20 Player Highend Free Minecraft Server on Oracle Cloud

How to make a free Minecraft Server on oracle OCI ( Oracle cloud infrastructure) | Step by Step

Setup Time 1 hour

1. Sign Up for Always Free Oracle Cloud

   

   If you already have an oracle cloud account, skip this else, create a free tier account at  cloud.oracle.com/free, and click ‘Sign Up’ under Not an Oracle Cloud customer yet?

2. Enter Account Information

   

   You’ll need to key in some information to sign up, starting with your first and last name and your email address. You’ll get an email to verify your email address.

3. Check Email for the Confirmation message

   

   You will need to confirm your oracle cloud account by clicking the ‘click here’ button

4. Create login Passwords

   

   Enter Passwords as per Oracle Cloud Password Policy. i.e min 8 characters 1 lower case 1 upper case 1 numeric and 1 special character
   You can leave the optional fields.
   Enter the Cloud Account Name and select the Home Region nearest to your geographical location.
   Though selecting the home region to nearest geography is not mandatory, but it’s recommended for better performance.

5. Enter Address information

   

   Enter Mobile number and verify the number with OTP if prompted . Hit ‘Continue‘ to proceed

6. Enter Payment Verification

   

   Click on the button Add payment verification method

7. Select the verification method

   

   Currently, Credit card is the verification method provided. Click on ‘Credit Card‘ button. Don’t worry there won’t be any charges. There will be a test transaction that will be reversed.

8. Enter Your Card Details

   

   Enter your card details and click finish.

   PS: Rest Assured you will never be charged for the Always Free tier Account. Only when you manually upgrade your account to use more oracle cloud resources your billing happens.

9. Check for Confirmation

   

   After verification select the Agreement Checkbox and click ‘Start the free trial’ button.

10. Verify your Card Transaction is Reversed

    

    You will get messages from bank on your transactions credit and debit. Verify your transaction is reversed on your SMS message.

11. Receive your login link in your Email

    

    After few minutes you will receive an email from oracle with the login link. [Get started Now with Oracle Cloud]

12. Check Access Details

    

    The email content will have the access details. click on the button ‘Sign in to Oracle Cloud’

    P.S Sometimes there may be a small delay in receiving this message as it takes some time in doing the provisioning, so just give some time.

13. Login with SSO

    

    When you click on sign in it will take to SSO page where you can enter the username and password which you set previously.

14. Create VM (Virtual Machine)

    

    Once you log in successfully you will see this landing page with quick actions. To create a Minecraft server or any server you need an operating system. So the first step after landing at the OCI console is to create an Operating system.

    To do that Click on Create a VM instance.

15. Create the compute instance configuration

    

    Give a name to you VM instance (e.g Minecraft Server). Note the Edit buttons , We will use this to edit the default configurations in next steps.

16. Change Image Shape

    

    In the shape dialog, select the ‘Instance type’ of ‘Virtual Machine’ and then select ‘Ampere’ (ARM) under ’Shape series’. Choose the ‘VM.Standard.A1.Flex’ shape and choose the amount of CPU and RAM that you want to allocate to this server. For your “always free” ARM servers, you get up to 4 OCPU and 24 GB of RAM to allocate. This means that you can turn up one virtual machine with 4 OCPU and 24GB of RAM, or 4 servers each with 1 OCPU and 6GB of RAM (or any combination up to the limit). It just depends on what you want to dedicate to each VM! 

17. Select Ampere image

    

    Select Ampere image and note the OCPU =1 and Memory = 6 by default. We will change that in the next step

18. Increase CPU and RAM

    

    – Select the ‘Instance type’ of ‘Virtual Machine’ and then
    – Select ‘Ampere’ (ARM) under ’Shape series’.
    – Choose the ‘VM.Standard.A1.Flex’ shape and
    – Choose the amount of CPU and RAM that you want to allocate to this server.

    Click on the down arrow and move the OCPU and RAM Slider to the desired power. Here we are setting to 2 OCPU and 6 GB RAM.

    The Free ARM server provides up to 4 OCPU and 24 GB of RAM. So you can allocate up to 4 Server machines and distribute the 24 GM as you want.
    e.g 4 CPU with 6 GB RAM each OR
    2 servers with 2 CPUs each with 12 GB RAM
    or any combination based on your VM server requirement.

19. Confirm the changes in VM

    

    After the selection you have made confirm the configuration in VM is of 2 Core OCPU and 6 GB memory.

20. Configure Networking and Assign Public IP

    

    The next step would be to create a network to which the VM server has to be connected. So choose a virtual cloud network (VCN). Give VCN name and enter subnet name. If there are any default values you can just accept the defaults.

    Finally, make sure you check the radio button Assign a Public IP Address. This is a public IP address and can be accessed from external networks. This will be used for your partner players to connect over the internet.

21. Create Public Private SSH Key Pair

    

    Save the keys to your local system and store them safely. you will need the private key to connect later.
    Also if you already have a Public-Private key beforehand you can upload the public key using the upload public key files, or paste public keys radio buttons.

22. Configure Boot Volume

    

    Leave the boot volume as default

23. The Server provisioning Starts

    

    It takes a few minutes to provision the server configuration .

24. Confirm a Running server

    

    Once provisioned the icon changes to green and shows running . Note the Public IP and copy it somewhere.

25. Connect Using SSH to Public IP

    

    Connect via ssh (in Windows 10) to the public IP you just copied from the local system. Select yes for the above message.

    NB: SSH is a secure shell and is used to create secure connections. The commands to connect via ssh may be different for different operating systems (mac, ubuntu, Linux, windows etc).

    This example is done for windows 10.
    And if you face any issue on windows you can also try using Putty. Putty is software to create secure connections. you can download it from here.

26. If using Putty Convert the key

    

    Note that Putty doesn’t understand the key you downloaded so you need to convert the key.

    You can use PuttyGen to convert the downloaded private key. When you install Putty , PuttyGen also gets installed . Run PuttyGen from the windows start search menu

    Copy the converted key to .ssh folder in windows 10.

27. keep the private key in .ssh folder

    

    The local windows default path is C:\Users\USER_NAME\.ssh

28. Open Putty

    

    Now Connect the Public IP with putty. Enter public IP in Hostname as per image. Don’t hit Open yet. Hit Open after loading private key in next step

29. Connect using Private Key

    

    go to SSH tab > Auth > browse for the local converted private key from .ssh folder ( or any folder you have kept) and hit the Open button

30. Login as opc

    

    Once you come to command prompt login as :
    enter opc and you would be connected. You can run any Linux command to test.
    e.g
    $ ls
    $ ls -l
    

31. Check for Java

    

    Run the below command at $ prompt

    $ yum list jdk*

    This will list the available packages. Copy the Jdk filename of the latest version.

32. Install latest JDK

    

    Copy the latest jdk file name from the above step and run the below command. Note the Jdk filename is appended

    sudo yum install jdk-16.0.1.0.1.aarch64

    confirm with y when asked for installation.

33. Monitor the installation

    

    You will see a confirmation when jdk is successfully installed.
    Enter $ java –version at the command prompt the confirm

    You will see the version output as

    java version “16.0.1.0.1” 2021-06-29
    Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 16.0.1.0.1+1-2)
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 16.0.1.0.1+1-2, mixed mode)

34. Install MineCraft Server

    So now we are ready to install the Minecraft server
    Download the latest Minecraft jar file from Minecraft Server Download Page on to the VM server.

    Note that if you click on the link it will get downloaded to your local system which we do not need to do. Just copy the link and use the command in the next step on the server.

35. Copy the Jar File link

    

    There is a jar file that needs to be downloaded and run on the server.

36. Run the Download Command (Wget) on cloud

    

    wget https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/0a269b5f2c5b93b1712d0f5dc43b6182b9ab254e/server.jar

    This will download it to the Cloud VM server.
    The next step is to install.

37. Try Installing

    Run below command
    $ java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui
    
    This is supposed to fail and you may see this and we need to accept the licence agreement.

    [19:35:33] [main/ERROR]: Failed to load properties from file: server.properties
    [19:35:33] [main/WARN]: Failed to load eula.txt
    [19:35:33] [main/INFO]: You need to agree to the EULA in order to run the server. Go to eula.txt for more info.

    EULA – End user license agreement.

38. Edit eula.txt

    

    Edit eula.txt with Vi editor or nano editor whichever you are comfortable with. You can see the text from the command by typing

    $ cat eula.txt

39. Set EULA to true

    

    If using nano editor to save exit, type CTRL+C, ‘Y’ to accept changes, and then ENTER
    If using Vi editor do the changes and press SHIFT+wq!

40. After changes verify the EULA

    

    Confirm EULA.txt is set to true
    using the command
    $ cat eula.txt

41. Open Firewall and Security List Ports to Allow External Internet Access

    

    Go to subnet in the VM server image

42. Edit Default Security list

    

    Click on default security list

43. Enter Ingress Rule for TCP Protocol ( Incoming Traffic)

    

    Enter CIDR for source type
    Source CIDR as 0.0.0.0/0
    PROTOCOL as TCP
    and Destination PORT as 25565
    25565 is the port where Minecraft server allows incoming connections

44. Enter Ingress Rule for UDP protocol

    

    Enter another ingress rule for UDP protocol with similar values

45. Open the ports on VM’s Firewall

    

    Run the below commands

    sudo firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=25565/tcp
    sudo firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=25565/udp
    sudo firewall-cmd –reload

    It should show ‘Success’ and the ports would be opened.

46. Now Start the Minecraft Server

    

    Use the below command to start the Minecraft server. Note that this command failed earlier as EULA was not accepted.

    $ java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui
    
    In a few minutes, the Minecraft server will be up and running! You can now connect up to your server using the public IP address and start playing on your own server! 

    And in case you need to modify the server configuration for accepting more Load you can always do it by following the Tutorials/Setting up a server – Official Minecraft Wiki (fandom.com)