DayZ Server admins - Post your performance tips

[Freeborne (DayZ) 7]

Hey everyone,

Can we please pool our collective knowledge to provide each other with tips and best practises for optimising our server performance?

What is everyone finding the best Max Slots to have, for sustaining acceptable server FPS?

What is your data usage for your servers, and what is the peak bandwidth use? What are your arma2.cfg values set for min/max bandwidth, etc.

Is there much difference between having HyperThreading on or off?

Any tips for ensuring Hive and HiveAuth performs efficiently, and doesn't go into an auth-loop, crash, or become unresponsive, etc.

I'll start off and answer some of my own questions.

We are using about 7.5GB an hour with 80 slots (across two servers). Average bandwidth is 8Mbps in, 10Mbps out, but it can peak to 12/20.

We currently still have H/T on, and 40 slots is best max slots we can sustain before FPS drops too much. This is on an E3 1240 at 3.3GHz.

We are running games and Hive apps as services, with auto-restarts if they fail. There has been about a dozen times that the HiveAuth didn't seem to work, and players were stuck at "Waiting for character data". Restarting HiveAuth often fixed the problem. A few times, the HiveAuth seemed to be in a loop (was authenticating a user every second, even though no-one was joining). Started a second instances of HiveAuth and it seemed to fix the looping, so then closed the other instance.

Server FPS still drops after a an hour or so, and usually hovers around 8-15 FPS. This is normally low, but game still seems fine and zombie cleanup scripts still run, etc. Past 5fps, zombies usually keep multiplying eventually leading to a crash. What FPS is everyone else getting, what are your configs like, etc.

[Freeborne (DayZ) 7]

Wow. No responses?

What about changing the AI skill level. Will that make much of a difference to FPS, or the zombie AI (which I imagine don't need as much processing as soldiers, who need to aim, move in formations, take cover, lean out from buildings, etc).

[Antipop (DayZ) 37]

I have tried 'AlwaysUp' application. However, same problem with HiveAuth, just didn't seem to work. Then running it outside of that program it worked fine. Not sure what the problem is there.

On my US7 Server, Specs are a Intel® Xeon® CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz and 1GB DDR3. With 32/32 players for three hours straight my memory used on the server has not gone above 60%, so ram is not a big issue with ArmA servers. My CPU does take a flogging. Sometimes it's constant 100%, other times it hovers around 70-80%. This is a full server.

In terms of FPS, yeah, anything below 5 causes problems. I try to keep mine at around 12. I tried 40 slots and it dropped to 4-6. So 32 is a good value that keeps the server up and running for longer and the players enjoy a more pleasant gaming experience.

ArmA determines their own configs if you don't provide one (I'm told by the faithful Rommel). So I just ran it for a few days, and it spat out a config I believe, and it actually has run smoother since then.

In terms of Bandwidth, I have no idea. My box comes with unlimited/unmetered bandwidth, so I'm just turning a blind eye to that one haha

But I'm glad to see everyone else has slow FPS aswell, it's not just me haha.

[BTK (DayZ) 12]

With regular ArmA missions, below 5 FPS is critical, but not so with DayZ. It's designed to run well with just 3 FPS. DayZ is using cluster-computing after all. So don't set your goals too high.

Hive and Hive Auth didn't crash once for me. So i didn't bother creating services. I'm just running them as they are.

Changing the AI skill won't make a difference, the Zombies are agents, not really AI. Which is a great thing.

I don't really have any tips as of yet. I'm still experimenting with my cfgs.

Traffic is around 200 GB a day per server.

RAM is a joke.

CPU is around 10-20% per server. I'm using an Intel Xeon i7 W3520 4x2x2.66+ with HT enabled.

[profanwolf 3]

200GB a day per server? Definitely not, I get around 210 GB per day running three 40 slot dayz servers on the one box.

I can't say I have any performance tips to share, sadly :(

[cm. (DayZ) 28]

So far we seem to be able to "comfortably" run 2x 50 slot servers on our setup (first post).

Our ping limit ensures we are not full 24/7 but get about 4-6 hours of low to moderate usage before they are full again.

Server FPS seems to hover around 5, which in any other game would be terrible, but seems to be fine for DayZ.

So far deleting the arma2 config *seems* to have made a slight improvement but it's hard to tell without a way to monitor server FPS.

[Dasweb 0]

So what we've learnt thus far:

On lower end CPUs, they'll be near maxed out.

RAM is hardly used at all, can get by with 4gb with no issue.

Bandwidth is HUGE, so those looking at dedicated servers, plan for at least 5TB/month if running multiple servers.