How to Set Up a VPS for Game Servers

VPS or managed game hosting: pick honestly

Choose a VPS if you enjoy running Linux, want several games and services side by side, or need software no game panel offers. Choose a managed game server if you just want the game online: the panel, the backups and the updates come with it.

Choosing a VPS for game servers

• KVM virtualisation. Pterodactyl's game servers run in Docker containers, and Pterodactyl's own docs say KVM is certain to work, while container-based VPS (OpenVZ, LXC) usually cannot run Docker properly. Check with systemd-detect-virt: the answer should be kvm.
• RAM. Add up what each game needs, then leave room for the system and the panel (its database, cache and web server). As a rough start: a small vanilla Minecraft server 2–3 GB, a modded one 6–9 GB, Valheim 4 GB, Terraria 2 GB, plus 1.5–2 GB for everything else.
• CPU. Most game servers simulate the world on one main thread, so a few fast cores beat many slow ones. Each game server you add wants at least one core to itself.
• Disk. Worlds grow, and backups stored on the same machine double the space they take.

Pick Ubuntu 24.04 as the operating system: Pterodactyl supports it and it ships the PHP version the panel needs, with no extra repositories.

First steps: SSH keys, updates, a user and a firewall

1. Log in with a key, not a password. On your own PC, create a key and copy it to the server:

   ssh-keygen -t ed25519
   ssh-copy-id root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

2. Update everything.

   apt update && apt upgrade -y

   Ubuntu installs security updates on its own through unattended-upgrades, which is on by default.
3. Create a user with sudo for everyday work, so you are not logged in as root all the time:

   adduser gameadmin
   adduser gameadmin sudo

4. Turn on the firewall — allowing SSH first, or you lock yourself out:

   ufw allow 22/tcp
   ufw allow 80/tcp
   ufw allow 443/tcp
   ufw allow 8080/tcp
   ufw allow 2022/tcp
   ufw enable

   Ports 80 and 443 are the panel, 8080 is the Wings daemon and 2022 is its SFTP server.

Installing Pterodactyl: panel, Docker and Wings

Pterodactyl has two parts: the panel, a web app where you create and manage servers, and Wings, the daemon that runs each game server in its own Docker container. Both can live on the same VPS. The current releases are panel 1.15 and Wings 1.13 (August 2026); the 2.0 version is still a pre-release, so follow the 1.x documentation at docs.pterodactyl.io/v1.

1. The panel

The panel needs PHP 8.2 or 8.3 (not 8.4), MariaDB, Redis, nginx and Composer. On Ubuntu 24.04 these all come from the standard repositories. The official guide walks through every command; the shape of it is:

1. Install the packages, download the latest panel release into /var/www/pterodactyl and run composer install.
2. Create a database and user, then run the setup commands: php artisan key:generate --force — back up the key it writes into .env, because without it your encrypted data cannot be recovered — then p:environment:setup, p:environment:database, migrate --seed --force and p:user:make for your admin account.
3. Add the cron job and the queue worker service, and point nginx at the panel. Use a domain name with a Let's Encrypt certificate if you can.

2. Docker

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable bash
systemctl enable --now docker

3. Wings

mkdir -p /etc/pterodactyl
curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/wings "https://github.com/pterodactyl/wings/releases/latest/download/wings_linux_amd64"
chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/wings

In the panel, go to Nodes > Create New, then open the node's Configuration tab and copy the configuration into /etc/pterodactyl/config.yml. Run wings --debug once to see it connect, stop it with Ctrl+C, then install it as a service with the wings.service unit from the official docs and systemctl enable --now wings.

Nodes, allocations and game ports

Every game server needs at least one allocation: your VPS's public IP plus a port. Add them on the node's Allocation tab — single ports or ranges such as 25565-25570. Use the public IP, never 127.0.0.1, and when you test a game port, test it from outside the VPS.

The panel comes with ready-made "eggs" — templates for each game — and the community publishes many more. Our game guides cover each game's own settings, for example Valheim or CS 1.6. Running just one Minecraft server without a panel? How to host a Minecraft server on a VPS is the simpler route.

Backups you can actually restore

Pterodactyl has backups built in: each server gets a Backups tab, and by default Wings stores them in /var/lib/pterodactyl/backups — on the same disk as the servers themselves. That protects against a bad mod update, not against losing the VPS.

• Off the machine: the panel can send backups to any S3-compatible storage instead, set in its configuration.
• The whole VPS: a snapshot captures the system, the panel and every server at once. On HytHost this is the BackUp VPS Snapshot add-on.
• Test a restore once, before you need it.

Running it on a HytHost VPS

HytHost VPS plans run on KVM with full root access, SSD storage and DDoS protection in front of the network — everything Pterodactyl needs. Choose Ubuntu 24.04 when you order and follow the steps above. The VPS is unmanaged by default: the operating system and everything on it are yours to run, and you can upgrade the plan later as your servers grow.

If the setup above sounds like more than you want to maintain, a managed game server does the same job without it: our game servers come with the panel, automatic backups and updates already in place.