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Ask LowEndBox - What Do You Do with Empty VPS?

One question drmike asked here in the forums has drawn my attention, because in fact I am also facing the same situation. What do you do with empty VPS?

I know virtual servers at the price listed on LowEndBox can sometimes lead to impulse buys. Hey it is cheap! I have this great project coming up and it ought to be on its own server! The next thing you know, I am $6-$7 poorer but am a proud owner of a shining new low end VPS. Except a few weeks down the track that “great project” did not turn out to be too great.

So I am left with a some virtual servers lying around doing nothing. Sometimes they can lie around for a couple months because I prepaid them for up to a year. D’oh. Assuming that you are not interested in using it as a seed box, but would like to use it for something interesting, or useful, or something with minimal effort but generate enough revenue to recoup the cost.

Any good idea?

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

24 Comments

  1. Rob:

    A few ideas…

    1. Set up OpenVPN to watch Hulu (if the vps is in the US) or iPlayer/SeeSaw (UK)

    2. If you have another project with your static content (images etc.) on a different DNS name (e.g. static.example.com) you could set up a caching proxy such as squid or varnish to cut the load on the main server. If you have a few, you could experiment with GeoDNS.

    3. Set it up as a MySQL slave for another project and run your mysqldump backups on the slave.

    4. Backup your other projects over rsync.

    March 8, 2010 @ 11:31 am | Reply
  2. IWTFI:

    teamspeak server to talk with my friends.
    do anyone know a good program like teamspeak with video support?

    March 8, 2010 @ 12:20 pm | Reply
  3. Thomas:

    Make it as a Shoutcast Server!

    March 8, 2010 @ 2:33 pm | Reply
  4. Use them as DNS boxes – sell private DNS or offer it free with advertising on your site etc? :)

    March 8, 2010 @ 4:52 pm | Reply
  5. IWTFI:

    @admin can you make a tutorial about how to setup a DNS server + web interface?

    March 8, 2010 @ 5:05 pm | Reply
  6. ui:

    #4 – Google for PowerDNS+PowerAdmin

    March 8, 2010 @ 9:29 pm | Reply
  7. +1 to ui. PowerDNS would be the easiest with its MySQL backend.

    March 8, 2010 @ 9:56 pm | Reply
  8. IWTFI:

    @LowEndAdmin a tutorial would help. why don’t you start making tutorials?

    March 8, 2010 @ 11:06 pm | Reply
  9. Anto:

    I seed – don’t want to waste this bandwidth i paid for!

    March 9, 2010 @ 9:54 am | Reply
  10. Make a server to serve static content with a cookie-less domain.

    March 10, 2010 @ 12:51 pm | Reply
  11. And what content should I serve? And why cookie-less?

    March 10, 2010 @ 1:12 pm | Reply
  12. bob:

    Nethack server!

    March 10, 2010 @ 8:43 pm | Reply
  13. Neves:

    My Suggestion: Long Running Processing like page scraping, etc.

    PowerDNS with MySql would require 256MB. For a a really tiny VPS, use MaraDNS.

    Anto, what is seed?

    March 11, 2010 @ 1:52 pm | Reply
  14. ui:

    pdns + sqlite :)

    March 11, 2010 @ 2:58 pm | Reply
  15. IWTFI:

    can someone make a good tutorial about MaraDNS for Debian?
    please!!!

    March 11, 2010 @ 9:37 pm | Reply
  16. Host a Bitfighter server!

    March 12, 2010 @ 7:55 pm | Reply
  17. Hmm that’s interesting. What kind of resource requirement for a bitfighter server?

    March 13, 2010 @ 4:36 am | Reply
  18. How about use the VPS as back-up storage for your production server? rsync can be easily setup via cron to run hours after midnight.

    March 14, 2010 @ 6:26 am | Reply
  19. Dai:

    use it as seedbox. or private torrent tracker. or make it a tunneling server xp

    March 17, 2010 @ 1:27 am | Reply
  20. i have a maradns tutorial up on my site atm (philderbeast.com), i have been running it for both my primary and secondary dns for a while now and its REALLY light weight (<200kb)

    March 17, 2010 @ 6:28 am | Reply
  21. Daniel:

    I am buying VPSes to donate bw and time for the Tor Project. It depends on BW, but every bit helps.
    http://www.torproject.org/
    Set BW limits according to your aloted BW and you wont have surprises like overcharge.

    April 20, 2010 @ 8:58 am | Reply
  22. C:

    If it is a larger VPS, maybe one could install BOINC and run SETI or Rosetta or ClimatePrediction or something.

    May 24, 2010 @ 3:54 am | Reply
  23. @C — that would be a pretty anti-social behavior to take all available CPU on a shared environment. I’ll leave SETI at home on my own computers, thanks :)

    May 24, 2010 @ 4:06 am | Reply
  24. C:

    @LowEndAdmin – LOL true. XD I admit that my understanding of how VPS works is pretty sketchy, and I had thought that each container gets its own personal allocation of CPU time.

    May 24, 2010 @ 6:38 am | Reply

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