Minecraft is RAM-hungry and single-thread dependent. For vanilla with 10-20 players: 4GB RAM, 2 vCPUs minimum. For 20-50 players with plugins: 8GB RAM, 4 vCPUs. Modded servers need 16GB+ for heavy modpacks. NVMe storage matters for chunk loading. Most critically, choose a VPS location near your players — low latency (under 50ms) makes the biggest gameplay difference. FastNode’s UK and European data centers deliver excellent gaming performance.
Choosing the Right Specs
Minecraft is RAM-hungry and single-thread dependent. For vanilla with 10-20 players: 4GB RAM, 2 vCPUs minimum. For 20-50 players with plugins: 8GB RAM, 4 vCPUs. Modded servers need 16GB+ for heavy modpacks. NVMe storage matters for chunk loading. Most critically, choose a VPS location near your players — low latency (under 50ms) makes the biggest gameplay difference. FastNode’s UK and European data centers deliver excellent gaming performance.
Server Software and Java Tuning
Use Paper or Purpur instead of vanilla — they dramatically improve performance with async chunk loading and entity optimizations. Use Eclipse Adoptium JDK 21 or GraalVM. Allocate 80% of RAM to JVM: -Xms6G -Xmx6G (for 8GB VPS). Use G1GC garbage collector with -XX:+UseG1GC. Set view distance to 8-10, simulation distance to 6-8. Pre-generate your world with Chunky to avoid chunk generation lag spikes.
Monitoring and Maintenance
Use Spark or Timings to profile performance. Monitor TPS (ticks per second) — anything below 18 indicates lag. Schedule automatic restarts every 12-24 hours to prevent memory leaks. Set up a monitoring dashboard tracking TPS, player count, and resource usage. With FastNode’s sub-10ms latency across the UK, your Minecraft server gets the fast storage needed for smooth chunk loading and world saves.
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