On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever

On-Demand Minecraft Sever established on AWS services with very low costs.

User Requirement

• MC ver. >= 1.17
• 15 players in a world
• usally, 8 players at the same time
• can play at any time
• may want 10+ mods
• no lag, no data loss
• reduce costs at much as possible

Context Diagram

• How players interact with system

• Details behind chatbot and services

System Requirement

• Machine
  • ref: https://apexminecrafthosting.com/how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-my-server
• MC Server
  • static IP or an easy-to-remember DNS
  • MC ver. = 1.17 for test
  • MC ver. = 1.18 for play
  • 1 Admin for AWS services and MC server
  • 2 Operators with MC permission >= 3
• On-demand start server
  • API Call via url click
  • Chatbot on Telegram or Discord
• Auto stop server
  • No player is playing
  • Time for sleep, don't let player stay up late

System Design

• EC2
  • Machine AWS t3.xlarge
    • vCPU: 4 cores
    • Mem: 16 GB
    • Net Bandwidth: 5 Gbps
    • EBS Bandwidth: 2,780 Mbps
    • On-Demand Price/hr: $0.1670
  • OS
    • Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM) - Kernel 5.10, SSD Volume Type
  • Use .pem for admin connection
• IP and DNS
  • Enable EIP on the machine
  • (optional) Create a DNS by Route53, make an A record that mapping the EIP and the DNS
  • Players could link to the server by the EIP or the DNS name
• MC Server setup
  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/blob/main/Server%20setup/Readme.md
• On-demand start server
  • API Call & Chatbots
  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/tree/main/On-demand%20start%20server
• Auto stop server
  • No player is playing & Time to sleep
  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/tree/main/Auto%20stop%20server
• Backup
  • Routine
  • Just before shutdown
  • EBS snapshot
  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/tree/main/Backup

Screenshot

• Start server

  

• Day-1

  

• More: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/tree/main/Screenshot

Cost

• The server runs in 2021 December and 2022 January. The following is cost in each month.

• 2021 December

  • Total (USD): 126.11

  • Server's CPU, memory and disk are the main source of cost

  • Network fee for backup data tranmission the secondary source of cost

  • Cost of chatbot is almost 0 due to chatbot is deployed to AWS Lambda as an event-trigger service

  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/blob/main/Cost/202112.md

    Cost Type	Sub Total (USD)	%
    Server (CPU+MEM+Disk)	91.08	71.83%
    DNS	0.5	0.40%
    Backup (storage+transmission)	33.89	26.87%
    Monitor	1.14	0.90%
    TOTAL	126.11	100.00%

    

• 2022 January

  • Total (USD): 20.95

  • Server's CPU, memory and disk are the main source of cost

  • Cost of chatbot is almost 0

  • Backup fee is reduced because the simplified backup mechanism (no more cross-region backup)

  • After a month, the number of players and the time of play are both reduced

  • Details: https://github.com/MOHOAzure/On-Demand-Minecraft-Sever/blob/main/Cost/202201.md

    Cost Type	Sub Total (USD)	%
    Server (CPU+MEM+Disk)	13.78	65.78%
    DNS	0.5	2.39%
    Backup (storage+transmission)	5.2	24.82%
    Monitor	1.47	7.02%
    TOTAL	20.95	100.00%