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I don't need a VPS anymore

greenash.net.au

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Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#11

Post by nine_k »

cheschire wrote: post #5

Was there a typo in the final paragraph and the author meant SaaS / PaaS? Isn’t a VPS an IaaS offering? Edit: The author wrote “SaaS / IaaS” in the final paragraph.

The author went from.a VPS, a VM he managed manually, to hosting everything on Netlify and GitHub, with a smattering of AWS. Thus the title.

The author duly notes that a VPS does not belong to you in ways similar to those SaaS offering don't, so why bother.

If all you used a VPS for was hosting public static web pages, then there's indeed little point to run a VPS by hand.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#13

Post by edgyquant »

lrvick wrote: post #9

I feel the author presents a false dichotomy. I would argue that production servers should be immutable appliances. They should not have mutable root file-systems, they should not have package managers, they should not have ssh or require direct modification. Those are security accidents waiting to happen. I do not babysit my servers in my home rack. I have a company to run and better things to do just like the autho…

Interesting. Are there any OS’ that implement such a structure? Sounds kind of like chromeos if it was geared towards servers.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#14

Post by politician »

edgyquant wrote: post #13
lrvick wrote: post #9

I feel the author presents a false dichotomy. I would argue that production servers should be immutable appliances. They should not have mutable root file-systems, they should not have package managers, they should not have ssh or require direct modification. Those are security accidents waiting to happen. I do not babysit my servers in my home rack. I have a company to run and better things to do just like the autho…

Interesting. Are there any OS’ that implement such a structure? Sounds kind of like chromeos if it was geared towards servers.

Nix?

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#15

Post by edgyquant »

politician wrote: post #14
edgyquant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Are there any OS’ that implement such a structure? Sounds kind of like chromeos if it was geared towards servers.

Nix?

I don’t think nix has an immutable filesystem, servers etc. Im sure you could build an imagine like that but you could do that with any distro.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#16

Post by esjeon »

I think OP is overgeneralizing a little.

Cloud is all about buying resources(IaaS) and functions(SaaS) of your choice. That means, one can purchase storage and traffic like the case here, or CPU time and memory for data processing. One specific scenario can work for someone, but that doesn't define what cloud is or should be, because it's all about choice.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#17

Post by selectronics »

mjevans wrote: post #4

There are still reasons to have a VPS. However nearly all of them are driven by one factor for me: American ISPs suck; cash from the wallets and otherwise. For one thing, they often make it against the ToS to host 'a server' (generally). ISPs with even remotely decent uploads, EVEN for their business offerings, in the metro area around Seattle (still crazy rent, can't even afford to try buying a house) are like Cable…

>For one thing, they often make it against the ToS to host 'a server' (generally).

Beyond this, it can also be impossible due to lack of a static IP or control over the router (5G internet service with CGNAT). A VPS with WireGuard and remote port forwarding allows access for things like SSH.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#18

Post by alberth »

edgyquant wrote: post #15
politician wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix?

I don’t think nix has an immutable filesystem, servers etc. Im sure you could build an imagine like that but you could do that with any distro.

Nanobsd has immutable file system. Mostly used for routers.

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/nanobsd/

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#20

Post by rstuart4133 »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #7

It sounds like you never really needed a VPS, that you could have just paid some shared hosting provider $10 a year to host your site and been fine, but instead you chose to do so and now somehow came to the realization that you never needed to do so. Cool story, but then you throw in a bunch of stuff like about how SaaS is hard to compete against but simply because you never had a reason for a VPS in the first place…

+1

The things he has moved to SaaS sounds like it's, simple, public low volume stuff. My only concern is what happens if the free provider just disappears, but reading between the lines it sounds he's got that covered. His web site is in git, he has a local copy of his git repositories and he backs it up to S3. Personally I've always used SaaS for stuff like that.

Much harder is personal private stuff like email / contacts / calendar / photos. Stuff you want kept private, you don't want to loose ever and must be online 24/7. In utopia the back end would be redundant store with copies stored at multiple vendors, so you don't care if one dies. And the front end is yet another SaaS provider that uses the back ends. If they disappear you just move to another one, pointing them to your back ends.

In the real world you use Google or a competitor to do all jobs, they make it hard to export / import your data to other providers, they mine your data, they will make it available to governments and law enforcement agencies and possibly lawyers on request without telling you, and if they get the shits with you it disappears and you loose everything.

In todays world that what SaaS delivers to most people, and it's reads like a deal with the devil.

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