Performance Optimization

Reading the Dashboard Metrics

The Dashboard shows three key performance indicators updated every 2 seconds:

Metric	Ideal	Action needed
TPS	18–20	Below 15: investigate heavy plugins or farms
CPU	Below 80%	Consistently high: reduce entity count or view distance
Memory	Below 90% of allocation	Near ceiling: increase memory in General Settings

Use the 60-second rolling charts to identify patterns — is lag constant or does it spike at regular intervals?

Low TPS (Server Lag)

TPS (Ticks Per Second) is the most important server health indicator. Minecraft’s target is 20 TPS. Below 18 means the server is struggling.

Quick Fixes

1. Reduce view distance — lower view-distance in Properties (try 8 or 6 instead of 10).
2. Reduce simulation distance — lower simulation-distance in Properties.
3. Restart the server — clears memory leaks and resets entity counts.

Finding the Bottleneck

Use the /timings report command (Paper) or /spark (Spark plugin) via the Console to get a detailed breakdown of what’s consuming server ticks.

Common causes of low TPS:

Cause	Fix
Large mob farms	Add mob limits in bukkit.yml or reduce render distance near farms
Redstone clocks	Remove or throttle redstone contraptions
Chunk generation	Let the server pre-generate chunks using a tool like Chunky
Heavy plugins	Disable plugins one by one to find the culprit

High Memory Usage

Increasing Memory Allocation

1. Open General Settings.
2. Increase the Memory value (in MB). Allow at least 1 GB per 10 active players.
3. Save and restart the server.

Recommended Allocations

Players	Minimum	Recommended
1–5	1 GB	2 GB
5–20	2 GB	4 GB
20–50	4 GB	8 GB
50+	8 GB	12+ GB

JVM Tuning

For servers with 4+ GB of allocation, add these JVM flags in General Settings → JVM Extra Args:

-XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:G1NewSizePercent=30 -XX:G1MaxNewSizePercent=40 -XX:G1HeapRegionSize=8M -XX:G1ReservePercent=20 -XX:G1HeapWastePercent=5 -XX:G1MixedGCCountTarget=4 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=15 -XX:G1MixedGCLiveThresholdPercent=90

These are the Aikar flags — widely used by the Paper community for improved GC performance.

High CPU Usage

High CPU is usually caused by too many active entities, a heavy plugin, or insufficient view distance throttling.

1. Use the Console to run /tps (Paper) to see per-world TPS.
2. Run /spark profiler start → wait 30 seconds → /spark profiler stop to get a flame graph.
3. Look for plugins that appear frequently in the profiler output.

Backup Impact on Performance

Creating backups is CPU and disk intensive. Schedule automatic backups during low-activity hours (e.g., 4:00 AM) using the Daily schedule type in General Settings to minimize player impact.

Regular Maintenance

Action	Frequency
Restart server	Weekly or after plugin updates
Create a full backup	Before major changes
Check for plugin updates	Monthly
Review TPS trends in Dashboard	After any change