Question. does the MC server automatically use all 4 cores? when I'm looking at it. it seems to use core 1 and 3. not the other 2... and what raid is best for MC: LSI Hardware RAID 1 LSI Hardware RAID 0 Help me please?
In my opinion RAID 0. People say bukkit uses one core, but the load from my server is balanced between all 4 codes (I have a quad-core also).
Your opperating systems kernel will load balance minecraft over the cores available, although this depends on the operating system in question. It is to my knowledge that bukkit uses one core, but it does run several threads and these threads can theoretically be load balanced over different processor cores. With some multi-core servers you may notice a number of bukkit log entries stating time is going backwards, this has several causes but can be caused when the operating systems kernel is load balancing bukkit over multiple cores during a point where those cores are running at slightly different speeds due to internal processor throttling. I have noticed this on several amd systems as well as a number of my intel Xeon powered systems, somewhere on this forum someone linked to a windows driver provided by amd which apparently fixes that issue for their processors. The side effect is everything in mine-craft speeds up two to three times for a couple of seconds every so often.
The minecraft server runs on a single main thread. Some tasks can be spun off into separate threads though to lessen the load. Java will also use multiple threads for it's garbage collection. You can also use those extra cores for other things, like backup compression, running a MySQL database for your plugins to store their data, generating detailed maps, collecting player stats, and then hosting it all on a website.
Yep thats what I do, its nice to have the i7 so your server can do everything. Also I run a Raid0 with two SSD's but I also have a normal 1TB backup drive. I do weekly backups of my entire server to that drive.
If you're on windows, there is no more powerful and flexible way to automate your backups than this: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/world-backup-and-mapping-utility-windows-only.3794/ I have it backup each of my worlds independently with incremental backups, as well as the server and plugin files. so the main worlds that see a lot of use get backed up every 15 minutes, and the slower worlds like the nether only every hour. It also refreshes the world map data with each backup.
ok thanks for all the answers. BTW I'm running Linux. and I'm gone use an SSD for my MC server. and make it so it does backups to an 1TB HDD. i find that the easiest way to do that i really don't trust raid 0 that much :/ anyway. with 2 SSDs with raid 0.. that will be really fast right?
NO. DONT use a SSD. SSD's are only rated for a certain number of read/write cycles...they "burn-out" in essence. You will be making a TON of new writes to your disk. SSD's are great for fast access to data that doesn't really change that often. Core OS information, for example. A lot of people will run their OS off of an SSD and their everyday data on a typical HDD. Fast options available to you include RAID 0/0+1 and making a ramdisk. Don't throw $100-$200 at a SSD and watch it fail by this time next year (at the very latest). Please.
The guy above doesnt know much about SSDs, he just saw someone mention the lifetime write limit once and is blowing it out of proportion. I have seen extensive testing done with SSDs by some people I know and have shows that you can write 50GB a day to any modern SSD (these are the lowest lifetime drive Im talking about, so worst case scenario for write lifetime) and do that every day for 2 years before a drive's NAND chips wear out from too many writes. Running MC on a SSD will produce no where even close to 50GB of writes a day.
Torrent Yes, SMALL writes, small reads -- Kills it extremely quickly. I would know... from experience....
