How to Install and Configure Spark on Your Server to Improve Performance

The plugin or mod Spark (available as both a mod and a plugin) is one of the best for analyzing your server's performance in real time. It is frequently used by developers to precisely identify what is causing lag on your server. In this guide, you will find how to install it and help you find what is causing lag on your server.

INSTALLATION

First of all, you need to install Spark on your server. In this tutorial, we will explain how to install it as a Plugin, since many of you use Magma or Mohist which supports both plugins and mods.

1. Download the JAR file of the Spark plugin from its official download page.

2. Click on "Files" in the left menu.

3. Select the "plugins" folder. [NOTE: If this folder does not appear, it is because your Server is not using a version compatible with plugins. For that, you must install PaperSpigot from the "Versions" section before installing this plugin.]

4. Drag the "plugins" the JAR file that you previously downloaded from Spigot into the folder.

5. Once it has been uploaded, restart your Minecraft server so that the plugin activates.

BASIC TUTORIAL

Great, at this step you already have Spark installed on your server. Now we will give you a hint on how to use one of the most powerful tools it has, the "spark profiler". Alright, let's begin.

The command we will teach you next will be used specifically to find lag spikes. When activated, the server will begin recording everything that is happening on it. If it notices that at a certain moment the server took longer than normal to respond, it will generate a log and alert you. The command is:

/spark profiler --only-ticks-over 100

Once you activate this command, you should receive a message like this:

Great, you have activated the command successfully. Now the server will check the general status for the next 6 seconds to be able to provide data with greater accuracy. Once those seconds pass, and the server detects lag, you will be notified with a message like this:

In summary, what each message means is that, for example, the "tick" #184 took 1500% longer than it should have taken. This means that at a certain "tick" the server showed a lag spike. Once that happens, we will generally want to stop the profiler to see what is causing the lag. For that, we just need to stop the profiler with the following command:

/spark profiler stop

When stopping the profiler, we will receive a link where we can see what is causing the lag. If your server has a developer, you should send them this link so they can see and fix the lag issues. Otherwise, you can interpret what is causing the lag. Below we will show you an example of the information that the Spark report shows us:

Right. Simply put, you may not understand what is happening. But we can clearly see that "com.sk89q.worldedit.bukkit" is what is causing the lag, so the lag is very likely coming from this plugin. So, as server owners, we can try to simply remove this plugin, run another profiler and see how it works, look for new versions of the plugin, etc.

On the following official Spark page you can see in detail how to fully use this plugin. What was explained above is a very short summary of how to use one command, it has many more functions. Good luck finding the performance issue on your server!

We hope this information has been helpful. If you have any questions or issues, do not hesitate to create a ticket from the client area. Thank you very much for trusting us!