DayZ server hosting: the loot economy decides everything
DayZ works differently from most survival games, and you notice it most in the loot. The world is governed by the Central Economy: a system that constantly tracks how much of each item exists on the map and adds or removes things accordingly.
The loot economy defines your server
Players finding nothing? That is rarely bad luck. More often the Central Economy is tuned wrong, or items are stashed in bases so the system believes there are plenty already. You tune this in types.xml — how much of each item may exist, how quickly it returns and where it spawns.
That file is the single most important control on your server. Anyone running DayZ seriously ends up in it.
Persistence and why bases vanish
Built bases and dropped gear survive through persistence, but with an expiry date. If a base is not visited within the configured period, the server clears it. Communicate that period to your players — nothing drives people away faster than a base that appears to have vanished for no reason.
Mods via Steam Workshop
Mods load server side, but players need them too. On a modded server your players need the same list — through the DayZ launcher that happens automatically as long as you declare the mods correctly.
How much RAM
DayZ is fairly predictable: 2 GB for a small vanilla server, 4 GB once you run mods or head towards forty players. The map itself is the largest fixed cost.