I've been considering expanding my hosting company to include Minecraft hosting, but I'm hesitant to select US OVH servers as my node due to the higher cost of NVMe or SSD storage. While I could get 4TB of HDD storage for no additional cost, I'm unsure of how important SSD storage is for Minecraft hosting.
Any first-hand knowledge or experience with running a Minecraft hosting node on HDDs, particularly OVH HDDs, would be greatly appreciated in determining the best course of action.

The utmost important factor for shared hosting with numerous Minecraft servers is to avoid excessive iowait that can result from server activities such as backups, live map generation, and frequent data changes in MySQL for block logging plugins.
Choosing HDDs for such hosting would lead to perceptible performance problems for all clients during gameplay. To stay competitive, it's crucial to opt for hosting providers that use SSD or NVMe instead of HDDs.

It is highly recommended to use SSDs for this purpose without any exceptions. In fact, even in 2010 with only around 16GB worth of MC servers and 8x 15k rpm drives, we encountered problems.
However, a pair of 128GB SSDs in RAID 1 at that time provided much better performance. From 2010 onwards, we have used SSDs and NVMe's for Minecraft hosting and would never consider going back.

You can try test periods on the servers, though not all of them have it. They have such services, so that later it would be clear what hostings represent. And the description on which server will minecraft is there, ssd or not.

Unfortunately, even now, in 2022, the price of SSD drives is still high, so expecting SSD hosting to be cheap is naive. Anyone who has run game servers, I'm not just talking about Minecraft now, knows that any 3-d dependent accelerator greatly affects response, and for a client, response = life. My advice to you is to use regular hosting with hdd for DB storage and only SSD for providing game servers.

Here is a list of free Minecraft web hosts along with their pros and cons. Freemc Hosting offers up to 3 servers for free with bungeecord support, a convenient panel, any number of slots and plugins, but comes with advertisements that cannot be turned off and there may be bugs. Minefort.com allows only 1 server for free with easy plugin installation and registration, however, a license is required to register and cannot be turned off in the settings.

Aternos has no limit on the number of slots and plugins, and provides a plugin library, but one can have only one free server, and there are ads, long queues to turn on the server, and no FTP. Server.pro, while offering a very comfortable panel and bungeecord support, allows only 1 free server, turns off every 60 minutes, but comes with inexpensive paid tariffs, no ads, plugin libraries, full access to files, and bypasses of restrictions.

SkyNode offers only one free server but its panel is not very convenient with the server being deleted every hour if you don't hit the resume button. Payment can be made through various payment methods such as bank transfer, electronic money or cash in electronic payment terminals on these website. Game server hosting requirements are always high due to different games requiring varying degrees of resources.
Gaming websites are usually hosted on VPS or dedicated servers with powerful equipment, low ping, a convenient control panel and good technical support.

When it comes to HDDs versus SSDs, it really depends on what kind of performance you're aiming for and the player base you're expecting.

If you're planning to host a small server with not too many plugins or mods, HDDs might just work out fine for you. I've seen a few setups using OVH's HDDs where the performance was decent enough for a server with around 20-30 players. However, when you start getting into larger servers or heavy modpacks, that's where the difference between HDD and SSD really becomes apparent.

HDDs have slower read/write speeds, so loading chunks and handling player data might get sluggish under heavy load. This can lead to more lag, and players aren't exactly forgiving when it comes to that. SSDs, on the other hand, offer much faster access times, which means smoother gameplay and quicker world loading.

But yeah, SSD storage, especially on OVH, can be pretty expensive, and I totally get the hesitation. You could start with HDDs to see how it goes, and if you start seeing performance issues or get complaints from your users, then maybe consider switching to SSD or even NVMe if budget allows.

In my opinion, it's worth spending the extra for SSDs if you're serious about offering top-notch performance, especially if you want to attract more players who are likely to stick around. But if you're just testing the waters or catering to a smaller group, HDDs might be a cost-effective way to get started. And if you're using OVH's servers, their HDDs are pretty reliable, so you shouldn't run into too many issues as long as you're not pushing the server too hard.

Servers in Minecraft handle a lot of data, including world chunks, player interactions, and plugin operations. SSDs provide significantly faster read/write speeds than HDDs, so worlds load faster, gameplay is smoother, and servers respond faster.

Avoiding excessive iowait, which can arise from server activities like backups, live map generation, and rapid data changes in MySQL for block logging plugins, is crucial when sharing hosting with multiple Minecraft servers.

For a Minecraft web hosting node, SSD storage is essential due to its impact on performance and player experience. I will explain why in the following manner:





SSDs provide faster loading of worlds, chunk generation, and save operations, which minimize lag during gameplay.



Improved server responsiveness: Minecraft servers handle frequent data access for maps, player inventories, and log files. SSDs are faster than HDDs in terms of latency.



Minecraft nodes are capable of handling heavy I/O demands. Under such conditions, SSDs are more reliable.



Keeping players engaged requires fast load times and lag-free gameplay.