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I don't need a VPS anymore

greenash.net.au

161–170 of 197 posts

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#161
I have a side project where I need to store a large amount of data. If I were to use a non rental server it would cost me hundreds of dollars each month while renting a large ass server with unlimited bandwidth costs me around $70/month.

Sure if all you need is to host some static site it's all fine but if you need to host something more beefy that has requirements the costs are huge compared to rental servers.

Also, there is the point of nearly all managed hosting serverless solutions is done by american companies so if you want to host in the EU for example to avoid surveillance there isn't a lot of options out there.

There is also a bunch of different requirements that makes hosting on a serverless platform hard / more expensive for example:

* Connecting to a third party that has some firewall based on ip

* Using anything else than http

* Having multiple sites where with a rental server you could host everything on the same machine it usually gets quite expensive since serverless stuff costs usually are per app basis.

* As I've mentioned earlier, if you transfer and store larger amounts of data

* Any requirement from governments and such that data is not stored on american companies

* Long running processes

The list can be long for when serverless is not viable and for most of the apps I've worked on a lot of them couldn't be hosted on a serverless platform for some of these reasons alone.

Regarding the price aspect, I've found that if you have some kind of backend with a larger amount of traffic serverless solutions is always more expensive and I get why, it's managed and it's understandable. A rental server pricing is easy and predictable, a serverless solution pricing is complex and hard to understand probably by design. It appears cheap at first glance but in reality it's almost always a lot more expensive.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#162
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one never needs to trust copper wires or single transistors. One could, in theory, build an entire computer from discrete components and never have to trust external hardware or software. Of course, it wouldn't be very practically useful and would be a monumental amount of effort. But hey, it's a cozy thought for those chasing the trust dragon.

I think in this context building a computer from individual transistors and copper wire is the same as “invent the universe” for the purposes of the expression.

Or baking an apple pie, to feed your electronics engineer? If you're going to carry it to its logical conclusion, "invent the universe" works in any context.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#163
post #89

For most things we want to do there's more than one way to do it. Ultimately it comes down to having freedom to try different things, to experiment with web technologies as my interests evolve. I really really dislike having to bend to unnecessary restrictions. I don't think I'm alone in that regard. A VPS is a great way to go. IMO managing a VPS is hardly burdensome, the amount of effort it requires is minuscule. Ce…

> I really really dislike having to bend to unnecessary restrictions. I don't think I'm alone in that regard.

You aren't. I'm one who actually moved from a more managed product to a VPS precisely because I couldn't get what I needed from the managed solution.

It's great we have options, but it's absolutely a false dichotomy that the author is presenting. You can have SaaS solutions for things that fit well, while having VPSs to research and develop things that don't fit into a neat little package (yet).

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#164
post #21

Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. Most of us who use a VPS are hosting Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel + PostgreSQL or MySQL where the memory costs are a fraction of the equivalent cloud offering. I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked it's sti…

> Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel

/me over here reverse proxying to Hunchentoot with CL framework of the week. Have yet to see a serverless setup that even has any idea what CL is . . .

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#165
post #135
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then it will be harder for you to shift to another service, compared to switching your VPS server. No way. I can move a folder of files to anywhere quite confidently. Even a VPS. But I have no idea what I would do if I needed to move my VPS. I’d probably have to start over from scratch.

If your VPS was build by hand over a long period of time, sure it's hard to switch to another service. If your VPS setup is automated by Ansible or NixOS or something, it ceases to be hard.

Really? And how does Ansible get the data from my old VPS?

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#166
I still use a VPS because my websites present user data and I host a GraphQL backend to store that data (Strapi, KeystoneJS, and NestJS). What is the alternative here? AWS?

My frontends are static and hosted by netflify.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#167
post #127
post #120

In case you still find yourself needing more than netlify can offer, you can get a pretty decent free VPS from Oracle: https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/ . Just remember to make backups.

That... sounds a bit too good to be true? But maybe it is true? Have you been using it? Are there any surprise costs (traffic etc)? Please tell more!

I suspect it will be like Google is doing now, once they have enough market share or don't need whatever they're getting out of their end (eg. stress testing their VPS offering) expect the limits to come in.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#168
I'm in the same boat. I ran and maintained my own VPS for a decade to host several WordPress sites. I'm not a sysadmin, and package updates can be a nightmare if you only deal with it once every few months.

Ultimately I gave up and moved to SSGs + CloudFlare Pages, and put the WordPress sites I couldn't convert on managed hosting. My life has been so much easier.

This all will change in the future - I do think the free SSG hosting is a temporary loss leader for these companies. Hosting on a VPS would yield faster builds and serving static files isn't hard. And I'm sure there will be even easier ways to host WordPress sites.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#169
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [..] If someone identifies as a sysadmin and can't write Python/Perl/Go/Ruby [..] this is the difference between a systems admin and a systems engineer. some folk can't make the jump from sysadmin, despite best intentions and training.

It is a common (new) myth that sysadmins didn’t code. There were some IT technicians who couldn’t code and some operations staff who couldn’t code (and would proudly claim this, for some reason). But tools like ansible, salt, chef and terraform were written by sysadmins. In fact a lot of non-feature code in my companies such as database fencing programs and automated blue/green rollouts has been written by sysadmins.…

Somewhere along the switch from "System Programmer" to "Sysadmin", probably around turn of the century Windows Server timeline, "sysadmin" somehow started to imply there's no programming.

Despite ridiculous amounts of Perl written by system admins, among other things.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#170
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.

Alternatively, CloudFlare Tunnel can do this for free without the need for a VPS (assuming you're serving HTTP traffic only.)
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