Hosting a Minecraft Server On Linode

The planets have aligned again, and I've returned to Minecraft.  gaming Every once and a while I feel the need to contact a few friends, spin up servers and then spend a few hours every week building up crazy things and fighting to survive in a crowded world. Usually, I host the server on my laptop, however this time, I wanted to try something different (read more complicated). I'm a developer and I have the power of cloud at my fingertips So why not spin up a Linode instance and host the server there?

The first night I made the horrendous mistake of using my existing Linode instance to host the server. While it is able to run a static website using 1GB RAM, it is not equipped to run an online gaming server. If you'd like the server to crash constantly and eventually be unable to run on memory, then this is the strategy you should test.

Linode's 4 core and 4GB memory instances are recommended for those who are looking to play the game. This will be enough unless you plan to host a lot of people at once. The most appealing thing is that these instances are $0.06/hr. Last night, I was 4 hours playing with my friend and it cost me 24Cper hour.

I have created a shell script that will install the software automatically and then sign the EULA. Now whenever I would like to play with friends, I'm able to hit a total of three buttons on Linode's administrator panel, connect via SSH to the server, execute my script, and play. Then when we're done I can copy the world onto my Mac via FTP, and shut down the instance. Simple, inexpensive, and fast.