Having more can give peace of mind though. For example, you’ll be able to do more complicated tasks on your server if you decide to, such as using chunk loaders as long as you aren’t also over-using the processor.
How much storage space do I get?
Storage space is unmetered. You can use as much space as necessary to store files like mods/plugins, worlds, and even Dynmap map tiles. We impose no hard limit on storage space usage. We know by experience how much storage space Minecraft servers use and have provisioned more than enough capacity for your server. If you start using storage space outside the norm, we’ll reach out to investigate and clean up.
What happens if I run out of memory?
Your server will either operate very slowly or crash. To continue our kitchen analogy at the beginning, imagine the kitchen counter filling up. Flour and sugar are everywhere. The mixer, rolling pins, and eggs are on the side. As the kitchen countertop fills up, one will spend more and more time reorganizing the items on the counter and moving stuff off of it. It takes a long time to prepare meals. If the counter top is very full, some new ingredients will not fit in for preparation, and you’ll need to start over again.
When there is not enough memory for a Minecraft server, it may become slow or crash. The server (i.e. Java garbage collector) may spend all of its time trying to free up memory, leaving no time to process game logic. When it’s unable to free up memory, the server will exit and you’ll see an OutOfMemoryError. Please note that you will not lose all of your progress, but only the progress since the last save, which may be up to 30 minutes as the server is saved periodically.
Why is there a memory limit?
The limit is designed to prevent buggy mod or plugin code with memory leaks from using up available system memory and impacting other users.
How do I increase the performance of my Minecraft server?
Our kitchen example left out one key component – the chef. A skilled chef can prepare meals faster than an apprentice. The central processing unit, or processor, is the chef of your Minecraft server. Some processors have multiple cores (chefs). The main Minecraft server code can only take advantage of one core at a time for the main game logic, though multiple cores can be used for some tasks in newer versions of the game.
Using high performance processors with fast frequencies (3+ GHz) and high IPC (instructions per clock) can ensure optimal performance for your Minecraft server. It is also important to ensure that a host does not overload the processors. At Akliz, we only use the top performing processors available for purchase. Check our tech specs page for examples of hardware we use.
Additionally, we only use solid state storage devices. It’s like having a robot refrigerator bringing you the contents instead of having an assistant walking back and forth. In practical terms, our hosting architecture will minimize the amount of lag you experience on the server and improve the speed of world loads.
How much memory do your machines/nodes have?
Akliz systems have a minimum of 32GB of memory, with some having as much as 768GB. We make sure our Minecraft servers use much less than the total system memory. That way, our Minecraft servers never use the hard disk space as memory and remain in top performance. Some of our systems have more than half of the available memory free on a regular basis.
Some hosts oversell their machines and try to fit more Minecraft servers than the physical amount of memory. Their systems will begin using hard disk space to make up for the lack of system memory. The process is called “paging”. It’s like using your refrigerator as extra counter space. As hard disks are hundreds of times slower than system memory, it will cause noticeable degradation of game performance.