DayZ server: How to host your own DayZ server

Orig­i­nal­ly released as a mod for the tactical shooter Arma 2, the survival horror game DayZ was of­fi­cial­ly released in December 2018 after a five-year alpha and beta phase. Since then, players have been able to fight their way through the zombie apoc­a­lypse together or fight each other, should the thrill of fighting the zombies lurking every­where not be enough.

If you want to enjoy the online game with the best possible per­for­mance and decide for yourself who can join the game world and which mods can be used in it, you should look into hosting a DayZ server yourself. What are the re­quire­ments for this and how exactly does setting up your own DayZ server work?

If you want to explore the game world of DayZ together with your friends, without having your own server you have the choice between the official servers, which are public by default, and the community servers, which are hosted by other users. In both cases, however, you have no influence on which other players can join the server, which mods are used or when the server is online. You can only enjoy these freedoms with your own DayZ server.

If you have a computer with powerful hardware and an excellent Internet con­nec­tion, you can install and run your own DayZ server on your device. However, as soon as you shut down the PC or the Internet con­nec­tion is in­ter­rupt­ed, the online adventure ends abruptly. Moreover, you cannot run the DayZ client on the same device - so if you want to play along, you need another computer.

If you rent a server from a provider to host a DayZ server instead, you won’t have to worry about aspects such as Internet con­nec­tion and avail­abil­i­ty. The func­tion­al­i­ty of the hardware is guar­an­teed, and you can focus entirely on setting up and ad­min­is­ter­ing the server.

The system re­quire­ments for your own DayZ server depend on how you intend to set up and use the server. Which mods should be allowed and how many players are in the world at the same time? Developer Bohemia basically rec­om­mends the following minimum setup for a dedicated server:

• Processor: Intel dual-core 2.4 GHz or AMD dual-core Athlon 2.5 GHz
• RAM: 6 GB RAM
• Storage space: 2.5 gigabytes

For the in­stal­la­tion and man­age­ment of server logs, Bohemia also considers SSD drives as in­dis­pens­able. As an operating system, you should opt for Windows Server. Native support for Linux systems is not available, which is why you can only set up a DayZ server there by using a workaround (e.g. with Wine).

Since DayZ’s dedicated server software is designed as a single-core ap­pli­ca­tion, a CPU setup with high single-core power is also prefer­able.

One aspect that the de­vel­op­ment team does not address is the broadband re­quire­ments of a DayZ server, but this is at least as important to the sub­se­quent gaming ex­pe­ri­ence as the un­der­ly­ing server hardware. Steam publisher Valve has for­mu­lat­ed a basic upload guideline of 53.4 Kbit/s per player for other dedicated ap­pli­ca­tions such as the CS:GO server or Rust server, which you can also take as a guide for a DayZ instance without mods, etc.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to the latter point of broadband con­nec­tion, having a provider behind you gives you the con­fi­dence of running your DayZ server at the highest level. If you rent your resources from IONOS, for example, a broadband con­nec­tion of the server with up to 400 Mbit/s is guar­an­teed - re­gard­less of the server model you choose.

IONOS offers the following three cat­e­gories of servers:

• Cloud server
• vServer
• Dedicated server

When you choose a cloud server you get access to vir­tu­al­ized resources. How high the per­for­mance of this virtual server en­vi­ron­ment is, depends on the chosen plan, whereby you can increase or decrease the per­for­mance at any time. In the cloud server model, you are billed by the minute, so you only pay for the per­for­mance that your DayZ server actually uses.

Vir­tu­al­iza­tion is also the un­der­ly­ing concept of IONOS's vServer (also known as Virtual Private Server, or VPS for short). Unlike cloud servers, however, you are dealing with fixed per­for­mance setups that are available for a fixed monthly amount. If you want to run the DayZ server con­tin­u­ous­ly, you will make sig­nif­i­cant savings with this model.

The most suitable, but at the same time the most expensive model for anyone who wants to host a DayZ server is a Dedicated server. With this server variant, you get fixed hardware setups for a fixed monthly price, which are optimal for hosting in­di­vid­ual ap­pli­ca­tions like a dedicated server software thanks to strong single-core power.

The three IONOS server models are available in different plans, which differ in price and per­for­mance. So, if you want to host a DayZ server with IONOS, you will not only be choosing one of the models, but also a per­for­mance package of CPU, memory, and storage.

To ease your decision, we have compiled three possible scenarios for a DayZ server in the following table and assigned the ap­pro­pri­ate rates of the three server options.

Equipped with the ap­pro­pri­ate hardware, you can now venture to the server setup and in­stal­la­tion of the DayZ server software. In the following tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, using an IONOS server running Windows Server 2016 as a base.

Keep the selected default choice (“Remote desktop con­nec­tion”) to open the link and confirm it by clicking “OK”. In the following dialog continue with “Connect”.

Enter your cre­den­tials for the server by pressing “More options” and “Use another account” and typing in the in­for­ma­tion. If you have not yet changed your login cre­den­tials, you will find your “Initial Password” in the cre­den­tials listing in the Cloud Panel.

Using the SteamCMD client, you can now obtain and install DayZ’s dedicated server software. For this purpose, first log in to the public Steam servers with your Steam login details:

Then create a directory for the server - for example classic C:\dayz-server - by entering and con­firm­ing the following command:

Using the app_update command and the Steam app ID (223350), you will now download the latest version of the DayZ server software:

After the in­stal­la­tion is complete, log out of the Steam servers by typing “quit”.

In the directory of your DayZ server, now create a new batch file for launching the server. For this, choose any editor and paste the following minimal setup for a simple DayZ server:

For an exact list of available pa­ra­me­ters for the server launch BAT, see the “Launch Pa­ra­me­ters” paragraph of the article “DayZ: Server Con­fig­u­ra­tion” in the official community wiki of Bohemia In­er­ac­tive. It will also tell you what other con­fig­u­ra­tion options you have for your DayZ server.