Cloudcraft: Minecraft Cloud Server

by Liquid Labs

A robust Minecraft server management tool using Google Cloud. Cloudcraft will set up, backup, start, stop, and destroy cloud based Minecraft servers.

Status note: This has been manually tested relatively thouroughly and, at the same time, everything is spretty new.

Install

1. Install terraform if not installed (check with terraform --version).
2. Install gcloud CLI if not installed (check with gcloud --version).
3. Install Cloudcraft:

   npm i -g cloudcraft

Usage

gcloud auth application-default login # authenticate to gcloud, if necessary
# start and run a new Minecraft server
cloudcraft server create -- name='my-mc-server' start

Costs

You will have to (potentially) pay for a few thins. Overall, costs (for a 24x7 server) are comparible to the monthly cost of a premium Minecraft hosting service with similar RAM capacity.

1. Your disk storage, which is pretty cheap.
2. The time your server is running. This is probably the most expensive thing and stopping the server when not in use can save you a lot of money.
3. Data ingress and egress. At the time of writing, there was a significant amount of free data transfer per month, but a larger, 24x7 server would probably start to incur some costs for data transfer as well.

References

• Terraform main and vm-instance module documentation.

Command reference

Usage

cloudcraft <options> <command>

Main options

Option	Description
<command>	(main argument,optional) The command to run or a sub-command group.
--quiet, -q	Makes informational output less chatty.
--throw-error	In the case of an exception, the default is to print the message. When --throw-error is set, the exception is left uncaught.

Commands

• backups: Selects backup commands.
• create: Creates a Minecraft named {underline server-name}..
• destroy: Destroys the named server or all resources.
• help: With no command specified, prints a list of available commands or, when a command is specified, prints help for the specified command.
• info: Prints info about the Minecraft server(s).
• list: Lists Cloudcraft managed Minecraft servers.
• ssh: Displays the proper SSH command or executes specified command on remote server.
• start: Starts the named Minecraft server.
• status: Displays the status of a Minecraft server.
• stop: Stops the named Minecraft server.
• terraform: Runs the terraform command, as specified, in the staged Cloudcraft terraform directory. This command is meant primarily for developers.

cloudcraft backups [command]

Selects backup commands.

backups options

Option	Description
[command]	(main argument,required) The backup action to perform.

Subcommands

• create: Backs up the named server.
• delete: Deletes the named or chosen backups.
• list: Lists the current backups.
• restore: Restores the named or chosen backup.

cloudcraft backups create [server-name]

Zips the remote server files and copies them to the cloudcraft data directory.

create options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) Name of the server to backup.

cloudcraft backups delete <options> <backup-files>

Deletes the specified backup file(s) or, if none specified, asks the user to choose one or more files for deletion.

delete options

Option	Description
<backup-files>	(main argument,optional) The backup file(s) to delete.
--confirm	If set, then the 'yes/no' confirmation will be skipped.

cloudcraft backups list <options>

Lists the current backups.

list options

Option	Description
--format	Specifies the format of the output. Can be 'terminal' (default), 'json', or 'yaml'.

cloudcraft backups restore <options> <backup-file>

Restores the specified backup or, if none specified, asks the user to choose a backup to restore. By default, the backup will be restored to the server from which it originated. This can be changed with the '--target' option.

restore options

Option	Description
<backup-file>	(main argument,optional) The backup file to restore.
--confirm	If set, then the 'yes/no' confirmation will be skipped.
--target	The server to restore the backup to.

cloudcraft create <options> [server-name]

Creates a Cloudcraf managed minecraft server named server-name. By default this is a bedrock server.

create options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) The name of the server to create.
--server-type	May be one of: bedrock, java.

cloudcraft destroy <options> <server-name>

Destroys the named server or all resources.

destroy options

Option	Description
<server-name>	(main argument,optional) The name of the server to destroy.
--all	If true, then destroys all infrastructure. Incompatible with '--server-name'.
--confirm	If set, then the 'yes/no' confirmation will be skipped.
--plan	Prints the destroy plan without actually doing anything.

cloudcraft help <command>

With no command specified, prints a list of available commands or, when a command is specified, prints help for the specified command.

help options

Option	Description
<command>	(main argument,optional) The command to print help for.

cloudcraft info <options> <server-name>

Displays info about the servers or, if name supplied, a server. By default will display all information. If one or more info select options is provided, then it will only display that information.

info options

Option	Description
<server-name>	(main argument,optional) The name of the server to get into on.
--select-fields	List a field to display. Common options include: project-id, ip-address, machine-type, server-memory, and server-type. Underscores and hyphens are interchangeable. May be specified multiple times to select multiple fierds.
--refresh	Updates underlying terraform files and applies the results before reading the output.

cloudcraft list

Lists Cloudcraft managed Minecraft servers. When the (primary) option '--quiet' is 'true', then it will output nothing if there are no servers. Otherwise, it prints a human readable message.

cloudcraft ssh <options> [server-name]

The 'ssh' command, with no options, is used to generate and display the SSH command you would use to log into the specified server. With '--eval-mode', you can do:

eval $(cloudcraft ssh --eval-mode some-sever

You can also use the --command option to execute a single command.

ssh options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) The name of the server to log into.
--command	Will run the specified command and exit.
--eval-mode	Produces output suitable to 'eval $(cloudcraft ssh a-server)'.

cloudcraft start <options> [server-name]

Starts the named Minecraft server.

start options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) The name of the server to start.
--refresh	Updates and applies the terraform configuration before starting the server.

cloudcraft status <options> [server-name]

Tries to determine the if the server is up, it's ping status, and disk usage.

status options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) The name of the server to describe.
--no-ping	Skips the ping test when set.
--refresh	Updates and applies the terraform configuration before resolving the server status.

cloudcraft stop <options> [server-name]

Stops the named Minecraft server.

stop options

Option	Description
[server-name]	(main argument,required) The name of the server to stop.
--refresh	Updates and applies the terraform configuration before stoping the server.

cloudcraft terraform

The entire command (everything after 'cloudcraft') is executed from the Cloudcraft terraform staging directory. E.g., 'cloudcraft terraform plan -no-color' executes 'terraform plan -no-color'.