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Dedicated Server for Minecraft:EE

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196 comments

  • Jason Giancola

    So I'm just going to point this out.  When Minecraft was under the EDU tag, they had a the ability to launch a server and then run it separate from the application. https://www.instructables.com/Starting-A-MinecraftEdu-Server/

    This is kind of frustrating because myself as a teacher, I have to be at the school teaching but student's can't connect based on the firewall and how the subnetting works within the district.  

    What should be developed is something that already exists for Java edition is a separate server launcher application which doesn't need a sign in but only runs as a command line prompt.  

    1
  • Jason Giancola

    I mean I would also be down for it if they made the server client tied to something that only let verified teachers use it.  When I saw that they originally had a server client for back in 1.6.4 and then got rid of it, that is frustrating.  I can run a dedicated server for Java and bedrock but can't for Minecraft EE.

    Or a quicker option, a person who is listed as a teacher could be logged in on 2 different computers but only one character within the world.  That I feel under the current coding, would be easier to do.

    1
  • Aleece Landis
    Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    I've had to reserve an "extra" student account to use as a HOST account so I can use a computer to act as a server.  Only drawback being the Host is pretty much AFK and if it is a survival challenge sort of thing that AFK host doesn't let them sleep through the night.  If this could be a dedicated server software it wouldn't have to burn an account to host it and it would make logging easier.

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  • Andrew Forgrave

    I would like to challenge current same-tenant model that limits the ability for M:EE collaboration with educators and students from schools from other jurisdictions.  

    Java Minecraft servers have employed a whitelist mechanism for many years that I believe should be incorporated into an M:EE server. If teachers can manage slash commands in M:EE like /weather thunder or /tp @a @s, then they can manage /whitelist add ...  

    3
  • Andrew Forgrave

    Bryan Sanders (archived) --  The current tenant-based authentication removes the classroom teacher from the decision-making process as to who their students will interact with. 
    1) the limitation on tenant means teachers can't support collaborative projects with students from another jurisdiction.
    2) the symbol-based authentication leaves kids open to peer-to-peer host simply by sharing a code with anyone else on the tenant -- it could be a friend in another classroom, another school, etc. 
    3) there is no whitelist facility that allows a teacher to be directly responsible for which accounts access an M:EE world hosted from within their classroom.  

    In my 8+ years of using Minecraft with elementary-aged kids, I have always been very conscious of my responsibility as the educator for supervising my students when they are interacting through Minecraft.  As a long-time proponent/champion for the use of Minecraft, I've been especially conscious that leading the way brings along the extra responsibility of ensuring that care is taken in setting positive precedents. 

    With the original Java-based #MinecraftEDU, it was possible to set up the clients such that they were only able to connect to ONE specific server: 
    1) The server was live/accessible when it was time to work on our Minecraft work and I was supervising.
    2) The serve was closed/inaccessible when we were focussing on other learning.  Students might launch the client, but without the server present, they couldn't distract themselves with a self-hosted world. 

    The ability to complement the original @TeacherGaming Java mod with other Java-based mods like World Edit, DynMap, etc. provided a much richer feature set even then (7 years ago) than we have now within M:EE.  

    When Microsoft has been promoting Mystery Skype for years -- a classroom-initiated activity in which teachers reach out and connect their students with classrooms all over the world (without any restrictions imposed by tenant) -- the legal ramifications argument RE: Minecraft doesn't stand up to inspection. The problem lies in how it has been implemented -- and the financial motivations that lurk behind the license model. Sorry.   

    This reflects, in part, my recent question related to Bedrock servers and Code Connection. If it were possible to fire up a Bedrock server and have my students connect to it and code collaboratively, it would work around the tenant limitation. Sadly, that hasn't seemed to work in my tests, and it appears no one else has looked at it? Add to the fact that Bedrock seems to be ignored for the Mac platform (why is that? Bedrock is based on minecraftPE, which was out on the iPad loooong before W10 edition, and M:EE can be released for the Mac) and we are back to needing to use M:EE.

    I know that softwares have roadmaps that make them less nimble than we might like -- but maybe if a team were to backtrack to where the road hived off from Java and start a new path forward along that route we might get to where we would like to be a lot more quickly ...  

    5
  • Christoph Peters

    How about using Azure virtual servers inside the school tenant to install minecraft server. This would require a MCEE server version of course. Im wondering if such a software is in development. That would be awesome!

    3
  • Standalone MC:EE Server

    Milo Wearn

    So instead of having to be in the game you could have something like this: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server

    2
  • Per-Ole Fanuelsen

    Yes please. And it should run on other operating systems than windows.

    1
  • Andrew Forgrave

    I've been doing some recent testing with remote access for participants to an M:EE peer-hosted world sitting on an Intel NUC. So far, folks have been able to connect from various physical locations without issue. I've not had enough folks active yet to test out the functional upper limit to the number of simultaneous connections, and that is something I'd like to try out. I've kept the world open for days, looking to see what kinds of issues might exist -- it appears that the join code times out after a couple of days? I just did a search and found a recent post by Andrew-L about this.  I've been able to exit and reconnect from multiple machines for a day or two before needing to refresh the code at the "server" host.  I understand that the current implementation is not designed to run for long stretches -- but an option to whitelist players versus the join code option would be a step in the right direction. 

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  • Milo Wearn

    So I was looking around and came across this.

    Looks like it is using the bedrock server hosting tool. I am gonna try hosting a server and joining it through MC:EE

    Edit: Doesn't look like it works. I tried using the IP method but it just says "Unable to connect to the world"

    1
  • Per-Ole Fanuelsen

    For performance purposes I really hope its not gonna be the java version. We need something thats coded in a language thats from this century. 

    0
  • Andrew Forgrave

    Milo Wearn -- I set up a Bedrock server a few weeks back and tried to connect from M:EE with no success. Even though M:EE and Bedrock share the same code base, it looks like they're not able to connect. 

    Bryan Sanders (archived) -- I just tried to use the rejoin code from my session Monday night and it had expired. So yeah -- that's problematic.  I'd really prefer a whitelist feature over the join codes. 

    Kyle-M What ever became of the M:EE server pilot from two years ago? I've not seen any disclosure of the results from that? It might help us all if we had a sense of how well it worked and what the challenges were. 

    2
  • Aleece Landis
    Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Definitely interested in keeping this wish alive and maybe turning it into reality.

    1
  • Server

    I would like to see a severs option when you click the play button on everyone's Minecraft Edu

     
    1
  • wolverine jackman

    can you make it so your server code doesn't change when your computer/pc close's.

     

    0
  • Ability to play with others outside of one's organization

    FOLLOW
     
    Garry Strait
     

    I have some friends who play MCEE, but are outside of my Organization. Could you please add the ability to play with other players outside of the organization?

    Thanks,

    Garry Strait

    4
  • Beard Rob

    Hey folks,

    Just wanted to upvote this.  We started using MineCraft Education Edition in late 2019 and I didn't realise that the pilot of the Azure server was an option until after the pilot had finished.

    Our Minecraft club was going really well when it started, it was bringing kids together, including a couple of kids who were shy or had learning difficulties who really struggled to make friends and were lonely.  Suddenly having a club where they all had a common interest they could play together which really made a huge difference for the kids, some of who didn't have access to a computer at home or perhaps were so isolated at school and didn't have any friends and this was a way of helping them socialise and improve their mental health.

    However, then the pandemic happened and caught everyone off guard.  Our school was closed to all but a handful of students, one student even asked if he could come into school so he could still play Minecraft (from experience of my teenage kids, they'd do anything they could to avoid going into school, so kids asking to go to school was an amazing surprise, and something I put down to the availability of Minecraft Education Edition in school).  Over the pandemic a couple of the kids would e-mail me to ask if there was any way they could play together at home, but sadly running Minecraft:EE on a school computer and allowing the kids to connect from home wasn't an option, we just weren't able to open up the firewall.  Having something on the outside Internet (on Azure, on a hosted VM or something) would have been ideall, but cost was a factor too.

    I even looked at the possibility of running Minecraft:EE on a computer at home like Bryan Sanders (archived) is doing by opening ports up and allowing the kids to connect in to my computer, but despite having a 200Mbit down/20Mbit up connection at home I gather the bandwidth used would probably saturate my upload speed an make it impossible to still work from home... sadly while I have the option of a faster connection I can't afford it and I know the school wouldn't fund it.  There's also the issue of power availability, I have occasional power cuts which would mean downtime (I'm going to add a UPS to my home router and switch when I can afford it, but right now when the power goes off everything else does too).

    It would really make a difference to the kids in the school I work at, I was so excited to see that Minecraft:EE was now available on Chromebooks (I'm having issues deploying this, but that's going to be a separate support ticket), a lot of the kids at the school have borrowed Chromebooks for home learning, so if a server was available on Azure (or even just a server application that could be installed on a basic Windows, Mac or Linux host that could run headless with a separate management client or web interface for administration, or even just a GUI that we could access via a Remote Desktop or VNC session) would be amazing.  It would make a huge difference to the kids, they're feeling pretty isolated right now and we want to do what we can to make the isolation more bearable so a dedicated Minecraft:EE server that is simple to connect to from a Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or Chromebook client from a kids home would be amazing.

    Minecraft-EDU-Official I see there's a new client available that is required to continue playing, does this suggest that perhaps something could be possible?

    Rob

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  • Aleece Landis
    Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Bump.

    Any news on the Minecraft EE dedicated server software front? 

    2
  • Mic D

    I've skimmed this whole thread and there still is not a definite answer about a server option for MEE. These discussions and wishlists have been going for over 2 years and it would have been very benficial last year during lockdown (as well as now). 

    Can someone official please put the real answer on the forum and maybe pin it to the top so we can find it easily?

    Thanks! Love your work!

    3
  • Andrew C

    Just read through this thread in depth (though I skimmed some parts that are beyond my technical understanding). I believe that my district would need to have its own server to comply with privacy laws. If that's what the Azure solution means, I'd love to see it.

    I've had a lot of issues getting multiplayer to work in my schools because of firewalls and network configurations.  My workaround has been to host on a guest wifi network from my laptop but  this seems to max out around 15 players(I don't know why), and I would prefer to have 30 slots as advertised. I'm interested in this "server farm" setup that some people have talked about as an interim solution.

    I am really not looking forward to the day that my district decides to pull MC access because of cyberbullying incidents. So, I would definitely like to see more ability for teachers to limit/supervise students' access to multiplayer than currently exists. I hope too, that those controls can be used by teachers without IT admin privileges or a high level of technical knowledge!

    2
  • Flame Flame

    We seriously need this. Why is this not a feature?

    1
  • Daily SMP
    One of these "servers" exists, a team and I have been working on a little project that allows players globally to join a world.

    Here's a screenshot from one of our beta worlds https://imgur.com/a/zJfyn8k
           
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  • Richard Combs

    Hi

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  • Scotty W

    Is there any update on this?

    As the person responsible for our District's Network/Firewall, I see the benefits of using Minecraft in Education. We have numerous Teachers who are fluent in teaching with Minecraft, come to us wanting to get a server/realm setup.

    The basic MM:EE software does not work to support this.

    Why can't we get a VM that I can host in our environment, where I can secure it and lock it down. Opening up a port to the Internet to the Teacher's laptop is not something that I want to do.

    1
  • Gopal Krishanlal

    This thread has been going on for 2 years and we still have so little progress.
    Are we ever going to be able to have a physical server on school grounds that could be used to connect 200+ students to the same server or be running multiple different servers that students can join? Or is that not ever going to be possible? 

    2
  • Scotty W

    Yeah it is crazy that has been an issue for EE, you would think Microsoft would want more people using their product. Having schools host their own servers is a perfect way for that.

    2
  • Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Still interested in a dedicated server for Education Edition.  Even if it is only for a "class" worth at a time.  Heck the Java and bedrock dedicated servers are light weight enough to be able to run on just about any machine if you are not expecting it to handle huge numbers users at one time.

    With Whitelisting it should be easy enough to provide security over who is allowed to log in and with logging it should actually be easier for schools to track what is done/said  in the worlds.

    Please, any updates on this?

    3
  • ARKANJ ISLAM

    Can you guys please add servers for bedwars and skyblock if you do I am 100% sure that downloads would go up, and can you add 24/7 servers even if the owner of the server is not online this would also increase the downloads, I asked everyone in my class and they have recommended this, please I am sure if you add this the download and play rates will go up by 100% 

    2
  • Minecraft-EDU-Official

    With respect, we need some serious engagement from the Minecraft Education Edition team on this dedicated server question, along with a separate space where long-standing Minecraft educators can engage with the internal team on the development of a significant feature set for M:EE.  It has been years since the Azure pilot now, with no update or new developments. 

    Having used the original @TeacherGaming #MinecraftEDU platform with my students from 2012 through to 2018, I’m sad to note that M:EE still has not reached feature parity with a product that was released almost a decade ago. At that time we hosted multi-player, multi-school servers that allowed simultaneous access by multiple classes for province-wide and even international participation, and here in 2021 M:EE is hobbled with a “30 participants” functional limit and a same-tenant requirement that really doesn’t support at-a-distance collaborations. 

    I am a big fan of the CodeBuilder/MakeCode functionality that exists with M: EE, and it is positive to see the work done in extending the Camps and Clubs licensing option that arrives with 1.14.60. Imagine the kinds of collaborations that could happen with a persistent server that allowed educators and their classes to join with students from communities in other parts of their province/state/country/world. 

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  • Bug Zapper Beacon of Knowledge Super Star

    Bump.

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