There are many different ways to help improve Minecraft server performance and a lag-free, responsive server is important for the best Minecraft experience. Luckily there are many options for Minecraft servers that can improve lag, chunk loading/generation, loading times, and stability.
1. Switching from Vanilla Minecraft
Minecraft has a few different modding platforms with some of them providing performance-enhancing frameworks. The big two are Fabric and Paper. Campfire Hosting supports both of these types of servers, and if you’re looking to improve Minecraft server performance without much effort than simply switching to a Fabric server will help improve things. The added benefit of switching from Vanilla Minecraft to a modded Minecraft is that there are also multiple mods and plugins with the focus on improving various aspects of Minecraft’s performance.
Both platforms offer extensive compatibility with a range of mods and plugins, allowing server admins to modify their server to meet specific needs.
2. Performance Mods
By switching to a modding platform for your server, there are further ways to improve performance via mods. Below are some popular performance mods for Fabric servers/clients:
Ferritecore, a mod that improves Minecraft’s RAM/memory usage.
Sodium, an alternative renderer and performance mod.network-compression-threshold
ModernFix, an all-in-one mod that improves performance, reduces memory usage, and fixes many bugs in modern Minecraft versions (most versions including and above 1.16 are supported) without compromising the game experience.
Lithium, a general-purpose optimization mod for Minecraft.
Better chunk loading, increases chunk loading speed in general.
Concurrent Chunk Management Engine, a mod designed to improve the chunk performance of Minecraft.
3. Modifying Server Properties
Another good method to adjust the performance on your Minecraft server is changing some server properties. On Campfire Hosting, these can be managed on the “Properties” tab of the server’s admin panel.
Campfire Hosting also has an easy way to enable Aikar flags under the “Advanced Properties” tab on the server control panel. This set of JVM flags can help Minecraft server performance.
Below are some properties that can be related to performance:
- view-distance and simulation-distance
- Default: 10
- Optimized: 7-10
- network-compression-threshold
- Default: 256
- Optimized: 512
- Caps the size of a packet before the server attempts to compress it, reducing CPU load
4. sync-chunk-writes
This is another server property, but it requires some explanation. The sync-chunk-writes setting controls whether chunk data is written to disk synchronously or asynchronously. When it is false, the server writes chunk data to disk asynchronously. This means that the server does not wait for the data to be fully written to disk before moving on to other tasks. This can improve server performance and reduce lag because disk write operations can be a significant bottleneck. However, it also very slightly increases the risk of data corruption if the server crashes or shuts down unexpectedly.
Due to the nature of Campfire Hosting, this option is best set to False, as it greatly improves server performance. However — as mentioned there is the tiny risk of data corruption if the server crashes. This is an unlikely scenario, but it can be good to install a mod/plugin that can automate backups of your world, or do it manually. Look to our post about Minecraft World Backup solutions/mods over here.
That is all! I hope this guide has given you some insight on how to improve your Minecraft server’s performance.
