A proposito di clubfemale94

Descrizione:

Set Up A Minecraft Server In Azure VM

My son's latest addiction is Minecraft. This single or multiplayer game has a client/server architecture to it. There are millions of users, a newly released edition (as at last week), as well as a vibrant community. I was initially put off by the crude graphics of the game (a cube-constructed environment with overlaid textures on blocks), but I quickly came to terms with how fun it was and how it encouraged creativity. I'm also impressed by the huge and vibrant community of people playing and extending the game with plug-ins (mods), custom maps, and public server worlds (sites you can go to play, such as http://planetminecraft.net).


Minecraft can be used to play single-player games on a local computer or you can connect remotely. You don't need to be a technical expert or a power user to set up your own server. There are many tutorials that will help you. This involves downloading and running the server software, disabling firewalls, and entering a server IP address onto the client machine.


Of course what comes next is "Dad, can my friends connect to my Minecraft server?"


So I went down that route and configured our home router to do port forwarding, in turn allowing open internet traffic into the Minecraft-active port on our home network. This was very easy and there are many tutorials available to help you.


The scary part: Poking holes into the firewall. This allows unknown (and sometimes malicious!) Kd76 parties to access your home network and onto any machine that may have personal information. There is also the matter of connection bandwidth. This is an essential aspect of smooth gaming when a host server is involved. You could be creating an unusable server if you don't have an internet connection that is fast or has bandwidth limitations.


Enter Windows Azure Virtual Machines


As a Microsoft Windows Azure Insider, I was naturally aware that Windows Azure is the best infrastructure for this type of shared access. Windows Azure provides many capabilities, including access control, storage, shared host roles and access control. This is what is generally referred as PaaS - Platform as a Services. IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service – a relatively recent offering from Windows Azure includes virtual machine host.


Finally, a reason to get started with Azure VMs!


[Wait... That sounds kind of snarky... It's not intended to be. I was trying to be funny... I guess I should continue my day job...


The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. It can be spun down when you're done. You don't even have to alter your home firewalls. Yada, yada...