The scoop

When I host Minecraft servers for my friends, I seriously hate having to tell them to connect to example.com:25567 or example.com:25568.

Luckily, there is an amazing solution for this: Reverse Proxies

I tried doing this with Traefik at first (which is my preferred http reverse proxy), but I had zero luck, even after hours of scouring the internet for help.

So as an alternative, I found infrared, a reverse proxy for Minecraft by Hendrik Schlehlein, built with Go.

What will we be doing?

By the end of this, we will have a working reverse proxy running in a docker container, and two minecraft servers sitting behind mc-server1.example.com and mc-server2.example.com. Both of these will be accessed using the default minecraft port of 25565.

Example files

If you want to just view some example files, check out my Overture repository, under the Docker/Infrared directory.

Before You Start

Requirements

• A virtual machine with Ubuntu 22.04 or later
  • Or bare metal, I won’t judge
• A bit of knowledge in the ways of Docker
  • i.e. you will need Docker installed on your server
• At least 2 working Minecraft servers
• Ability to edit DNS records

Optional

• Ability to port forward on your router (if you want to access outside of your network)

Set up Proxy Server

Create Proxy Server

To get it all started, we’ll need a server that will act as a proxy.

• This can be a new virtual machine, or existing. It just needs to have Docker installed
• Make sure you take note of its IP Address
  • For this example, we’ll use 192.168.1.10

Create necessary files and directories

cd to a directory that you want to store your files in, your current user’s home directory is probably best

Create the necessary directories and files:

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mkdir infrared
touch docker-compose.yml
mkdir data
cd data
mkdir configs
cd configs
touch mc-server1.example.com.json
touch mc-server2.example.com.json
cd ../../

What these commands do

• Create a project folder
• Create docker-compose file to deploy from
• Creates a data/configs directory to store configurations
• Creates two configuration files, one for each server name listed under What will we be doing?

Edit docker-compose.yml

Now, you’ll want to edit the docker-compose.yml file:

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nano docker-compose.yml

And paste in the following text:

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version: '3'

services:
  infrared:
    image: ghcr.io/haveachin/infrared:1.3.3
    container_name: infrared
    restart: unless-stopped
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
    ports:
      - "25565:25565/tcp"
    volumes:
      - "./data/configs:/configs"
    expose:
      - "25565"
    environment:
      INFRARED_CONFIG_PATH: "/configs"

What this bit of Yaml does

• Uses docker-compose version 3
• Creates a service called infrared
  • With the image ghcr.io/haveachin/infrared:1.3.3
  • With a name of infrared
  • Don’t restart the container unless we (the admin) stops it
  • Open up a port
  • Define a location for configurations

Edit configurations

Now, go into the configurations directory

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cd /data/configs

You may want to change the names of the created files to match the FQDN’s of your actual servers.

I will continue to use the names mc-server1.example.com and mc-server2.example.com for this tutorial, however.

Edit each file and include the following contents:

mc-server.example.com.json

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{
    "domainName": "mc-server1.example.com",
    "proxyTo": "192.168.0.11:25565",
    "listenTo": "0.0.0.0:25565",
    "disconnectMessage": "Goodbye",
    "offlineStatus": {
      "motd": "Server is currently offline :("
    }
}

mc-server2.example.com.json

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{
    "domainName": "mc-server2.example.com",
    "proxyTo": "192.168.0.12:25565",
    "listenTo": "0.0.0.0:25565",
    "disconnectMessage": "Goodbye",
    "offlineStatus": {
      "motd": "Server is currently offline :("
    }
}

Configuration note

Make sure that you change domainName to your server’s FQDN and the proxyTo address and port to match your Minecraft server.

Set up DNS

Reverse Proxies rely on DNS to route the incoming connection to the intended server.

Let’s say, for this example we are going to proxy 2 servers:

• mc-server1.example.com
• mc-server2.example.com

On your DNS server, create an A record for each of the servers, pointed at your proxy server. For eaxmple:

• A: mc-server1.example.com > 192.168.1.10
• A: mc-server2.example.com > 192.168.1.10

Test ’er out

Spin up your container

Now you’re ready to spin up your container!

Make sure you’re in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml file, and run:

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sudo docker-compose up -d

Launch Minecraft, and check your work

Now, launch Minecraft, head over to the multiplayer menu, and add servers that point to the FQDNs for your A records created in Set up DNS.

If you did everything correctly, these should be showing as online! (If not make sure they’re running first 😉)