Changes

# host it on my I have a relatively beefy 12GB RAM Windows 8 machine by that sits idle because the only thing I use it for is TurboTax and a couple Windows-only applications. By setting up Virtual Box, and then installing [http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/ Ubuntu 14.04 LTS] as a guest operating system which is , I'd have a clean dedicated machine to act as the Minecraftserver. This way And, as a VM, it will require a bit of tweaking compared be easier to backup and manage. Although the Bitnami pre-packaged setupis "complete" out of the box, but actually the requirements are pretty minimal. You just have only real requirement to get Minecraft running on default Ubuntu is to get Java working.

With the third option, I don't have to pay for anything but electricity. The IP address of the server will remain fixed, and I can even add in DynDNS if I really want to. I would '''never''' open up my firewall to a Windows host on my network. Thanks to VirtualBox and Ubuntu, I don't have to. I simply port-forward to the Ubuntu guest OS. That host is purpose-built and doesn't have any special abilitiesextra services that need maintenance/security or which could introduce conflicts. Using <code>nmap</code> to see if your minecraft server is properly port-forwarded<source lang="bash"># Use nmap to knock on port 25565 at the external IP address# Add in the -Pn option to treat all host as "online" in the HOST DISCOVERY stage; in other words, skip the host discovery stage# because for Comcast, the port will be in "stealth mode" or "filtered" and the host will not respond to pings.nmap -Pn -p25565 50.164.164.219 PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION25565/tcp filtered minecraft</source> In the above nmap scan, "filtered" means that a firewall, filter, or other network obstacle is blocking the port so that Nmap cannot tell whether it is open or closed.