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How to Set Up and Run a (Really Powerful) Free Minecraft Server in the Cloud

In this post, I’m going to show you how to set up and run your very own private, dedicated Minecraft server in the cloud. I have blogged about this before, but the server was limited to 1 CPU core and 1 GB of RAM in that post. In this post, we're going to create a server with up to 4 CPU cores and 24 GB of RAM! That’s more than enough resources to host a game with 20+ friends with excellent performance (and still have enough leftover to create another server for something else). And best of all, it’s absolutely free! Forever!! I’m sure you’re just as excited as I am about this, so let’s jump right into it and get started!

Why Is This a Big Deal? 

In this post, we’re going to launch a new OCI Virtual Machine that uses a new Ampere Arm chip. These VMs provide better price-performance and near-linear scaling for CPU-bound workloads compared to x86-based instances. They are suitable for a wide range of workloads including web applications, media encoding, AI Inferencing, and much more. We’re very proud that Oracle is now partnering with leading technology vendors to make Arm server-side development first-class and easy.

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Load-Balancing Minecraft Servers with Kong Gateway

It's time to have some fun. Sure, tell your colleagues or your family that you're doing research, experimenting with some new tech—because that is what we'll be doing—but just don't let them see you playing Minecraft!

Here's the scenario: You're organizing a full-day Minecraft class for local STEM students. You need to run your own Minecraft servers to ensure a kid-friendly multiplayer environment, restricted only to your students. One server won't be enough, so you'll run two servers simultaneously, expecting your load balancer to handle sending students to Server A or Server B, depending on the load.