From Zero Linux To Your Own Minecraft Network In 6 Weeks
- Deploy & Manage Your Own Minecraft Servers
- Linux, Docker & Networking From Absolute Zero
- Pelican Panel, Velocity, Grafana, TCPShield
- Firewalls, SSH Hardening, DDoS & SSL Security
- Weekly Live Calls To Answer Any Question & Review
- Lifetime Access With Free Updates
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
A system administrator is someone who sets up and runs a network.
Whether that’s the Hypixel network, a private mail server, a website, or your own AI models running on a rented machine, that’s sysadmin work.
Any network past a certain size (think Hypixel) needs constant upkeep: Minecraft updates land, plugins break, new vulnerabilities appear, EULA rules change.
Large networks have entire teams of sysadmins.
AI has flooded the internet with self-proclaimed “experts”. They vibe-code slop, and real sysadmins get paid to clean it up.
We made this course because there’s an extreme demand for real sysadmins who know HOW things work and use AI to speed up their workflow instead of covering up for their lack of knowledge.
No, I got help from Sheridan Roberts, a senior system administrator to teach you sysadmin and networking from scratch.
AI lessons are at the very end and are optional. That way, you’ll learn the skillset first, and actually be able to spot and eliminate slop unlike most other courses out there.
According to Glassdoor, a beginner system administrator with 0-1 years of experience earns between 68k-103k/year. That translates to roughly $5,600 – $8,600 per month.
Senior sysadmins can earn upwards of 220k/year, though these positions are typically found outside of Minecraft.
Therefore, we’ve designed this program to give you the skillset required to not only become a sysadmin in Minecraft, but in general – including basics of DevOps and CI/CD lessons.
A sysadmin runs the machines behind a network: the servers players connect to, the store that takes payments, the website, the database and the security.
In practice that means setting up and running entire Velocity or BungeeCord networks with Redis, configuring a webstore such as Tebex, Xenforo or other website software.
Sysadmins also manage a network’s domain, set up DNS and SRV records, write CI or backup scripts and keep firewalls and databases healthy. They should also know how to optimize the server software itself (i.e. Paper, Purpur, Folia).
Say you want to start a unique Skyblock network. A developer writes your Skyblock plugin, but a sysadmin sets up the entire network, its webstore, domain and database so players can actually connect and play.
And the skillset goes way beyond Minecraft. Running a VPS, web apps, mail servers or AI models is all one skillset. For example – Look at how many OpenClaw videos are out there, people are desperate to set it up without getting hacked, and they pay sysadmins to do it right. This course is NOT about OpenClaw but you will be able to setup any system on a Linux VPS after completing it.
The program is fully self-paced with lifetime access, so there is no falling behind.
Lessons are short and hands-on. Some students binge a week’s material over a weekend, others spread it across a few evenings.
Stuck? Post in the 4,000+ member Discord any time, and bring the tricky stuff to the weekly live call.
If life gets busy, pause and come back months later. Your access and all future updates stay.
No. Past students get System Administrator 3.0 for free.
If you bought the earlier versions of the program, the new lessons appear in your account automatically for free.
"Grew my network to the biggest in Italy"
Nothing was better than finding this amazing course, it changed my life. Today I have a Minecraft server from more than 1,200 average players and it became the biggest in Italy.
–Nicolas Bonistalli, coralmc.it
"The only way to become a DEV on my server"
I have now made it a requirement for developers on my Minecraft server to have done the course with MineAcademy. I recommend this course.
-Sean Firth, MindBuzz.com.au
Program Outline
Week 1: Linux & Your First Server
You'll build your own Minecraft server running on a real cloud VPS by lesson 4.
Then, you'll connect to the server over SSH and set up the same terminal workflow professional sysadmins use.
You'll also get free up to $5k Azure credits so you can run everything you learn completely for free on real production hardware!
Finally, you'll learn about Linux: users and permissions, processes, systemd services and cron.
Week 2: Docker & Control Panels
You'll learn Docker, Compose, volumes and databases and all commands professional sysadmins use to launch, rebuild and scale networks.
We'll install panels such as Pelican, your own web control panel that starts, stops and manages your servers from the browser, and migrate your files, worlds and database using rclone.
Week 3: Networking & Security
Here, you'll learn all things networking: IPs, ports, TCP (Minecraft Java), UDP (Bedrock).
You'll build a WireGuard VPN, run a load-balanced reverse proxy and set up firewalls on both the server and the cloud level.
Then we will lock it down: SSH hardening, Fail2Ban and free auto-renewing SSL certificates and make it harder for botnets to target you.
Week 4: Minecraft Network Administration
You'll understand the differences between Paper vs Purpur vs Folia, how much RAM and CPU you actually need for 50, 100 or 500 players, and JVM flags that stop lag before it starts.
You'll connect multiple servers behind a Velocity proxy, wire up MySQL/MariaDB the right way and sync data across servers with Redis.
Finally, you'll learn about LuckPerms groups, prefixes and cross-server sync.
Week 5: Production & Automation
This week your network starts running itself. Automated off-site backups you can restore hosted for free on Cloudflare R2 (or Amazing S3), Grafana dashboards and Discord alerts when server starts to lag or freezes.
You'll put TCPShield DDoS protection in front of your network and write self-healing scripts that restart through Pelican API.
Finally CI/CD: push a config to GitHub and it deploys itself, and Spark profiling lesson to understand reading Spark reports and optimize performance.
Week 6: AI Acceleration
Only once you can do everything yourself we will discuss AI. That way, you can steer it instead of generating slop.
You'll set up agents for your infrastructure, learn about MCP servers, skills and AI security: prompt injection, credential exposure and understanding the limits of LLMs
We close with local and uncensored models on your own hardware and how to spot when AI is lying to you or hallucinating.
Live Weekly Q&A
Here’s what Aikar, the founder of Paper, Minecraft’s most popular server mod, said:
With weekly live calls where you can chat or speak with expert coaches, the level of support you get is the closest compared with an in-person academy.
And, you’ll join a 4,000+ Discord community and our Hub training group (NOT Facebook) to connect with your instructors, senior sysadmins and successful server owners.
People used our group to get help, find partners, co-founders or simply get new ideas.
Career Certificate
Upon completion of the program, you will be receive a career-advancing certification issued by MineAcademy with a QR code verification link.
JetBrains Program
MineAcademy works with JetBrains so all students get the same software used by professional system administrators and developers for free.
With this training you will get a full 4-month license for any of the following JetBrains programs:
- dotUltimate
- CLion,
- DataGrip, DataSpell, Datalore
- GoLand
- IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate
- JetBrains AI Pro
- PhpStorm
- PyCharm
- ReSharper
- Rider
- RubyMine
- RustRover
- WebStorm
And after this period, JetBrains provides a 40% discount on any purchase you choose.
FounderPass Program
MineAcademy partnered with FounderPass, an organization connecting startups to private programs offered by big companies (previously only available to startups with investor capital).
Through them, you’ll get up to $5,000 in credits for Microsoft Azure (among many other providers). That’s enough to deploy a real VPS and practice everything in System Administrator™ on the same hardware the big networks run, completely for free.
- 6 weeks of System Administrator 3.0 (76 short lessons with exercises)
- Weekly lZoom Q&A calls with certified coaches
- JetBrains 4-month license
- Up to $5,000 in Microsoft Azure credits
- Career certificate
- Private Discord community access
- Lifetime access with updates
The Guarantee
Follow the training and in 30 days you'll have your own secured Minecraft server running on a cloud VPS, or you owe us nothing.
We can promise this because of 13 years of teaching, weekly live coaching calls in this program and a community to help you on demand.
If you go through the lessons and don't get there, contact us at mineacademy.org/contact within 30 days of your purchase and we will give you a prompt and courteous refund.
Quality, Trust, Results
About Authors
Sheridan Roberts
Sheridan is a Certified AWS DevOps Engineer and Solutions Architect with over 14 years of experience.
He was a System Administrator on Let’s Encrypt — the project that encrypts over half the internet.
Sheridan worked with the people behind GitHub and Cars.com, and kept a gaming network running at 450 million views per month.
He writes production code in Go, Python and Rust daily. When he teaches you Linux, he’s drawing from real production experience, not a tutorial.
Learn more about Sheridan on his LinkedIn.
Matej Pacan
Matej is the founder of MineAcademy and a senior software developer with over 15 years of experience.
He built and deployed the entire learning platform you’re using right now, from code to the VPS. Everything he teaches comes from running real infrastructure daily.
Matej ran a Minecraft server in Czech and Slovak Republic with over 30,000 players, his plugin ChatControl released in 2013 was downloaded over 700,000 times and got him the award Top Creator of 2025 from BuiltByBit.com.
Learn more about Matej at mineacademy.org/story.
- 6 weeks of System Administrator 3.0 (76 short lessons with exercises)
- Weekly lZoom Q&A calls with certified coaches
- JetBrains 4-month license
- Up to $5,000 in Microsoft Azure credits
- Career certificate
- Private Discord community access
- Lifetime access with updates