Found a thread on the FTB forum, and while some of the info may be contradictory or misinformation, i did see they were using a special startup config. While I am not entirely postive of what this does....what I can (hopefully) deduce from it is that it is enabling the FTB server to use SS4 cpu instructions and modifying how garbage collection is ran. After running the server with this config, within minutes the "tick lag" on the server disappeared, everything moved very smoothly.... and best of all, CPU usage went from 70% to 14% even with several chunk loaders and a quarry.
Thread found: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/how-to-make-an-efficient-server.5525/
Startup config used:
"C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\java" -server -Xincgc -Xmx3072M -Xms1024M -Xmn512M -XX:NewRatio=2 -XX:CMSFullGCsBeforeCompaction=1 -XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=2048 -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseAdaptiveSizePolicy -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -Xnoclassgc -oss4M -ss4M -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=90 -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:UseSSE=4 -XX:+UseCMSCompactAtFullCollection -XX:ParallelGCThreads=4 -XX:+AggressiveOpts -cp "ftbserver.jar" -jar "ftbserver.jar"
Essentials is a Bukkit plugin, which is for the custom-written Minecraft server called CraftBukkit. FTB is a modification of the normal Minecraft server. So they're completely different pieces of software. FTB doesn't have the custom code necessary to load and understand Bukkit plugins, and CraftBukkit isn't compatible with the type of mods FTB uses.
However! You're not the first person to want the best of both worlds and want to use both Forge mods and Bukkit plugins. Enter MCPC+, which is a further modification of the CraftBukkit server to add Forge, and can therefore accept both Forge mods and Bukkit plugsins.
Alternatively, if you are not interested in the huge constellation of Bukkit plugins and really just want the functionality of Essentials, you can take a look at a Forge mod dedicated to bringing the features of the Essentials plugin to Forge as a native Forge mod: ForgeEssentials.
The advantage to using MCPC+ is that it has native support for both Bukkit plugins and Forge mods. It's also fairly mature, so it's going to be more-or-less reliable (as much as anything is in the world of Minecraft modding). The disadvantage is that every time either CraftBukkit or Forge makes a major release, MCPC+ has to be updated as well so that it is compatible with new plugins/mods, and that takes time. For example, right now it's still on Minecraft 1.5, though for the current version of FTB Unleashed that's sufficiently up-to-date.
The advantage to using ForgeEssentials is that it is a native Forge mod, so it is simpler to install than dealing with two modding flavours and it will more quickly track updates to Forge and not stay out of date as long as MCPC+ may potentially do. The disadvantage is that it only adds Essentials-like functionality and doesn't give you access to the wider world of Bukkit plugins (though I hear that's a long-term goal). It's also still under heavy development, so it's not the complete, awesome, bug-free package that the Bukkit Essentials plugin is, but it might already offer the specific features that you're interested in.
Due to ForgeEssentials' WIP status you will probably want to go for the bigger-but-better MCPC+, but it's good to have options.
Best Answer
It is possible.
MultiMC 5 has a built in way to track your FTB instances. However, you will still need to use the FTB launcher to download packs and updates.
In order to "Track FTB instances" You need to open the MultiMC 5 options dialog by clicking the "Computer with a Screwdriver" button in the top toolbar.
Next, In the window that opens, you need to Tick the check box next to "Track FTB Instances." Then you will need to tell it where you installed FTB to. Note: This is the folder that has all of the mod packs downloaded to and has the
FTB_Launcher.exe
andFTB_Launcher.jar
files in it.Once you've done that, you will be able to see, and launch your FTB instances from MultiMC 5.
Keep on gaming,
~tarper24