Configure VPS server vs. hire a cloud service

Server farm

Many private users or companies, for various reasons, need to own server for the activity or projects they are developing. The problem is that the hardware is expensive, and many of the Internet connections available to some small businesses and individuals are very limited and could not handle the high traffic that other large servers do without having problems or saturation. In addition, the servers also need maintenance and administrators who always have them ready.

That the server is always up and does not fall is especially important in this type of services in which downtimes or the crashes of a server can be catastrophic, momentarily losing the service offered by the server or losing clients who depend on its good health. Well, within the possibilities, and regardless of whether the server is real or it is a service contracted to a company that offers cloud services, we can have two types of servers: physical or virtual.

What is a VPS?

VPS

In the case of being virtual, we run into VPS (Virtual Private Server) or also called VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server). This technology offers great possibilities and advantages compared to a physical server, since it allows dividing the capacity of the resources offered by the physical server to create many small independent servers that distribute the available capacities. These servers can work with different operating systems, and completely independently, as if they were several different physical servers.

This partition method A physical server in several virtual servers, not only allows each of the virtual machines to work independently and with its own operating system, but they can also be restarted or shut down independently without affecting the rest. Therefore, it is very interesting from the point of view of the administration and is perfect to offer them as a service for diverse clients. The truth is that it is not a new technique, in mainframes this method was used to distribute resources, but with the new virtualization techniques it is now much easier and more powerful.

Then each of these servers can be used for different purposes. From a simple hosting to host your web platform or offer web apps to clients, to being an FTP download server from where you can download data, implement a database, create a file server, DHCP, LDAP, etc., it is that is, all the possibilities that you have with a physical server. Therefore, the possibilities offered by virtual technology do not have as many limitations as some think, and even less since they have matured so much and extensions and technologies have been created to improve virtualization that integrate modern microprocessors ...

Create your own VPS server vs hiring a service:

Applications in Ubuntu

Possible create a VPS server own, the advantage is to be you the own administrator and to have the total control of all the system. The disadvantages however can cloud those virtues. Basically we can find two: the bandwidth of our network, the cost. Starting with the first, our connections to the home network are very limited, and for the traffic that a normal user has they are more than enough, especially if we have fiber or ADSL, but to implement a server with high traffic loads, they could not be enough.

On the other side is the price. You can always choose to use a desktop, laptop, or SBC (like the Raspberry Pi or competition) to build a small server, but that hardware may not be sufficient for some applications. If you need a decent server, you will have to invest a few thousand euros in buying a server, and if you need an even larger server, think about an exorbitant outlay and large electricity consumption, that without going into issues of the space you will need to host it.

Despite the impediments, we will teach you the basic steps so that you can build your own VPS server in Ubuntu:

  1. Starting from an installation of Ubuntu (in any of its flavors, derivatives, or any GNU / Linux distro) or Ubuntu Server. It would also be necessary to have our distro well updated, and have adequate network and security settings.
  2. We will also need to have some virtualization software installed, such as VirtualBox which is free, or use one of the paid versions of VMWare. To work properly, you must have a microprocessor from Intel and AMD with support for virtualization technologies such as Intel-VT or AMD-V. Pay special attention to Intel chips, since some do not support it, while in the case of AMD, almost all modern ones include it ...
  3. The next move is install the operating system that we want in the virtual machine. You can install any other Linux distro, such as Windows, Mac, FreeBSD, ReactOS, Solaris or whatever we need. Another possibility is to download images of virtual machines already created ...
  4. Once installed, you must know the IP of your virtual machine. The IP will serve us for the subsequent connection to the system from another remote machine. Write it down because it will be necessary for later. You will also have to ping to verify that the mv has a network connection, otherwise you will have to modify its network configuration so that it is appropriate. And if you still have problems, look at the configuration of the network adapters that you created in VirtualBox or VMWare when creating the VM.
  5. You can too install the rest of the software that you need, like an FTP server, databases, web server like Apache to create a web service, PHP, etc., or all together to have a LAMP server (or any other type).
  6. Knowing the data of the IP or the FTP service, web, etc., created in the previous step, you can access from the browser or console remote form from the host or from any other device connected to the network.
  7. Finally, advise you that if you want to have more than one virtual machine To have several different servers, you can create more virtual machines by repeating the steps. Do not forget that you must not turn off the system, otherwise the servers will go down.

Anyway, as you can see it is not too difficult, at least the concept, it is something complex and long, but it is not something extremely complicated, although it will depend a bit on the type of server you need.

Clouding.io and its possibilities

En conclusion, the most acceptable option is usually to hire a cloud service that already offers us a server. They will take care of the management, backups and other extras, in addition to offering much more competitive prices to customers. There are many companies that offer us this type of service on the web, one of them is clouding.io. If you access the web, you will see that you can select the service you want and more according to what you need.

For this you can choose between the amount of virtual cores that your Cloud VPS server will have, from 1 to 16, in addition to the RAM memory available for your virtual machine, which can range from 1GB to 32GB. They also offer the possibility to select the capacity of solid state hard drives (SSD) from a few GBs of capacity up to 1.9TB of capacity. That leaves prices of between € 10 per month for the lowest service, up to just over € 400 for the server with the most resources.

If you do the math, € 10 is insignificant, and allows you to have a small server with good bandwidth for certain simpler applications. And if you need something more, you could choose the most extreme package for something less than € 500 as I said. Analyzing the prices of servers, you can go to websites such as Dell, HP and other manufacturers that have servers for sale, and you will see how a server of these characteristics could cost you even more than € 6000 (to which we must add the electricity consumption, which would not be low considering that it would work 24h and 365d, and other expenses such as payment to your Internet provider). Divided by 12 months, it would exceed the price you pay to purchase a cloud service.

In conclusion, these types of companies they take care of everything, they offer you other extra services such as backups of your systems (triple in this case), firewall, decent bandwidth, security, technical support, and by acquiring large machines but dividing them into virtual "plots", they offer you a server at very low prices. competent, allowing you to save in times of crisis without any restriction in terms of the service provided when compared to a real physical server that you can purchase or mount.

Do not forget to leave your comments With the suggestions or doubts you have, I hope the post has helped you to make a smarter choice if you were thinking of hiring any of these services or if you needed to implement your own server ...


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.