Project Zomboid
Project Zomboid Dedicated Server
Single-Threaded Game
PZ is single-threaded. Adding CPU cores will not increase player capacity. Reduce zombie population, cap explored map area, and tune sandbox settings instead.
Memory Drift on Large Maps
Performance degrades as the explored map grows. Schedule a daily restart and enable PauseEmpty=true to recover RAM when nobody is online.
Disable In-Game Backups to Avoid Disk Crashes
PZ writes each backup as a compressed copy of your world, and old ones are only deleted after the new backup is written. With a large modded save these zips grow fast, and if the disk fills up the new backup fails with No space left on device before rotation runs, so nothing gets freed. The world database can then no longer be created and the server crashes on boot.
Disable the in-game backups (BackupsOnStart=false, BackupsPeriod=0) and use the LBC backup tool instead. It keeps snapshots off the server disk with retention limits, so it can't fill the server and crash it.
Official Documentation