Pre-Launch Server Validation - Preparing for Opening Day

Phase 1: Infrastructure (2-4 Weeks Out)

Start with the foundation. No amount of plugin tuning saves you from bad hardware or missing backups.

Hardware requirements by server size:

Run baseline checks on your hardware before anything else:

# Disk I/O speed — target >200 MB/s for SSD
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=1G count=1 oflag=direct

# Network bandwidth
iperf3 -c speedtest.server.com

# Disk space — keep >50% free for headroom
df -h

Red flags: HDD instead of SSD, less than 2GB RAM per 10 expected players, shared hosting with unknown neighbors.

Your backup system needs to actually work before your first crash, not after. Create a full backup, extract it to a separate directory, and confirm the world loads cleanly. Then schedule automated backups via cron -- every 6 hours locally, daily offsite.

On security: lock down your firewall to only the ports you need (25565, 22, 80/443 if applicable). Disable SSH password authentication, install Fail2ban, and keep the backend IP hidden behind a proxy if you can.

Phase 2: Server Configuration (1-2 Weeks Out)

Get your numbers on an empty server first using Spark. You want TPS at 20.0, MSPT under 10ms, RAM under 25% of max, and CPU under 20%. That's your baseline.

Configuration checklist:

• View and simulation distance -- Lower simulation distance reduces entity processing overhead without sacrificing player visibility. See the stress testing guide for recommended values by server size.
• Entity limits -- Tighten Paper's mob spawn caps and collision limits. Default values are far too generous for servers expecting 50+ players.
• World pregeneration -- Non-negotiable. Without it, 100 players exploring on launch day forces on-demand chunk generation and TPS drops to single digits. Use Chunky to pregenerate at least a 5,000-block radius from spawn. This can take hours -- plan accordingly.
• JVM flags -- On Java 25+ with 8+ cores, use ZGC with Compact Object Headers for sub-millisecond GC pauses. On older Java or smaller hardware, use Aikar's G1GC flags. Match Xms and Xmx to your available RAM.
• Server software -- Paper is the baseline. For 100+ player targets, consider Pufferfish.

Check each setting, restart, and make sure your numbers haven't gotten worse before moving on.

Phase 3: Plugin Validation (1 Week Out)

Start the server and watch the logs for errors:

tail -f logs/latest.log | grep -i error

Common sources of trouble: multiple economy plugins conflicting, duplicate feature plugins (two claim systems), and version mismatches. For each critical plugin -- economy, permissions, claims, chat, teleportation, anti-cheat -- confirm it loads cleanly, test its primary features, test its interactions with other plugins, and check that permissions are correctly assigned.

Walk through each rank (default, member, VIP, moderator, admin) and make sure players can use exactly the commands they should -- and nothing more. Check chat prefixes, tab list formatting, and look for permission leaks giving default players access to moderation commands. This is the kind of thing that ruins trust fast.

Phase 4: Player Experience (3-5 Days Out)

Join your own server like you've never seen it before. Read the welcome message. Follow the instructions. Complete the starter tasks. The whole thing should take 10-20 minutes and leave a new player with basic tools, a sense of direction, and a reason to keep playing.

At spawn, look for dark patches in the lighting, unfinished builds (leftover scaffolding is classic), unreadable signs, hazards near the spawn point, and a /help command that actually tells players something useful. Post your rules where people can find them.

Then walk through the progression path. A new player should make their first purchase within 15 minutes and reach iron tools within 30. Diamond tools should take 2-3 hours, endgame items 20-40 hours. If one earning method vastly outperforms everything else, your economy will collapse within the first week.

Phase 5: Load Testing (2-3 Days Out)

Now you need bots. You can't click around with five friends and call that a load test. Our stress testing guide covers the full methodology -- incremental load ramps, realistic bot behavior, spike testing, and endurance runs. Follow that process, but focus on these launch-specific scenarios:

• Mass join: Simulate 50-100 players connecting within a few minutes -- the launch surge. Keep an eye on connection failures, spawn area performance, and TPS dips during the initial flood.
• Spawn pressure: Your spawn area will bear the heaviest load on day one. Test it at your full target player count and look for rubber-banding or block interaction delays.
• Endurance: Run at 50-75% of target capacity for 4-12 hours. Monitor for memory leaks, TPS degradation over time, increasing GC pauses, and accumulating errors in the log.

Also test connectivity from your target regions. Under 100ms is good, 100-200ms is acceptable, above 250ms and players will feel it.

Phase 6: Staff and Communications (1-2 Days Out)

Your staff need to know what to do when things go wrong -- and things will go wrong. Write up a quick-reference doc with the three or four most common issues: "can't claim land" (check their balance), "can't use command" (check their rank), "grief reported" (use /co inspect, rollback if needed). Make sure everyone's tested these commands on the actual server, not just read about them. Set up an on-call schedule so you have coverage during peak hours.

On Discord: have your announcement drafted, your channel permissions locked down so launch-day chaos doesn't spill everywhere, and at least one staff bot responding to commands. Don't wing this part.

Phase 7: Final Validation (Day Before Launch)

Do a complete walkthrough of the player journey -- join, orientation, resource gathering, claiming, building, social features, economy. If something breaks during this walkthrough, fix it now. Not tomorrow with 100 players online.

Run final system health checks:

# Verify services
ps aux | grep java
ps aux | grep mysql

# Disk space
df -h

# DNS resolution
nslookup your-server.com

# Recent backup exists
ls -lh backups/

# No errors in logs
tail -100 logs/latest.log