How to setup Minecraft Velocity server

IMPORTANT

When running on Minecraft servers hosting behind a proxy like Velocity or Waterfall, it requires them to be set to offline-mode. Normally hosting companies will not provide support for offline mode servers, but in this case it is required for the proxy to function properly. It will act as the gateway to your servers and handle authentication for you.

Downloading Velocity

To get started with Velocity, you first need to download the latest version of Velocity from PaperMC downloads page.

Once you have downloaded Velocity you may proceed to the next step in the setup process: creating a server split to run Velocity off of. Velocity is it’s own server jar file and will require it’s own server to run from.

Creating a Velocity Server Split

NOTE

It is recommended that you give Velocity at least 524 to 750 megabytes of RAM to operate off of, for servers with a lot of traffic it is probably better to allocate 1 gigabyte of RAM for Velocity to ensure a smooth experience for your users.

First you will need to head to your server split section via the server panel sidebar.

Next you need to select the type of server split you want to create, name your split, and allocate the amount of RAM and Storage you want your Velocity Server to have, it will look something like this:

After you create your split for Velocity it will appear in that section with all its details, just like your other server splits.

Rename your velocity jar that you downloaded in the previous section to velocity.jar for simplicity and upload it to your /home directory on your new server split. This will be the jar that runs Velocity, much like server jars on your other splits. After you've uploaded the jar file to your server, you need to head to the Startup section of your server split via the sidebar and make sure that the name of the startup variable for the server jar matches up with what you have uploaded.

Now you need to start up the Velocity server and then shut it down once it's loaded, this will initialize the file system for Velocity and setup Velocity's folders and configuration file. Your /home directory should now look something like this.

The velocity.toml file is the config file for Velocity, we will be editing this and more in the following sections.

Setting up the [servers] section in velocity.toml

The first section of the config file you need to edit is the [servers] section, this will contain the aliases you want to use for your different servers in the config as well as the IP Addresses/Ports of the servers so that Velocity knows how to connect players to servers running behind the proxy. Here is an example [servers] section provided from Velocity's documentation.

NOTE

Now you need to setup this section

[servers]
# Configure your servers here. Each key represents the server's name, and the value
# represents the IP address of the server to connect to.
lobby = "yourserveripgoeshere:25566"
factions = "yourserveripgoeshere:25567"
minigames = "yourserveripgoeshere:25568"

# In what order we should try servers when a player logs in or is kicked from a server.
try = [
  "lobby"
]

Replace "yourserveripgoeshere" with your actual server IP. The section after the : is the port, so replace that too with the ports your backend servers are using.

The try section you see in the above example is extremely important, essentially this is the order of servers in which Velocity will try to connect incoming players to. If you have it setup like try = ["survival", "creative", "minigames"] then players will connect to survival by default, then creative if survival is down, and then minigames if the first two are down. Setup your preferred order and then we will continue our editing.

Configuring server.properties on your backend servers

In the /home directory of the servers you are running behind Velocity, you need to go to server.properties and set online-mode to false. For Velocity to work correctly and communicate with your backend servers it needs to be turned off.

Remember that running your server in offline mode is not supported by Godlike normally, but in the case of setting up a proxy like Velocity or Waterfall you need to do so for the proxy to work so it is acceptable.

After you configure and save your server.properties file along with completing the next section on Player Information Forwarding, make sure to restart your backend servers so that the changes are applied.

Configuring Player Information Forwarding

WARNING

It is HIGHLY recommended that your Velocity server is set to online-mode, this is the most secure option for running your server and will reduce hackers and exploits by a ton simply by having it turned on. You can also visit Velocity’s documentation for more setup help, but it highly recommended that you use modern forwarding.

Part of what makes Velocity more secure than Bungee would be it's modern player information forwarding mode, it is much more secure than Bungee and doesn't require an additional plugin such as BungeeGuard to secure connections between your front-end and back-end servers. This is pretty simple to setup, you need to locate the option for player-info-forwarding inside velocity.toml and set it to modern. Next you need to perform additional steps depending on the type of server jar that you're running behind Velocity.

Modern Forwarding for Paper

NOTE

This section also applies to forks based upon Paper such as Purpur or Pufferfish

Paper 1.14+ and above, along with Paper 1.13.1/1.13.2 build 377 and above support Velocity modern forwarding natively.

First, you need to disable BungeeCord forwarding if you had it enabled beforehand. Make sure settings.bungeecord is set to false in your spigot.yml.

In config/paper-global.yml, set settings.velocity-support.enabled to true and settings.velocity-support.secret to match the secret in your velocity.toml. You must also set settings.velocity-support.online-mode to the online-mode setting in your velocity.toml. Once you're done editing paper-global.yml, reboot your server.

Modern Forwarding for Fabric

A mod called FabricProxy-Lite allows you to use Velocity modern forwarding with a modded server using Fabric.

BungeeGuard Forwarding for Spigot/Paper

CAUTION

Legacy BungeeCord forwarding mode is less secure than modern Velocity forwarding mode and may result in security issues if not setup properly. If you need to use legacy BungeeCord forwarding mode, make sure you setup BungeeGuard to ensure people do not connect directly to your backend servers. Note that the bungeeguard forwarding mode uses legacy BungeeCord forwarding with the forwarding-secret as the BungeeGuard token.

NOTE

This section also applies to forks based upon Paper such as Purpur or Pufferfish

If you cannot use modern forwarding (for example, your server jar doesn’t support Velocity modern forwarding), you might be able to use BungeeGuard instead.

To set this up, see the guide on how to set up BungeeGuard.

Additional configuation options for velocity.toml

The following table contains additional noteworthy configuration options for velocity.toml

You can find documentation for other settings in the velocity.toml file right here!

Finishing up

Now that you have configured your backend servers to communicate with Velocity correctly you are ready to start Velocity. Start your Velocity Server and make sure that you have restarted all of your backend servers and you should now have a working Velocity network!

If you are interested in installing additional functionality for Velocity, they have a Plugins section on their website where you can go to find Velocity compatible plugins!

TIP

The server-icon.png file you upload to your Velocity server is the icon that will show up on the multiplayer menu in Minecraft.