Switch from ASA Manager to Z-ARK without stopping your servers

Your servers already run with ASA Manager? Z-ARK takes over your profiles and settings, and observer mode watches without touching anything while you check. Players notice nothing.

Install Z-ARK on the same machine

Install Z-ARK on the computer where ASA Manager runs, as explained in the installation guide. Nothing is changed on the ASA Manager side: Z-ARK reads its files, it does not rewrite them.

Turn on observer mode

Before importing, go to “Settings”, “General” tab, then “Z-ARK”, “Observer mode” card, and tick “Enable”. Z-ARK then sees everything, and what you do by hand works, but it never acts on its own:

• no restart after a crash;
• no scheduled restart or automatic backup;
• no automatic update.

Each time it would have acted, it writes it in its journal: you see what it would have done, with no risk.

Import your servers

1. Click “Add a server”, then “ASA Manager”. If ASA Manager is detected on first launch, the “Take over the existing one” button leads there too.
2. Click “Detect automatically”: Z-ARK finds the ASA Manager profiles of every Windows account on the machine.
3. Tick the servers to take over, then click “Import the selection”.

Taken over: the map, ports, RCON, player count, mods, cluster, processor priority and cores, AsaApi, launch arguments and scheduled restarts. A server running during the import is taken over as it is, without being stopped.

Your old backups stay readable and restorable in each server’s “Backups” tab: Z-ARK never deletes them.

Switch over server by server

In the “Observer mode” card, the “Servers still managed” list hands control to Z-ARK one server at a time. Start with a test server, then add the others once you are happy.

Finish the switch-over

1. When all your servers are managed by Z-ARK, close ASA Manager and remove it from Windows startup.
2. Untick “Enable” in the “Observer mode” card: Z-ARK then manages your servers on its own.