How many players would this VPS be able to take?

Question

I started renting a VPS ("Platinum X8" VPS from Server4You), it has the following specifications:

• CPU: 16 Cores (Intel Xeon E5550);
• RAM: 18GB (30GB Burst);
• HDD: 800GB;
• Bandwidth: 100Mbits/s (though I did get 430MB/s with speedtest-cli, so might actually be a Gigabit connection);
• OS: Ubuntu 14.04

I am using this VPS for a single Minecraft server (i.e. not a network of servers), along with a Teamspeak 3 server & webserver (with MySQL server). The website runs a forum and will eventually only get moderate traffic (<100 connections at a time), & I plan for the Teamspeak server to have double the amount of slots of the Minecraft server (I plan to apply for a non-profit license when traffic picks up).

As the VPS is on a monthly contract, I am able to cancel it and go elsewhere at any time; if the Minecraft server starts to outgrow the VPS, I can upgrade to a different VPS package (elsewhere, since this is the top VPS package at the provider) or even a dedicated server

At the moment, the Minecraft server has 125 slots; can it go higher with the current hardware specifications?

The Minecraft server is running some plugins, for example:

• Craftbukkit (mod);
• WorldEdit (though this will be removed when the server is opened to the public);
• Factions

The Minecraft server is controlled via Multicraft ('Owned' licence for a maximum of 2 servers), with additional startup parameters to enable usage of all 16 CPU cores & 64 bit Java:

java -jar -d64 -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing -XX:ParallelGCThreads=16 -XX:+AggressiveOpts -Xms8G -Xmx27G minecraft-server.jar

What is the maximum amount of player slots the Minecraft server should be able to handle with the current hardware specifications of the VPS?

Answer 1

You'll find that you are more limited by RAM than CPU - especially with 16 cores. A 100 Mbit line will not be a limiting factor either.

So, going by your RAM, you'll have roughly 16-17GB that you can dedicate to Minecraft after the OS takes the portion it needs.

Experience has shown that you can get roughly 10 players per GB of RAM. In this case, you should be able to handle 160 players.

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A few things to consider with the above estimate:

• World edit is a very RAM intensive plugin. You mentioned you were going to remove it. This is a good idea.
• Setting a maximum map size may help as well. If players can't continuously expand the map, the server has less that it needs to generate as players explore.
• Your hard drive is very likely a spinning disk, if you are generating a lot of chunks at a time (ie. players running out in a circle in all directions), this will be an area that causes some lag as the new chunks are written to disk.
• If you allow automated, AFK farms, those can eat into CPU and RAM. Be aware of those and consider plugins that limit entities and mobs per chunk to prevent someone from sitting at a farm for hours or days.
• Some plugins require a database (grief prevent ones, for example). Adding a database will take up some of your memory. However, this could very easily fall into the 2GB I allocated to your OS.