Running Minecraft Server on Azure IaaS

A very-small Azure virtual machine (VM) would be fine for less than 10 users; however, consider a small VM for more than that.

Use the Windows Server 2012 Datacenter gallery image.

Create a separate data disk to store the Minecraft server executable and its data files. You will need to initialize and format this disk using Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).

Install the 64-bit version of Java.

Download the Minecraft_Server.exe and save to the Minecraft folder you create on your data drive.

Create a firewall exception for TCP port 25565, which is what Minecraft listens on.

Create an endpoint for the VM in the Azure portal for public and private port 25565 to enable external communication to the port on the VM. I cover this in detail in FAQ "Q: I've opened a firewall exception in my Azure IaaS virtual machine but I can't connect to it--what else do I need to do?"

Add your Minecraft account name to the ops.txt file to make yourself an operator on the server.

To run the Minecraft server I use the command below, which gives Minecraft 1GB of memory instead of 100MB. Save this to a start.bat file and use it to initialize.

"C:Program FilesJavajre7binjavaw.exe" -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -jar "Minecraft_Server.exe"