n a<br>
> couple of people, and once you've done a decent bit of exploring a=
nd<br>
> building it's going to become unplayable unless you've really =
opted for a<br>
> reasonably huge amount of RAM - and then you're looking at quite a=
n<br>
> expensive VPS for the purposes of running one game. I ran a server for=
a<br>
> handful of people for quite some time on a Bitfolk VPS<br>
<br>
</div>Can you say how much RAM your VPS has, and how many Minecraft<br>
players you could comfortably have online before performance became<br>
unacceptable?<br>
<div><br>
> it was painful enough to convince us to fork out a little bit for<br>
> a Multiplay server instead.<br>
<br>
</div>Looking at <a href=3D"
http://multiplaygameservers.com" target=3D"_bla=
nk">multiplaygameservers.com</a> they seem to suggest that you<br>
should be able to fit the following amounts of players into these<br>
amounts of memory dedicated to the Minecraft server:<br>
<br>
Memory (MiB) | Max # of players<br>
-------------+-----------------<br>
=C2=A0200 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 | 4<br>
=C2=A0600 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 | 17<br>
1024 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 | 35<br>
2048 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 | 53<br>
<br>
Now, it does say that this is the absolute minimum memory, and that<br>
large maps may require more. Also bear in mind that they appear to<br>
be hosting off of SSDs which will likely be providing more IOPS than<br>
a BitFolk VPS.<br>
<br>
Can you say how much memory your Multiplay server has, and how many<br>
players you're able to support?<br>
<br>
It strikes me that 600MiB is not a huge amount of memory to dedicate<br>
to Minecraft and that 17 players may be plenty for some people. The<br>
IOPS may be an issue however.<br>
<div><br>
> sort of VPS setup that's likely to be affordable - you're much=
better off<br>
> getting something that's far less flexible but far more geared tow=
ards the<br>
> purpose.<br>
<br>
</div>I've no idea how comparable a 720MiB VPS would be to a 600MiB<br>
Multiplay server, but the VPS will set you back =C2=A3137.88/year inc.<br>
VAT, whereas the Multiplay server would be =C2=A3153.00/year inc. VAT.[1]<b=
r>
<br>
Conversely, for =C2=A3167.88/year inc VAT you can have a 960MiB VPS.<br>
<br>
I'd be interested in finding out what the IOPS requirements are for<br>
a Minecraft server. I suspect they are quite high otherwise Multiplay<br>
wouldn't be using SSDs.<br>
<br>
Multiplay's prices seem quite high given that what you appear to get<br=
>
is a VPS dedicated to Minecraft, backed by SSD. =C2=A0Possibly I'm<br>
missing something. If not then I'm confident that I could undercut<br>
them with servers I have taken out of service for being too slow for<br>
VPS hosting, but with disks replaced by an SSD or two.<br>
<br>
The problem is that I don't know what the shelf life of Minecraft<br>
is, and I haven't got time to be playing computer games to work out<br>
what I could host next, nor to be replicating Multiplay's quite<br>
slick interface. =C2=A0I'd do all the work and then most likely Minecra=
ft<br>
would become old hat and no one would want to buy servers for it.<br>
i.e. I don't see a way for me to make a product out of this.<br>
<br>
There's spare memory capacity at the moment. If anyone would like<br>
to experiment with how usable a Minecraft server is on a BitFolk VPS<br>
at various levels of RAM then I'd be willing to let you do that<br>
for free provided you write up your findings.<br>
<br>
Such VPSes would be purely for testing Minecraft though and once I<br>
need to sell the resources I'd have to convert you to a paying<br>
customer or end the arrangement.<br>
<br>
Also at the moment I am exploring caching block devices with SSDs.<br>
Once I have a server in that
