# VPS discussion



## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

If you are new: VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It is basically a server provided by a VPS provider for a user to use as they see fit.

Some known VPS providers are Digital Ocean, Linode, Scaleway and AWS Lightsail.

This thread is dedicated to discussing VPSs and comparing their features and prices.

I personally have a Digital Ocean VPS at the lowest tier ($5) and I have 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB memory. Enough to run one web server and a MariaDB database.

My homepage and blog (in my signature) are hosted there.


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## meetdilip (Nov 26, 2019)

Nice to know @Desmond David . Which OS are you running ?


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## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

meetdilip said:


> Nice to know @Desmond David . Which OS are you running ?


Ubuntu 16.04

Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

As per my reddit experience,kimsufi seems to offer the best deals for a dedicated unmanaged server at cheap rates.You do need to configure it but someone with basic linux knowledge should be able to it without much difficulty by following various online tutorials. @Desmond David check it out if you haven't yet.


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## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

whitestar_999 said:


> As per my reddit experience,kimsufi seems to offer the best deals for a dedicated unmanaged server at cheap rates.You do need to configure it but someone with basic linux knowledge should be able to it without much difficulty by following various online tutorials. @Desmond David check it out if you haven't yet.


$4.99 for 1.8 GHz and 2 GB RAM server. GG, this is probably the best config yet. But doesn't look like they have servers in India.


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

Yeah,they don't have servers in India but is there any specific reason you want an Indian server. Btw keep checking kimsufi for black friday deals,may be you can get a server with good enough hardware to run it as seedbox/file server/vpn--all in one.


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## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

whitestar_999 said:


> Yeah,they don't have servers in India but is there any specific reason you want an Indian server. Btw keep checking kimsufi for black friday deals,may be you can get a server with good enough hardware to run it as seedbox/file server/vpn--all in one.


Is it legal to use a VPS as a seedbox? Also, I like to have a server in India because sometimes I run a voice server (Teamspeak or Mumble) and I like to keep the latency as low as possible.


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## Cyberghost (Nov 26, 2019)

Time4vps is one of the cheapest storage vps I've ever seen. According to the reviews it is also seedbox friendly


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## pkkumarcool (Nov 26, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> $4.99 for 1.8 GHz and 2 GB RAM server. GG, this is probably the best config yet. But doesn't look like they have servers in India.


per month or year?


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> Is it legal to use a VPS as a seedbox? Also, I like to have a server in India because sometimes I run a voice server (Teamspeak or Mumble) and I like to keep the latency as low as possible.


Depends on ToS of the provider but kimsufi dedicated servers usually comes with very relaxed ToS.They are the preferred choice for running dedicated seedboxes in reddit.

P.S. Isn't dedicated server different from VPS,I mean it is called dedicated because the hardware is for use of a single person/account holder & he can run whatever he wants on it incl vps or seedbox. ToS is common for any such service so it doesn't matter whether you run vps or seedbox as long as it does not violate their ToS.


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

pkkumarcool said:


> per month or year?


It is per month.


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## meetdilip (Nov 26, 2019)

Digital Ocean has data center in Bangalore.


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

meetdilip said:


> Digital Ocean has data center in Bangalore.


Yes.Actually I sometimes see spammer posting from that data centre.


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## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

pkkumarcool said:


> per month or year?


Per month of course.


whitestar_999 said:


> Depends on ToS of the provider but kimsufi dedicated servers usually comes with very relaxed ToS.They are the preferred choice for running dedicated seedboxes in reddit.
> 
> P.S. Isn't dedicated server different from VPS,I mean it is called dedicated because the hardware is for use of a single person/account holder & he can run whatever he wants on it incl vps or seedbox. ToS is common for any such service so it doesn't matter whether you run vps or seedbox as long as it does not violate their ToS.


I once had my Digital Ocean droplet shut down because of "suspicious traffic". But they let me run after a while. I was using it to run a CS1.6 server at the time. I don't think they'd allow using it as a seedbox.
A dedicated server is different from a VPS in that a dedicated server is a server hardware that needs to be provisioned. A VPS is basically a VM slice with some CPU, memory and storage allocated for it's dedicated use. It behaves the same as a dedicated server, but it's resources are shared between other VMs too.


meetdilip said:


> Digital Ocean has data center in Bangalore.


Yes, that's where my VPS is hosted.


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 26, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> I once had my Digital Ocean droplet shut down because of "suspicious traffic". But they let me run after a while. I was using it to run a CS1.6 server at the time. I don't think they'd allow using it as a seedbox.
> A dedicated server is different from a VPS in that a dedicated server is a server hardware that needs to be provisioned. A VPS is basically a VM slice with some CPU, memory and storage allocated for it's dedicated use. It behaves the same as a dedicated server, but it's resources are shared between other VMs too.


I have never seen a recommendation to use digital ocean as a seedbox in reddit & probably for this reason only. Yes,I know but what I meant to say was that ToS is there even for vps so if you do something like hosting pirated software/kms activation server which is in violation of their ToS then too it will result in same situation. As long as ToS allows it,it doesn't matter whether it is vps or dedicated server.

Why not test kimsufi if you get some good black friday deal? You can always use it as seedbox/file server & may be the latency won't be so bad.


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## Desmond (Nov 26, 2019)

whitestar_999 said:


> Why not test kimsufi if you get some good black friday deal? You can always use it as seedbox/file server & may be the latency won't be so bad.


Yeah, I am tempted to try it. Where can you get deals for this?


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## Cyberghost (Nov 26, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> Yeah, I am tempted to try it. Where can you get deals for this?


LowendTalk, r/seedboxes


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 27, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> Yeah, I am tempted to try it. Where can you get deals for this?


see above,I am familiar with /r/seedboxes and many there are always on the lookout for good deals on dedicated servers to use as seedbox.If I find some good deal then I will also post it here(I am also looking for a good seedbox deal this black friday).


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## pkkumarcool (Nov 27, 2019)

How do i make a website to start with to use vps with?Any tutorial?thinking of a gaming blog.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## meetdilip (Nov 27, 2019)

You can use shared hosting for a new blog. It will be much cheaper. You wouldn't need the resources of a VPS to run a beginner blog. 

But if you want to learn how to set up and use VPS, there are many tutorials on Digital Ocean website.


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## Desmond (Nov 27, 2019)

pkkumarcool said:


> How do i make a website to start with to use vps with?Any tutorial?thinking of a gaming blog.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Wordpress should be good enough. You can read up tutorials on how to set it up on a LAMP or LEMP stack. But if you only want to create a Wordpress blog, then better to use shared hosting like @meetdilip suggested. However, if you want to run some other servers on the same machine, such as a voice server, then a VPS is better.

You'd also need to buy a domain name.


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## meetdilip (Nov 27, 2019)

If it is a personal blog, ie, stories by you, you can always use blogger or wordpress.com. They have their limitations but are free and can be set up in a few minutes.


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## pkkumarcool (Nov 27, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> Wordpress should be good enough. You can read up tutorials on how to set it up on a LAMP or LEMP stack. But if you only want to create a Wordpress blog, then better to use shared hosting like @meetdilip suggested. However, if you want to run some other servers on the same machine, such as a voice server, then a VPS is better.
> 
> You'd also need to buy a domain name.


what is LAMP and LEMP stack?


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## Desmond (Nov 27, 2019)

pkkumarcool said:


> what is LAMP and LEMP stack?


LAMP = Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP

LEMP = Linux + (E)nginx + MySQL + PHP

These are software stacks required to run PHP websites such as wordpress.



Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk


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## meetdilip (Nov 27, 2019)

If you haven't used VPS before, I would advise not to do it on a production website. A lot of things could go wrong.


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## Nerevarine (Nov 27, 2019)

wtf What u described, i thought that was AWS EC2.. wtf is lightsail ?


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## Desmond (Nov 27, 2019)

Nerevarine said:


> wtf What u described, i thought that was AWS EC2.. wtf is lightsail ?


Amazon Lightsail
It's a VPS service from AWS, simpler than EC2 but not as flexible or configurable.  Starts at $3.5 per month.


meetdilip said:


> If you haven't used VPS before, I would advise not to do it on a production website. A lot of things could go wrong.


Nah, it's okay. You can use it to test and if things so sideways, you can always destroy the instance and create a new one. Won't affect billing since billing is usually done by hourly usage.


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## meetdilip (Nov 27, 2019)

A badly set up VPS could get hacked in no time. Also, if we have to reset the OS, there will be some down time. 

Are you using any panel on your VPS ?


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## Desmond (Nov 27, 2019)

meetdilip said:


> A badly set up VPS could get hacked in no time. Also, if we have to reset the OS, there will be some down time.
> 
> Are you using any panel on your VPS ?


To avoid hackers I changed my SSH port to something else from the default 22. I also set up ufw to block any request to ports other than the ones I have allowed.

What panel do you mean?

Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk

Edit: For more security you can also set up SSH to use a key file though I have not done so myself.


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## whitestar_999 (Nov 27, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> What panel do you mean?


I think he means something like this What is cPanel? How to use cPanel for WordPress hosting


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## Desmond (Nov 27, 2019)

whitestar_999 said:


> I think he means something like this What is cPanel? How to use cPanel for WordPress hosting


Seems like something that hosting providers provide. I don't think VPS providers provide this since the VPS are fully managed by the user. I myself use plain old SSH and terminal to manage my VPS.


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## meetdilip (Nov 27, 2019)

cPanel makes life easy. But it is paid. It is still worth trying it.


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## Desmond (Dec 13, 2019)

meetdilip said:


> cPanel makes life easy. But it is paid. It is still worth trying it.


$15 per month. Nah, I think I will use it the old fashioned way.


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## meetdilip (Dec 13, 2019)

Desmond David said:


> I will use it the old fashioned way.



Without a panel ?


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## Desmond (Dec 13, 2019)

meetdilip said:


> Without a panel ?


Yup, Bash shell FTW. I am pretty proficient with Linux so I don't have much trouble doing some admin work.


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## meetdilip (Dec 13, 2019)

I am not that good. But guides from Linode and DO are good enough for most activities.  There is some CyberPanel which everyone is talking about these days. Many say that it is good ( and free ). VestaCP had some serious bug, not sure whether developers have upped their game.


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## RageshAntony (Jan 2, 2020)

Cyberghost said:


> Time4vps is one of the cheapest storage vps I've ever seen. According to the reviews it is also seedbox friendly



Is time4vps is trustable ? the prices are very cheap . Just Rs.800 for 8 GB RAM 

What about quality of service and customer support?


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## whitestar_999 (Jan 2, 2020)

RageshAntony said:


> Is time4vps is trustable ? the prices are very cheap . Just Rs.800 for 8 GB RAM
> 
> What about quality of service and customer support?


You want a vps with extra 8gb ram for what? I mean usually such large amount of ram is only required for specific workloads on a virtual server.


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## meetdilip (Jan 2, 2020)

Small names vanish one day. That is the only problem with them. You are doomed if your backup schedule is not proper.


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## whitestar_999 (Jan 2, 2020)

meetdilip said:


> Small names vanish one day. That is the only problem with them. You are doomed if your backup schedule is not proper.


Not just small names,unless you take a plan with redundant storage option(obviously costs extra),a hardware/hdd failure can still cost you your data even with a big name provider.


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## RageshAntony (Jan 3, 2020)

whitestar_999 said:


> You want a vps with extra 8gb ram for what? I mean usually such large amount of ram is only required for specific workloads on a virtual server.



For a Video Streaming Server backend for our client


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## whitestar_999 (Jan 3, 2020)

RageshAntony said:


> For a Video Streaming Server backend for our client


What kind of video streaming,if it involves transcoding(encoding of source video to different formats to fit different connection speeds & resolutions like youtube) then it needs a fairly good processor.


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## Vyom (Jan 3, 2020)

I use lowest tier Digital Ocean VPS too ($5 per month), to host many of my and friend's personal websites.
At the current moment it's hosting atleast 6 wordpress sites.


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## RageshAntony (Jan 3, 2020)

whitestar_999 said:


> What kind of video streaming,if it involves transcoding(encoding of source video to different formats to fit different connection speeds & resolutions like youtube) then it needs a fairly good processor.



Videos streamed from Backblaze cloud storage with Swarmify Adaptive streaming  . Only node server + mongo DB running on the VPS


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## whitestar_999 (Jan 3, 2020)

RageshAntony said:


> Videos streamed from Backblaze cloud storage with Swarmify Adaptive streaming  . Only node server + mongo DB running on the VPS


Not much experience with linux but just a node server & mongo db shouldn't use too much processor,in fact I think you will be better off with getting a ssd vps instead of more ram but not sure, @Desmond David should know better about this.


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## Desmond (Jan 4, 2020)

whitestar_999 said:


> Not much experience with linux but just a node server & mongo db shouldn't use too much processor,in fact I think you will be better off with getting a ssd vps instead of more ram but not sure, @Desmond David should know better about this.


It really depends on how much load you are expecting. But at higher loads, CPU+Memory will be more important than storage. For a dev or testing environments, it's okay to have low to moderate specs.


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## RageshAntony (Jan 9, 2020)

I think it is wiser to use AWS LightSail because since AWS provides lot of Cloud Services including Media Transcoding and AI & ML Engines , you can easily integrate with these services in feature since they are tighly coupled with ready to Use SDKs for implementation 

That is you don't need to search for another provider 

For Example , you decided to develop a  platform that get a Video and face images from user AND  after that it tags Given faces  in a  given video using AI libiraires  AND also generate subtitles in many languages by speech recognition with translation  AND      encodes the Video AND stores in Cloud Storage AND then store the result metadata in a NoSQL DB AND User metadata in MySQL DB

..

So here you need following services 

1. A Web server  :: To handle uploads

2. A ML Engine :: To tag faces

3. A Media Encoder :: To reencode video with square around faces 

4. A speech recognition engine :: To generate subtitles 

5. A Translation Service :: To translate subtitles

6. A Cloud Storage :: To store Videos

7. A Managed MySQL server :::  for User metadata in MySQL DB

8.  A NoSQL DB Server :: result metadata in NoSQL DB


So  , you need 8 separate server to run the above mentioned platform 

So if you chose a AWS , you will get all in one at same place 

You able to manage it from single Dashboard with single billing and united customer support

You can use these services of AWS

1. A Web server  :: AWS LightSail

2. A ML Engine :: AWS SageMaker

3. A Media Encoder :: AWS Elemental MediaConvert

4. A speech recognition engine :: AWS Transcibe 

5. A Translation Service :: AWS Translate

6. A Cloud Storage :: AWS S3

7. A Managed MySQL server :::  Amazon RDS

8.  A NoSQL DB Server :: Amazon DynomoDB

So here all in one

But If you opt other providers you have to Find separate providers . You have manage different bills and different customer support . Also development is difficult 

Note:
The same applies to Azure and Google Cloud . They are giving all services for above platform as All in one


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## whitestar_999 (Jan 9, 2020)

^^That is commercial level enterprise usage so big providers will obviously have an edge. However many use VPS for simple tasks like storage servers/plex servers/simple hosting/seedbox etc which don't require big providers' costlier(but better) offerings.


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## RageshAntony (Jan 9, 2020)

whitestar_999 said:


> ^^That is commercial level enterprise usage so big providers will obviously have an edge. However many use VPS for simple tasks like storage servers/plex servers/simple hosting/seedbox etc which don't require big providers' costlier(but better) offerings.



I accept with you 


But AWS LightSail is also cheap for those who needs a unmanaged VPS hosting 

But readers , note one thing 

AWS . google , azure don't have managed hosting with "CPanel  hosting with auto SSL install , tuning , one click framework installs" etc. 

They only give a VPS or a compute instances


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## Desmond (Jan 9, 2020)

RageshAntony said:


> But AWS LightSail is also cheap for those who needs a unmanaged VPS hosting


I think Scaleway is cheaper at EUR 2.99 per month, though the difference in pricing is slight, but the VPS is much more powerful with 2 vCPUs, 2 GB RAM and 20 GB storage.



RageshAntony said:


> AWS . google , azure don't have managed hosting with "CPanel hosting with auto SSL install , tuning , one click framework installs" etc.


Honestly, the point of a VPS is the flexibility to run it in any way you want. That is why they are bare machines (not bare-metal) with nothing more than a shell. Though you can get pre-built images for solutions if you want.


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## Desmond (Jan 2, 2023)

Been a while since I have posted here. I have since moved from Digital Ocean to Linode. Mostly because their 2GB machines cost $10 per month compared to the $12 for Digital Ocean droplets.


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## khalil1210 (Jan 2, 2023)

Desmond said:


> Been a while since I have posted here. I have since moved from Digital Ocean to Linode. Mostly because their 2GB machines cost $10 per month compared to the $12 for Digital Ocean droplets.


Do you use this for personal blog?


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## Desmond (Jan 2, 2023)

khalil1210 said:


> Do you use this for personal blog?


Among other things:

A Bitwarden server.
Two telegram bots.
A searx instance: *desmond-david.com/searx
A Mariadb instance.
Nginx web server (also acts as reverse proxy).


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## Vyom (Jan 4, 2023)

Desmond said:


> Among other things:
> 
> A Bitwarden server.
> Two telegram bots.
> ...


I am also thinking to migrate from DO. It was good while it lasted. But their "tactic" to slowly move me to higher plan didn't seem ethical to me.
I also want to host Bitwarden. How much is linode costing you? And how's the experience fares compared to DO? Does Linode have server backup, kinda like DO?


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## Desmond (Jan 4, 2023)

Vyom said:


> How much is linode costing you?


I'm on $10 per month for 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM.


Vyom said:


> And how's the experience fares compared to DO?


The experience is more or less the same. I used a referral code, so I got $100 credit for 60 days. So it's free for me for 2 months appx. Perhaps I can give you my referral code if you are looking to move.


Vyom said:


> Does Linode have server backup, kinda like DO?


All cloud VPS providers have server backup option these days and it's same for Linode.


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## thetechfreak (Jan 4, 2023)

Desmond said:


> All cloud VPS providers have server backup option these days and it's same for Linode.


Remember the time when our TDF gang had that leaseweb server and one fine day it was completely wiped with no backup. The company also claimed it wasn't their fault and all data was lost. Those were the days


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## Desmond (Jan 4, 2023)

thetechfreak said:


> Remember the time when our TDF gang had that leaseweb server and one fine day it was completely wiped with no backup. The company also claimed it wasn't their fault and all data was lost. Those were the days


I don't remember. What happened and when?


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