Renting a dedicated server for testing FreeBSD projects

[Cromulent]

I need a cheapish dedicated server to test some work I'm doing. I primarily want to test ZFS, bhyve, jails and day to day running of a server running the latest FreeBSD (I'm primarily a Linux person).

If I wanted to spin up say 5 virtual machines and sort networking out as well as ensuring ZFS works and to see how much CPU power I need to keep things running fast. What specs dedicated server would you rent? Best to assume that the virtual machines burst from time to time rather than being under constant pressure.

 

[SirDice]

I have a server with two 12 year old Xeon E5620 CPUs and 96GB of memory. It will do everything you want to do and more. So any recent server will be more than sufficient. Your only limitation is cost.

 

[Cromulent]

I have a server with two 12 year old Xeon E5620 CPUs and 96GB of memory. It will do everything you want to do and more. So any recent server will be more than sufficient. Your only limitation is cost.

Thank you very much! That makes things easier.

 

[SirDice]

When renting ask what exact hardware the server is. While CPU and memory are important you also want to make sure disk controllers and network interfaces are supported. FreeBSD certainly supports lots of server hardware but there might be some odd hardware that doesn't quite work.

 

[Cromulent]

When renting ask what exact hardware the server is. While CPU and memory are important you also want to make sure disk controllers and network interfaces are supported. FreeBSD certainly supports lots of server hardware but there might be some odd hardware that doesn't quite work.

Noted. Thank you.

 

[cracauer@]

Yeah, get an old Xeon system with registered memory (DDR4 registered is dirt cheap, you get 128 GB for $110 shipped) and eat up the electric power bill shutting it down when not in use.

I also use the semi-free Amazon EC2 instances on FreeBSD for many years, no problems. They also cost almost zero when shut down (you only pay for the disk storage then).

 

[Cromulent]

Yeah, get an old Xeon system with registered memory (DDR4 registered is dirt cheap, you get 128 GB for $110 shipped) and eat up the electric power bill shutting it down when not in use.

I also use the semi-free Amazon EC2 instances on FreeBSD for many years, no problems. They also cost almost zero when shut down (you only pay for the disk storage then).

Thank you! Going for older gen tech is probably the best way to go.

 

[astyle]

I need a cheapish dedicated server to test some work I'm doing. I primarily want to test ZFS, bhyve, jails and day to day running of a server running the latest FreeBSD (I'm primarily a Linux person).

If I wanted to spin up say 5 virtual machines and sort networking out as well as ensuring ZFS works and to see how much CPU power I need to keep things running fast. What specs dedicated server would you rent? Best to assume that the virtual machines burst from time to time rather than being under constant pressure.

From the post, I see two possible scenarios:

1. If you want up to 5 VMs at the same time on a single FreeBSD host, assume you need 8 GB of RAM, 64GB storage, and at least 0.5 MB/sec bandwidth - per VM. Which means the host needs to have 6 times as much metal as a single VM. You do the rest of the math - the host needs to have some metal for itself, too.
2. A less expensive scenario would be to only have enough metal to have 1 or 2 VMs running at the same time. You'd still need enough storage space and RAM, but same math for hardware specs applies.

 

[Cromulent]

From the post, I see two possible scenarios:

1. If you want up to 5 VMs at the same time on a single FreeBSD host, assume you need 8 GB of RAM, 64GB storage, and at least 0.5 MB/sec bandwidth - per VM. Which means the host needs to have 6 times as much metal as a single VM. You do the rest of the math - the host needs to have some metal for itself, too.
2. A less expensive scenario would be to only have enough metal to have 1 or 2 VMs running at the same time. You'd still need enough storage space and RAM, but same math for hardware specs applies.

It would have to be option one as I want to use the virtual machines to build a custom network between them which I can then use for a larger scale deployment.

 

[PMc]

I have a server with two 12 year old Xeon E5620 CPUs and 96GB of memory.

Yeah, those are cheap for rent - but one needs to be careful: at some point there is the "UG" issue. If the cpu doesn't support UG, it has difficulty running VM, and it is often unclear whether it does or does not. From what I know, 5620 does, 5520 doesn't.

 

[astyle]

It would have to be option one as I want to use the virtual machines to build a custom network between them which I can then use for a larger scale deployment.

Did you know that jail(8) - created jails are, for all intents and purposes, VMs, they can have their own IP addresses, and services like SSHd and httpd? Jails have very low memory requirements, you can build a network between them easy, even if you don't have the money to rent a lot of metal.

I was assuming full-blown VMs like VBox or bhyve.

 

[Cromulent]

Did you know that jail(8) - created jails are, for all intents and purposes, VMs, they can have their own IP addresses, and services like SSHd and httpd? Jails have very low memory requirements, you can build a network between them easy, even if you don't have the money to rent a lot of metal.

I was assuming full-blown VMs like VBox or bhyve.

Working on jails was one of my main intents but it was not the only intent. Jails will be great for lightweight tasks and I want to build a service around them but I'm also building an open source project and offering hosting for it as a paid addition. This would include root access so that would need bhyve.

So basically I'll be using both. Of course I might be missing something obvious so please let me know if I'm wrong.

 

[SirDice]

Yeah, those are cheap for rent - but one needs to be careful: at some point there is the "UG" issue. If the cpu doesn't support UG, it has difficulty running VM, and it is often unclear whether it does or does not. From what I know, 5620 does, 5520 doesn't.

Sure. That's good to know. So far bhyve(8) has been running fine. The point I was trying to make is that 12 year old server hardware could easily do the tasks. So anything, say 5 years old, would already outperform my old beast and thus be more than adequate for the job.

My old beast was cobbled together from surplus servers I got donated and some second hand things I got from ebay. It didn't cost me much, for the components. My electric bill on the other hand...

 

[Cromulent]

Thank you all!

 

[PMc]

Sure. That's good to know. So far bhyve(8) has been running fine. The point I was trying to make is that 12 year old server hardware could easily do the tasks. So anything, say 5 years old, would already outperform my old beast and thus be more than adequate for the job.

Yes, that's true. These machines are about 3-4 times slower than current hardware, and that is good enough for many tasks.

My old beast was cobbled together from surplus servers I got donated and some second hand things I got from ebay. It didn't cost me much, for the components. My electric bill on the other hand...

Ah, that one's not rented!
I have a (small) rented one from that age, doing my offsite-backups and DNS (and could do more). and so the luxury of getting real metal for less than a sufficiently sized VM would cost (that one is from the first line of intel cpus that did support "UnrestrictedGuest", like Yours).
For my own build I need something that can compile ports in acceptable time, and currently 10/20core haswell (found cheap on ebay ) does not feel enough anymore (rust everywhere, five(!) versions of llvm neened, plus the usual chromium etc.) - I could plugin a second one, but then cooling gets an issue.

 

[tingo]

For a home lab you can do this on a NUC or comparable computer. My bhyve host is

root@kg-vm3# sysctl hw.model;sysctl hw.physmem
hw.model: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N3000  @ 1.04GHz
hw.physmem: 16788877312

currently running 6 vms on it

root@kg-vm3# vm list | grep Running
music3  default    bhyveload  1    768M    -    Yes [4]  Running (3286)
proxy   default    bhyveload  2    1024M   -    Yes [5]  Running (2045)
trap2   default    bhyveload  1    256M    -    Yes [1]  Running (2352)
web     default    bhyveload  2    1280M   -    Yes [2]  Running (2775)
web2    default    bhyveload  2    2048M   -    Yes [3]  Running (3813)
wiki3   default    bhyveload  2    1408M   -    No       Running (21293)

Oh, I cheat a bit - the storage for the vm disks are a usb connected external hard drive.

 

[astyle]

This would include root access so that would need bhyve.

jails can have their own root account, if need be - or you can set up SSHd to allow root logins from host (not a Best Practice from a security standpoint), if need be.

Until I saw what tingo posted just now, I was going to push jails as an alternative that is not a metal resource hog, but still capable of nearly anything that bhyve offers. However, I do know that jails cannot straight-out run a Windows VM (while bhyve can). You can run VirtualBox (or bhyve) as a jailed process, but that's the limit for jails, IIRC. And then you need a ton of metal to keep up. But a straight jail or bhyve with a service and a bit of security detail - that doesn't need a lot of metal.

 

[Cromulent]

jails can have their own root account, if need be - or you can set up SSHd to allow root logins from host (not a Best Practice from a security standpoint), if need be.

Until I saw what tingo posted just now, I was going to push jails as an alternative that is not a metal resource hog, but still capable of nearly anything that bhyve offers. However, I do know that jails cannot straight-out run a Windows VM (while bhyve can). You can run VirtualBox (or bhyve) as a jailed process, but that's the limit for jails, IIRC. And then you need a ton of metal to keep up. But a straight jail or bhyve with a service and a bit of security detail - that doesn't need a lot of metal.

My plan was to use bhyve for traditional virtual machines and jails for ad hoc tasks that are too small for a proper VM but still need isolation.

 

[Alain De Vos]

Did you know that jail(8) - created jails are, for all intents and purposes, VMs, they can have their own IP addresses, and services like SSHd and httpd? Jails have very low memory requirements, you can build a network between them easy, even if you don't have the money to rent a lot of metal.

I was assuming full-blown VMs like VBox or bhyve.

The 11000 packages on my system are build in a jail in a jail.

 

[Cromulent]

First of all I apologise. I have been away for a little bit but I'm back and have a question. Following on from this thread:

Renting a dedicated server for testing FreeBSD projects

I need a cheapish dedicated server to test some work I'm doing. I primarily want to test ZFS, bhyve, jails and day to day running of a server running the latest FreeBSD (I'm primarily a Linux person). If I wanted to spin up say 5 virtual machines and sort networking out as well as ensuring ZFS...

forums.freebsd.org

I've decided I can't afford to buy an actual server so I'm looking to rent one.

I wanted to know what dedicated server providers are using? I've hunted around and it doesn't seem like there is much in the FreeBSD space, The best I've found so far is Hetzner but I'm sure there are plenty of other options I just can't find them. I just need ECC RAM, SSDs (can be SATA SSDs) and a mid range CPU with Intel VT-d and Intel VT-x (or AMD alternatives).

 

[drhowarddrfine]

You should have continued in your previous thread so we know what answers you already had rather than starting another where you'll get lots of duplicates.

 

[gtewallace]

First of all I apologise. I have been away for a little bit but I'm back and have a question. Following on from this thread:

Renting a dedicated server for testing FreeBSD projects

I need a cheapish dedicated server to test some work I'm doing. I primarily want to test ZFS, bhyve, jails and day to day running of a server running the latest FreeBSD (I'm primarily a Linux person). If I wanted to spin up say 5 virtual machines and sort networking out as well as ensuring ZFS...

forums.freebsd.org

I've decided I can't afford to buy an actual server so I'm looking to rent one.

I wanted to know what dedicated server providers are using? I've hunted around and it doesn't seem like there is much in the FreeBSD space, The best I've found so far is Hetzner but I'm sure there are plenty of other options I just can't find them. I just need ECC RAM, SSDs (can be SATA SSDs) and a mid range CPU with Intel VT-d and Intel VT-x (or AMD alternatives).

the Foundation has a recent positive experience with NetActuate.com

we rented a Supermicro H12SSW-NT
CPU: Epyc 7402p
64GB RAM (can be upgraded up to 512GB)
1x 1gpbs network uplink
IPMI access via openvpn

 

[Cromulent]

You should have continued in your previous thread so we know what answers you already had rather than starting another where you'll get lots of duplicates.

Ah. Sorry. You are quite right.

the Foundation has a recent positive experience with NetActuate.com

we rented a Supermicro H12SSW-NT
CPU: Epyc 7402p
64GB RAM (can be upgraded up to 512GB)
1x 1gpbs network uplink
IPMI access via openvpn

Thank you!