Introduction

What is VoxelDash One?

The regular VoxelDash plugin lives inside a single Minecraft server and gives you a dashboard for that one server. VoxelDash One flips that around. It is a standalone control plane that creates, runs, and manages many servers from a single web interface.

You run one binary on your machine. From its dashboard you can spin up a Paper, Fabric, Vanilla, or BungeeCord server, pick the Minecraft version, and One takes care of the rest: it downloads the server software, fetches a matching Java runtime, installs the VoxelDash plugin, and boots the server for you. Every server it launches shows up in the same dashboard, and clicking into one gives you the full VoxelDash experience you already know, the console, file manager, player list, worlds, plugins, backups, and schedules.

It ships as a single self-contained executable. There is no Node, no Java, and no database to install first. Java runtimes are downloaded on demand per Minecraft version, and the bundled web UI and an embedded SQLite database come baked into the binary.

How it works

VoxelDash One has a few moving parts. You never need to touch them directly, but knowing the shape of things makes the dashboard much easier to reason about.

The control plane

When you start the binary it boots a small web server (Express on top of Bun) that listens on port 7867 by default. That server does three jobs:

• It serves the dashboard web UI from the files bundled next to the binary.
• It exposes a control API under /master/... that the UI talks to. This is where server creation, start, stop, and deletion happen.
• It owns its own user accounts and sessions, completely separate from any individual Minecraft server.

All of its state, the account you create, the list of servers, and their settings, lives in a single SQLite database inside its data folder.

Provisioning a server

Creating a server is the only part you actually do, and it is just a short form: pick the software (Paper, Fabric, Vanilla, or BungeeCord), choose a Minecraft version, give it a name, and decide how much memory it gets. Hit create and that is it.

From there One handles everything else for you. You do not download anything, install Java, or touch a config file. In the background it:

• Downloads the right server software for the version you picked
• Installs the VoxelDash plugin so the server shows up in your dashboard
• Sets up a matching Java runtime automatically (more on that below)
• Writes the config, accepts the EULA, and starts the server with sensible performance settings

You can watch all of this happen live in the creation log, but you never have to step in. When it is done the server is online and ready. If something does go wrong, the log tells you what, for example if the Minecraft version you picked is too old for the current VoxelDash build.

Java, handled for you

Old Minecraft versions need old Java and new versions need new Java, which is usually a headache. With One it is not something you think about at all. It works out which Java version each server needs and downloads it for you the first time, then reuses it for every other server on the same version. If a Minecraft version and software combination simply cannot work, One tells you up front when you create the server rather than letting it fail later.

The reverse tunnel

This is the clever bit. Every server that One launches still runs the normal VoxelDash plugin, and that plugin would normally open its own web port. Instead, One starts each server in connected mode.

In connected mode the plugin binds only to 127.0.0.1, creates a trusted internal session, and dials a WebSocket back to the control plane. When you open a server in the dashboard, your browser talks to One, One frames the request over that tunnel, and the plugin answers by calling itself over loopback. Every existing VoxelDash route is reused unchanged.

A few things fall out of this design:

• No extra ports to open. Individual servers never expose a web port to the outside world. Only One's single port is reachable, which makes it easy to put behind a reverse proxy.
• One login for everything. You authenticate once with One. Because the tunnel is trusted, you do not need to log into each server separately.
• Servers re-attach on their own. If you restart One, servers that are still running simply reconnect their tunnel. The dashboard picks them back up.

What you can manage

Once a server is up, opening it in the dashboard gives you everything the standalone VoxelDash plugin offers. The Features section covers each of these in detail:

• A live console with command input
• The file manager for editing configs and uploading content
• Player management
• World management
• Plugin installation
• Backups and schedules

From the One dashboard itself you also control the lifecycle of each server: create, start, stop, and delete, plus the memory each one is allowed to use.

Where to go next

Head to Installation to get One running on your machine with a single command.