What cloud VPS host is the best for privacy and security? I want to self host stuff for myself some tools. Mental Outlaw make a video last year about self hosting your own VPN with a service called Vultr but back in December vultr added to their TOS that they own what you host and a bunch of other scary stuff. So I don’t trust Vultr anymore. I don’t see recommended vps hosts on privacyguides website. So what do you guys think I should use to self host various things like a VPN, Nextcloud, and so on.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
      37·
      2 years ago

      Electricity isn’t free and nor is your time, you are never going to beat commercial VPS hosters on price.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          2 years ago

          Those are not VPS specs, that is more the kind where you would get a dedicated hardware server at a hoster. Hosting your own becomes much more viable the larger your operation becomes.

            • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
              1·
              2 years ago

              Cloudserver might still be doing the $10 a year deal where you get a cpu core and some ram and hard drive space.

              It’s hard to beat that price even if you already have the pi. And the vps runs amd64 binaries instead of needing everything built out for arm.

        • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
          1·
          2 years ago

          Well, how long do you expect the cluster to last, and how much did it cost? We need to factor that in to understand the true monthly cost of the cluster.

            • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
              1·
              2 years ago

              Okay, so €1000 over 120 months, that’s another €8.34/month, plus the €15/month in electricity costs. A total of €23.34/month.

              So yeah, you’re not going to get those specs at that price on a VPS today, but there are a lot of caveats here.

              1. 10 years is a very generous prediction for how long this cluster will last. In my experience, hardware that runs 24/7 lasts about 5 years before something happens requiring replacement.
              2. Even if your hardware does last 10 years, Moore’s Law suggests that it will be completely obsolete well before then. Chances are good that your Cluster’s specs will be rentable in the cloud for less than you are paying for electricity at some point before 10 years passes.
              3. Resource usage determines how useful the cluster actually is. Are you using all 24GB of RAM? Are you using all that disk space? If not, you’re paying for something you’re not using.
              4. Maintenance. Especially with an HDD, you need to expect parts to break. How much do you budget for that?
              5. Connectivity. Is your home Internet connection suitable for your needs? Is it worth the performance degradation your projects might have on your home network? If you subscribe to a second Internet connection for your hosted servers, how much does that add to your monthly bill?
              6. Security. Are you hosting anything publicly accessible from your home network? Can you trust that what you are hosting won’t provide bad actors access to your network? How much extra will it cost to segment your network to be more secure?

              At least with a VPS you can rent only what you need when you need it, have a dedicated multi-gigabit network connection, and watch server specs increase and costs decrease as scalable hardware capacity improves over time, all while keeping your home network safely out of the picture.

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 years ago

        That’s a load of crap. Anything you have to subscribe to will turn out to be more expensive than owning at some point. And even if that was not the case, the monetary value that you give your data is what should determine how much you should pay, up front or over time.

  • Autonomous User@lemmy.worldBanned from communityEnglish
    41·
    2 years ago

    Run a home server and VPN to it through a VPS if needed, so they see nothing. E2EE everything.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
    2·
    2 years ago

    I would recommend ADTAQ. They’re a small anti-corpo provider from Gibraltar who built their whole business remotely in an ultra-cheap datacenter in Quincy, Washington. Very reliable, very affordable, but with their only datacenter in WA, you probably don’t want this if you live too far away.

    A little bit more expensive, but with a richer product line and by-the-hour pricing is RamNode, with very cheap offerings hosted around the world.

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    The best thing to do is not trust your vps. You can use different credentials than those you normally would, connect through a vpn to obscure your identity (questionably useful depending on how you paid) and use public/private key pairs where no private key material or certificates end up on your vps.

    I’m not sure of a true “zero trust” method to secure a virtualized computer when someone else has lower level software access and physical control over the hardware it’s running on.