What factors matter when choosing a VPS provider? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 09:50 Hey 👋🏻 I’m picking a VPS provider and could use some advice. What’s most important to you when choosing one? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kmaid · 2023-10-27 10:19 Price to performance and sometimes location. Personal picks would be lowendtalk deals for Racknerd for lowend hobby level. Hetzner for something a little more performant and stable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Curmudgeons_dungeon · 2023-10-27 10:35 Your skill level vs there support knowledge base and they type of support you may need. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 10:38 In no particular order: * Price (if looking to host something low value) * Price/performance (if longer-term) * Details of Fair Usage Policy * Bandwidth limits * Overlimit pricing * Location - proximity * Location - creepiness of government / jurisdiction * Reputation of the company - are they scummy? Do they oversell? Is their datacenter about to get yeeted? (*cough* Dedipath *cough*) * Are they bullshitting me with RAID 100000 PURE SSD STORAGE!!!!! In fact, I actually prefer HDD storage for most of my servers: for most websites, your bandwidth will be a bigger limitation than your data access speed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-10-27 10:55 This. Also: * virtualization type (KVM, LXC, ~~OpenVZ~~) * Payment methods (I've seen a couple of EU companies that didn't accept bank cards) * Cancellation policy * 2FA availability * AUP (Acceptable use policy) also matters * Backups/snapshots availability and pricing * Paid support availability if that matters for you * Connection speed matters a lot * IPv6 availability * 'Cleanness' of IPv4 * OS images available. A lot of providers don't lake latest Debian/Ubuntu etc images readily available when they get released * Local networking if it matters to you Generally, I jook at pricing (avoid anything too low and too high), location (determines ping, jurisdiction etc) and AUP. Also, always check reviews. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:02 Which VPS do you prefer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:03 Which VPS do you prefer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:03 Do you know something about Alwyzon? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lanzaroslr · 2023-10-27 11:06 I prefer VPS with good price/performance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 11:06 Good additions! I glossed over virtualization type because I subconsciously ignore anything that is not KVM. OS Images can be a doozie. Good if the provider supports custom isos  —  many don't, possibly for storage reasons. If they don't, you have the thrilling experience of bootstrapping Arch over the top of a running system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:06 Which benchmarks are relevant when comparing two providers? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:07 Which benchmarks should one compare between providers? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 11:10 I don't. I prefer dedicated / baremetal servers, and if I need a VPS, I'll run a VM on one of my dedicated boxes. Having said that, if I do need to use a VPS, the demands of the project dictate the provider. For instance, I needed a VPS in India for a few days for something, so I spun up a DigitalOcean droplet. Could I have found something cheaper? Possibly, but I didn't want to spend the time searching for something with DCs in India. I have a hard and fast rule: I *do not* pay more than $20/month for a VPS, because I can get better price/performance either renting a dedicated server or going to a cloud provider like AWS/GCP/Azure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- usrdef · 2023-10-27 11:13 Right now I'm using [https://contabo.com/en/vps/](https://contabo.com/en/vps/). They offer monthly payments, with no contracts. They have a list of in-house OSes you can install, or you can provide your own ISO and install your own custom OS depending on your needs. Pretty decent deal for the price. Thus far, I've been with them three years and only seen one incident which was a power outage. My datacenter was down for maybe three hours and then I was back up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ivansalloum · 2023-10-27 11:18 I used contabo long time ago but stopped after I the fraud risk of contabo has been increased. Many people use their servers for spam and malicious purposes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- usrdef · 2023-10-27 11:34 Some do, but the same argument can be made about most hosts. I've seen a lot of spam / scam websites being hosted on OVH and other datacenters. Only time that's going to be a pain is if you're looking to host your own SMTP / mailserver and everything is being thrown in spam via major companies like Google / Microsoft. But there are much better alternatives out there that take the pain away from having a mailserver. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PatochiDesu · 2023-10-27 11:59 for me price per gb ram per month because memory is always my bottleneck ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kmaid · 2023-10-27 12:38 I do not. Re what benchmark. I always look at [https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench- script](https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script) output. Its pretty complete and easily googleable. Its always a bit of a finger in the air rather than exactly what you get because its heavily dependent on your VPS neighbours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- raunchieska · 2023-10-27 13:47 > Are they bullshitting me with RAID 100000 PURE SSD STORAGE!!!!! very specific. who hurt you? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- raunchieska · 2023-10-27 13:48 > . I prefer dedicated / baremetal servers, i think everyone would if everyone cold.... so you actually rent a dedicated? or selfhost in some colo? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- raunchieska · 2023-10-27 13:51 This is very important. Not everyone at all knows how to setup nginx, haproxy, varnish, mysql, redis, php-fpm and maintain that going forward just to host performant wordpress. this seems to be even more of an issue with modern developers that dont seem to know anything at all other then basic jamstack(s) configs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bytepursuits · 2023-10-27 13:57 I've seen people use this: https://github.com/masonr/yet-another- bench-script ---------------------------------------------------------------------- raunchieska · 2023-10-27 13:59 https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bityard · 2023-10-27 20:02 That depends, are you looking to rent your first VPS or are you fishing for content for your blog? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- txmail · 2023-10-27 20:32 >possibly for storage reasons For RAM usage. KVM uses KSM to de-duplicate memory. If the same OS is deployed there is a high chance the RAM is going to be duplicated many times over. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- txmail · 2023-10-27 20:34 Has to be KVM based. Then I look at shared / dedicated CPU cores and IO disk speed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 23:29 TIL, makes sense. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 23:38 > i think everyone would if everyone could get one.... > so you actually rent a dedicated? or selfhost in some colo? I rent dedicated servers. I have a weak one in Australia (for those applications where latency matters) but the bulk of my stuff is in Europe. I do want a server in the States too, for global coverage, but it is not that high on my todo list. My hardware demands are rather modest so it is cheaper to run 3-4 dedicated servers than to colocate. Colo in Australia is something like $200/month for 1RU and almost no bandwidth. If I did that, I'd then need to invest in serious 1RU hardware. I do also have on-prem hardware for things that (a) need lots of storage/RAM and (b) don't need perfect uptime. I do have a UPS but that's more a 'don't kill my hardware with power spikes' solution than a '24x7 uptime' solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-10-27 23:43 > very specific. who hurt you? I am legally blind. Reading things takes effort. I hate expending effort on useless things — like marketing materials. Simple enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytepond · 2023-10-28 05:08 I like Hetzner. Very high price/performance, pretty easy, no complaints.