diff --git a/nixos/modules/services/databases/victoriametrics.nix b/nixos/modules/services/databases/victoriametrics.nix
index 5b09115bb2f..9e2c79e61a3 100644
--- a/nixos/modules/services/databases/victoriametrics.nix
+++ b/nixos/modules/services/databases/victoriametrics.nix
@@ -53,6 +53,14 @@ let cfg = config.services.victoriametrics; in
               -retentionPeriod ${toString cfg.retentionPeriod} \
               ${lib.escapeShellArgs cfg.extraOptions}
         '';
+        # victoriametrics 1.59 with ~7GB of data seems to eventually panic when merging files and then
+        # begins restart-looping forever. Set LimitNOFILE= to a large number to work around this issue.
+        #
+        # panic: FATAL: unrecoverable error when merging small parts in the partition "/var/lib/victoriametrics/data/small/2021_08":
+        # cannot open source part for merging: cannot open values file in stream mode:
+        # cannot open file "/var/lib/victoriametrics/data/small/2021_08/[...]/values.bin":
+        # open /var/lib/victoriametrics/data/small/2021_08/[...]/values.bin: too many open files
+        LimitNOFILE = 1048576;
       };
       wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];