Getting Started with Your ArmA 3 Dedicated Server

This is the first-time walkthrough for a fresh ArmA 3 server on LOW.MS. If you've just ordered one (or you're still eyeing the order page), start here – I'll take you from "pick the right tier" through to your first #login as admin, and point you at the right follow-up reading when you're ready to go deeper.

ArmA 3 has been around long enough that a lot of the guides you'll Google are out of date, copy-pasted between hosts, or written for someone self-hosting on a home PC. This one is specifically for a LOW.MS-hosted box, running on our Windows + TCAdmin stack at control.low.ms.

Step 1: Pick the right tier before you order

Before you click checkout on the ArmA 3 hosting page, think for a second about what you're actually going to run. It makes a real difference.

A few things worth knowing:

Most community ArmA 3 servers sit at 30 to 64 players. 64 is the documented ceiling and what the in-game browser expects; going higher is a hack route with real stability costs, even on vanilla.
Vanilla Warlords and official scenarios will happily run on the entry tier with plenty of headroom.
Heavy modded gameplay is where RAM starts to matter. An ACE + RHS milsim, Altis Life, Antistasi, or Exile server loads a lot more into memory than vanilla, and having spare RAM stops a lot of weird "server got slow after two hours" tickets.
If you're not sure, round up one tier. Dropping a tier later is easy; scrambling to upgrade mid-event is not.

I've deliberately not listed prices or tier names here because they change. The pricing page is always the source of truth.

Step 2: First look at the panel

Once the order is provisioned (usually a few minutes), you'll get an email with your LOW.MS Control Panel login. Sign in at control.low.ms and click into your new ArmA 3 service.

The sidebar is where everything lives. The bits you'll use on day one:

Service Settings – start, stop, restart, and your allocated IP and port.
Configuration Files – this is where server.cfg lives.
Commandline Manager – startup flags (-mod=, -serverMod=, BattlEye toggles).
Mod Manager – pulls from the Steam Workshop directly onto the server.
File Manager – full file tree when you need to drop a mission in mpmissions\ or look at a log.
Log Viewer – the server console, useful when something won't start.

Your game port is shown on the Service Settings page. ArmA 3's upstream default uses the 2302-2306 UDP block (game port and VON, Steam query, Steam master, VON reserved, BattlEye). On LOW.MS we additionally expose BattlEye RCON on a dedicated TCP port at your game port + 10 – so 2312 TCP on a default allocation. All ports are opened for you automatically; you don't need to do anything at the firewall layer. Always check the panel for your exact game port, because if you've got other services or we've allocated a different base port, the block shifts with it.

Step 3: Start the server and watch the log

Before editing anything, just start it once and confirm the baseline works.

Open Service Settings and hit start.
Switch to Log Viewer and watch the console. The first boot runs a Steam validate on App ID 233780, which takes a minute or two longer than subsequent starts.
A healthy boot ends with the server listening on your game port and the Steam query announcing the server.

If it never gets there, the log will almost always tell you why. 90% of first-boot failures are a typo in server.cfg (more on that in a second) or a missing mission file.

Step 4: Connect from the game

With the server running, try to join it before you start changing things.

Launch ArmA 3.
Multiplayer → Server Browser, then filter by your server name.
Or use Direct Connect with your panel's IP and port – it'll look something like YOUR-SERVER-IP:2302, using the game port from Service Settings.

If direct connect works but the browser doesn't show your server, that's usually a reportingIP or visibility issue in server.cfg, not a hosting problem. Covered in the ArmA 3 Troubleshooting KB.

Step 5: Edit server.cfg

Go to Configuration Files in the panel and open server.cfg. That's the file the server reads on boot for everything public-facing – name, passwords, mission rotation, admin access, BattlEye, difficulty.

A minimal, working server.cfg looks roughly like this:

hostname      = "My LOW.MS ArmA 3 Server";
password      = "";                       // join password; empty = public
passwordAdmin = "changeme-please";        // admin password for #login
maxPlayers    = 40;
verifySignatures = 2;
BattlEye      = 1;

motd[] = {
  "Welcome to the server",
  "Rules: don't be that guy"
};

class Missions
{
  class Mission1
  {
    template = "MyMission.Altis";        // no .pbo extension
    difficulty = "Regular";
  };
};

A few things that bite people on their first edit:

template is the mission file's name without the .pbo extension. If your mission file is MyMission.Altis.pbo, the template is MyMission.Altis. Drop the file in the mpmissions\ folder via File Manager first, and the name must match exactly – ArmA's case sensitivity rules are weird and have stung me more than once.
passwordAdmin is the in-game admin password, not an RCON password. We'll get to RCON.
verifySignatures = 2 is the modern default and what you want on any modded server. On a vanilla server it doesn't hurt either.
BattlEye = 1 is on by default and you should leave it on. Clients will be prompted to install/accept BattlEye the first time they connect; that's normal.

Save, restart the server from Service Settings, and your changes are live. There's no separate "apply" step.

For the deeper dive on every key (difficulty classes, mission rotation, voting thresholds, headless clients), that's what the ArmA 3 Server Configuration guide is for.

Step 6: Logging in as admin

Set passwordAdmin in server.cfg to something you'll actually remember, restart the server, then in-game:

Join the server.
Open chat.
Type #login yourpasswordhere and send.
You're now logged in as admin for that session.

From there you can kick, ban, force-start the mission, vote down missions, and a pile of other things via # commands. If you ever want to rotate the password, change it in server.cfg and restart – there's no hot-reload for this.

There's a separate thing called BattlEye RCon, which is a remote-admin protocol (what most of the GUI admin tools talk to). It's configured in its own beserver_x64.cfg file and is independent of the in-game #login flow. On LOW.MS we allocate a dedicated RCon port at your game port + 10 (so 2312 if your game is on 2302), so you don't have to guess. Full RCon setup details are in the configuration KB – don't worry about it on day one.

Step 7: Mods, briefly

ArmA 3 mods are folder-based. A mod is a folder like @ace, @CBA_A3, or @RHSUSAF sitting in your server root, containing an addons\ folder of .pbo files and usually a set of .bisign keys plus a .bikey file that goes in the server keys\ folder.

You've got two realistic paths for getting mods onto the server:

The Mod Manager tab in the panel. This is the fast path for anything on the Steam Workshop. Search for the mod, install it to the server, add it to your startup line in Commandline Manager (e.g. -mod=@ace;@CBA_A3) and restart. For 80% of the ArmA 3 modding scene, this is what you want.
File Manager (or SFTP on port 8822 / FTP on 8821) for custom or private mods that aren't on the Workshop, or for dropping in a specific build of a mod. This works fine for normal .pbo / .bisign / .bikey files. One thing to flag: File Manager, SFTP, and FTP all block .dll uploads for security – that's a TCAdmin policy, not negotiable. Almost no ArmA 3 mod ships a .dll, but a handful do (Intercept being the well-known one). If you're installing one of those, open a ticket and we'll sort it server-side.

A few honest words on heavy mod packs: a stable ACE + RHS + TFAR + 3CB + ACRE stack is not a beginner task. It's the single most common reason people open tickets, and there's no shame in asking – half the job of tuning a mod pack is knowing which mod's signature is conflicting with which other mod's .bisign. If you're in over your head, we'd rather help than watch you burn three evenings.

For a vanilla server, skip this whole section. You don't need any of it.

Step 8: A quick note on BattlEye

BattlEye is on by default and you should keep it that way. Clients joining a BattlEye-protected server will be prompted to install BattlEye the first time; once that's done, it's invisible. Turning it off (BattlEye = 0) opens the door to cheaters and to aimbot-type problems that are genuinely unpleasant to deal with, so don't, unless you have a specific reason (a closed testbed, for example).

Where to go next

ArmA 3 Server Configuration – the full server.cfg reference, difficulty classes, mission rotation, RCon setup, headless clients.
ArmA 3 Troubleshooting – common boot failures, sig mismatches, port / visibility gotchas.
Bohemia's official dedicated server wiki – upstream reference if you want the canonical docs.
ArmA 3 on Steam and the dedicated server listing.

That's the full first-time path. Save your server.cfg, write down your passwordAdmin somewhere sensible, and you're ready to go.

Happy gaming!