Years ago, most providers offered SolusVM and OpenVZ templates. We’ve come a long way! Now even small providers have custom-developed features that rival the major public clouds. From block storage to custom ISOs to the ability to move your VM across a continent (or to a different one!) with the press of a button, there are a lot of features and capabilities that providers are bringing to the table.
Which of them matter the most to you? Please vote and inform our provider community what matters to you!
Note: You can select a maximum of four features, so please indicate those that are most important.
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Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
I’d like to see GPU in on the list.
IPv6 is a show stopper for me.
It seems only US is not ready for IPv6
For me, location are peering are #1
I mean location AND peering are my #1
Big feature for me is a firewall, like on Vultr and what Linode is introducing. I know I can set up a firewall on my VPS but having it on the “network” is nice and is usually easier to set up.
A firewall may slow down the server a little bit, but is essential that’s something you can install while setup the server.
I never try it on Vultr or Linode but it’s not that hard to install it via terminal.
I voted for DDOS protection, which I think can be pretty important these days.
That’s true but DDoS Protection can be also optional bought from another provider such as DDoS Protection with Cloudflare and you can set the DNS to be pointed to Cloudflare as an extra layer of security.
not just Cloudflare, there are other alternatives as well.
Ability to Upload a Custom ISO is actually is the most important and do not see all providers have this option, which is important.
Can you please share why a custom ISO is important? Isn’t it most mainstream Linux distri are usually provided?
For me, I prefer to install OpenBSD or FreeBSD and want full-disk encryption. A few will offer FreeBSD or OpenBSD pre-installed, but I have no control over the FDE. Many don’t even offer BSD options. With a custom ISO, I can readily do both. I could see Linux folks wanting to do FDE too, which means doing a full install rather than taking a stock image.
>Can you please share why a custom ISO is important?
I believe for most people the answer will be around the lines of “I use XYZ operating system which usually is not well represented. In my case that would be FreeBSD. Also, if I wanted to try something even less common like OpenBSD or DragonFly it is highly unlikely those would be supported almost anywhere outside of loading an ISO.
I’ve got a minimum baseline of RAM, disk-space, and in certain geographic locations (avoids some compliance issues in certain countries) and prefer to bring my own ISO (or use a process similar to `depenguinator`, creating a local system image and using the rescue console to `dd` it atop the boot disk). I’m usually less concerned about the CPU & bandwidth (as long as it has DDOS protection) since most modern setups are more than adequate for the light load I put on them. IPv4 is required for certain (but not all) services. And expandable disk-space is nice to have as an option (I wish I had more options for large+cheap HDD storage that I could use ZFS to front an L2ARC on the SSD main drive)