How to set up a RedM server: a step-by-step guide

This guide takes you from nothing to a working RedM server: choosing an operating system, installing the artifact, the database, streamed assets, opening ports and the mistakes most often made on first boot. RedM is built on the same CitizenFX stack as FiveM, so the flow will feel familiar — but it diverges in two places, and those two places set the server's budget: the volume of streamed assets and the fact that the framework ecosystem is unofficial.

Before you start

• A server. For a 32-slot roleplay server on VORP or RSGCore, 8 GB RAM / 4 vCPU / 80 GB NVMe is the practical baseline. At the same slot count RedM typically wants more storage than FiveM; you can compare against the steps on the FiveM server plans page. To pick resources one by one and see the monthly total, use the server configurator.
• A keymaster licence key. Free from CitizenFX's own site, bound to your server's IP address.
• A decision about the framework. VORP Core, RSGCore and RedEM:RP are the most common. The three are not compatible with each other, and resources and database schemas are framework-specific, so make the call before you install.
• Players who own the game. The RedM client runs on the player's own copy of Red Dead Redemption 2.

1. Operating system

Choose Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or Debian 12. CitizenFX's official Linux artifacts are tested against these distributions; on anything else, library version mismatches will cost you time. Windows is possible too, but you get more out of the same hardware on Linux.

2. Installing the artifact with txAdmin

The server software is CitizenFX's Linux artifact, and for RedM the rdr3 game build is what you select. Rather than managing artifacts by hand, use txAdmin: artifact updates, automatic restarts, backups and a live console end up in one place.

One expectation carried over from FiveM needs correcting up front: txAdmin's ready-made recipe templates are mostly for FiveM frameworks. On the RedM side you will usually install the framework yourself — placing resources under resources/, importing the database schema and writing the load order in server.cfg by hand. This guide gives no framework-specific commands, because VORP and RSGCore can require different steps even between their own releases; the right source is the current documentation of the framework you actually use.

What server.cfg must contain in every case: the licence key, the endpoints to listen on, and the resource load order. That order always runs from core to dependent — the database layer, then the framework core, then everything built on it. When the order is wrong you see errors like "resource not found" in the console; the resource does exist, it just has not loaded yet.

3. Database and streamed assets

Install MariaDB on the same machine, import the framework's database dump and set the connection string in server.cfg. Choose the utf8mb4 character set: non-ASCII characters and emoji break under utf8, and fixing it later means converting every table. When query load grows, the first place to look is indexes and the connection pool rather than hardware: MySQL performance settings

This is where RedM really differs from FiveM: the stream folder. Clothing, horse, weapon and map assets are noticeably larger on the RDR2 side. The base framework and default assets sit around 15-25 GB, and once custom packs are added the 60-120 GB range is common. That has two consequences. First, pick storage with comfortable headroom from the start. Second, because the number of assets read when a player enters an area is high, disk latency shows up directly in gameplay — NVMe is a requirement here rather than a preference. The measurable side of it: what is an NVMe SSD?

4. Ports

It runs on a single port, but it needs both TCP and UDP; with only TCP open, players see the server in the list and cannot connect. Exposing the txAdmin panel to everyone is a common and serious mistake — that panel is full control of your server. If you are on Datafex, port management, extra IPs and rDNS requests are handled from the customer panel.

The most common first-boot mistakes

1. The licence key is empty or bound to a different IP. The server starts and never appears in the list.
2. No resource load order was written. The framework core loads late and everything depending on it errors out.
3. `utf8` was chosen instead of `utf8mb4`. Non-ASCII characters turn into question marks.
4. Storage was sized from a FiveM calculation. Space runs out as stream packs are added and the server can no longer write.
5. The first boot was interrupted. With large stream folders, asset indexing takes a while — that is normal.
6. The database is not backed up. On a roleplay server, all player progress lives in the database: server backup strategy

On the DDoS side

CitizenFX servers are frequently hit by floods on 30120 UDP, and because source addresses can be forged in UDP, this cannot be solved at the application layer — it has to be filtered at the network layer. We covered the topic separately: what is DDoS protection?

On Datafex servers, layered Fexwall DDoS protection is included free on every plan.

Next step

Because RedM runs its main workload on one core, what determines tick time at high slot counts is clock speed rather than core count; above roughly 128 slots you reach the virtual server ceiling, and a dedicated server is the better move for both single-core performance and storage capacity. We have put the recommended plans by slot count and the processor options on one page: RedM server plans.