The servers.dat is used to store information regarding the multiplayerservers that the player has added to their server list. It does not store the direct connect IP address (see options.txt), nor any LAN server information. It is stored as an uncompressed NBT file. It is possible to add color codes by editing the server name attribute with an NBT Editor through the use of formatting codes.
The file is located in the root of the directory specified in the launcher profile. By default, this would be .minecraft\servers.dat.
NBT Structure[]
The root tag.
servers: List of compound tags, one for each saved server.
Information about the server.
icon: Base64-encoded PNG data of the server icon.
ip: The IP address of the server.
name: The name of the server as defined by the player.
acceptTextures: 1 or 0 (true/false) - 0 if the player has selected Never when prompted to install a server resource pack.