7 Days to Die managed server issues
- NFO advertises 10 and 50 player managed 7dtd servers. Unfortunately, it's well-known within the 7dtd community that running a server that regularly sees over about 20 players at a time is unrealistic. Even on powerful hardware, the game server simply does not run that well with too many players. I ordered the 50 player managed server, but I don't expect or even want 50 player capacity. I limited my server to 15 players in the dedicated server configuration. So I'm fine not getting the full 50 player capacity, but would recommend that NFO not offer 50 player servers for this game. This issue isn't specific to A13, but it bears mentioning, as the current build of A13 is the least efficient server release yet.
- 7dtd A13 consumes a lot of CPU time and tends to cause servers to run pretty hot. My managed server was being auto-restarted every 10 minutes due to high CPU usage, even with only a couple of players on the server, until I spoke with Support and they removed the auto-restart. Recommendation: Remove auto-restarts for CPU usage from all 7dtd servers until a more efficient dedicated server application is released.
- Here's the thing that is still affecting me: 7dtd A13 has known memory leaks in both the Windows and Linux dedicated server software. My server was just auto-restarted by NFO for exceeding 8 GB memory usage after being up for less than a day with between 2 and 6 players on for most of that time. Unfortunately, this auto-restart impacted players by causing rollback of some in-game stuff. While I'm hopeful a patch will be released soon, until then it seems inevitable that this is going to continually affect servers with even a small number of players. Recommendation: If it's realistic for NFO's bottom line, relax the 8 GB auto-restart restriction on 7dtd servers until the leaks are patched. As a compromise, I would happily accept a forced restart during a low-traffic time (middle of the night) in exchange for not having my server auto-restarted during a busy time.