VPS friends of FreeBSD?

I have a small FreeBSD 12.0 VPS hosted on vultr. It's been running for a bit more than a year and I've always been very happy with it, can recommend. I plan on renting some more on Vultr too, I don't see a reason to change for now. The support has been nice too and efficient too.
 
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At DigitalOcean, our mission is to empower our customers by providing them with simple, reliable cloud infrastructure and we couldn’t be prouder to support customers and businesses like you developing world-class applications. We’re reaching out to let you know that we are phasing out our FreeBSD Droplet.

Starting July 1, 2022, FreeBSD Droplets will no longer be available. In order to simplify our cloud offerings and refocus our efforts on developing and maintaining distributions that our customers use most, we’re ending support for new FreeBSD Droplets.

Beginning June 1, 2022, you will no longer be able to create FreeBSD-based Droplets through the cloud control panel. You will still be able to create FreeBSD-based Droplets through the API until July 1, 2022, but after July 1, 2022, only legacy FreeBSD Droplets will remain on the platform.

Rest assured: Existing FreeBSD Droplets and FreeBSD Droplets created from May 1, 2022–July 1, 2022 will continue to work as usual despite these changes to our offerings.

You’ll also still be able to create Droplets using FreeBSD after July 1 by using DigitalOcean’s custom images feature to import a virtual disk image of FreeBSD OS. Custom images are free to upload and charged at $0.05 per GB per month to store.
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The point in my mind is why should I use any (X)BSD virtualized into a Linux host?

Doesn't make sense, that is why I am almost convinced to use openbsd.amsterdam despite costs more (5€ vs 5$); doesn't have a nice webUI like DO, Linode or Vultr but only a brutal SSH access.

OpenBSD is not FreeBSD, but for my specific use case probably is better since I do not require any FreeBSD features, thus the lesser I have to config the better.

Would be nice to have a FreeBSD garden for FreeBSD folks but today Linux is everywhere just because is became another marketing label such as Cloud, there not is any technical reason behind.
 
JozanOfAstora said:
I have a small FreeBSD 12.0 VPS hosted on vultr. It's been running for a bit more than a year and I've always been very happy with it, can recommend. I plan on renting some more on Vultr too, I don't see a reason to change for now. The support has been nice too and efficient too.
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Until they decide to empower their customers removing the FreeBSD, which I hope not, but I won't trust such providers anymore.
 
covacat said:
my.frantech.ca if you want cheap storage too (mostly sold out, prepare your scripts to order :))
arubacloud.it
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I think Aruba has been my very first provider for my very first HTML website...

PMc said:
Yeah, I read that today. I didn't understand it fully - but their webpage says that up to december, they had offered you to buy a licence from them that would give you the permission to use FreeBSD.

Thats to the gods, back in 1995 when I started to use FreeBSD, they weren't there yet to give or not give me the permission. Computers didn't require driver's licences back then.
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sko said:
I haven't received anything in that regard yet from digitalocean despite running several FreeBSD droplets... (and exclusively running FreeBSD droplets for several years now)

[...]
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Actually you can continue to use or import via API the FreeBSD image, but it becomes a second class citizen.

Since I don't have any vital service online I simply decided to not give money to a company that does not support FreeBSD as first class OS.
 
RootBSD should had the same syndrome of DO, since it became Netactuate.

Almost same destiny for bsdvm:
BSDvm is shutting down its VPS and cloud hosting and will transform into BSD and Linux hosting review service
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freezr said:
RootBSD should had the same syndrome of DO, since it became Netactuate.
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I was desperately searching for that BSD-centric hoster that even had BSD in its name - turns out I was looking for RootBSD. Too bad they also transformed into one of those "standardized-KVM-stack-with-slightly-different-webUI" hosters. I really fear the day when a critical issue in that stack surfaces and 70% of all VPS hosters go dark...

I really hoped smartOS /w bhyve would gain some traction in that market, especially because it is excellently engineered and designed for automated orchestration from the ground up. Instead of fiddling dozends of loose ends together you basically just™ have to built a frontend that talks to the APIs that are already in place everywhere. But with most hosters being rather linux-centric, there's always the insurmountable hurdle of the NIH-syndrome of the linux-folks, that already prevented adoption of great things in the past (see dtrace or proper containerization like zones or jails...)
 
it is a shame, but I would not chase Linux on its field.

Any BSD foundation should focus primarily on Schools and Academics, produce a lot of papers and researches, this is the only viable strategy against the linux-monoculture.
 
What the heck, I just did a bunch of work on my servers this week.

But, wait, this looks like you can still run the instances, they just won't be providing the images. Isn't this just a "hey, do your own support" sort of thing, then?
 
msplsh said:
What the heck, I just did a bunch of work on my servers this week.

But, wait, this looks like you can still run the instances, they just won't be providing the images. Isn't this just a "hey, do your own support" sort of thing, then?
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More or less...
 
msplsh said:
What the heck, I just did a bunch of work on my servers this week.

But, wait, this looks like you can still run the instances, they just won't be providing the images. Isn't this just a "hey, do your own support" sort of thing, then?
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It's some crockish workaround. The site they recommend doesn't even have a supported version of Freebsd 12. I'd go to AWS or GCP if I was interested in being a second-class citizen.
 
Both Amazon (a.k.a. AWS and EC2) and Google a.k.a. GCP) sell virtual FreeBSD machines. Both have a free "low usage" tier, where a small instance doesn't cost anything. According to their web sites, Microsoft (Azure) andIBM Cloud also have it, but I haven't tried those.

Disclaimer: After a year of completely free usage, my Google virtual FreeBSD machine actually does cost a little bit. It turns out network traffic to and from some high-cost areas is not free, and I pay typically $0.08 per month for packets being sent by hackers which die in my firewall. So I do see regular charges.
 
ralphbsz said:
Both Amazon (a.k.a. AWS and EC2) and Google a.k.a. GCP) sell virtual FreeBSD machines. Both have a free "low usage" tier, where a small instance doesn't cost anything. I supposed Microsoft (Azure) also has it, but I haven't tried it.

Disclaimer: After a year of completely free usage, my Google virtual FreeBSD machine actually does cost a little bit. It turns out network traffic to and from some high-cost areas is not free, and I pay typically $0.08 per month for packets being sent by hackers which die in my firewall. So I do see regular charges.
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I wouldn't use any Amason or Gugl service not even if they would pay me...
They already have in their hands everything we cannot continue to give them power...
 
msplsh said:
I like Digital Ocean enough to work on making the images work.
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Whatever works for you. I've had too many experiences like Sko's where the knee-jerk reaction whenever there's a problem is "install a supported OS and then we'll look into it" -- even when it's obviously a hardware problem like a bad HD.
 
Jose said:
Whatever works for you. I've had too many experiences like Sko's where the knee-jerk reaction whenever there's a problem is "install a supported OS and then we'll look into it" -- even when it's obviously a hardware problem like a bad HD.
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On a VPS that risk is rather minimal, but yes - it's always a bonus if the hoster supports the OS or at least shows enough competence to take valid complaints seriously no matter what OS is running.
Despite nagging about the old-but-current drawbacks like blocked port 25 on IPv6, no PTR/reverse records on IPv6 and a broken login form when they changed their UI a few years ago, I haven't had to deal with their support - so I don't know what to expect now with FreeBSD support being dropped.

I don't think I will cancel my account with them immediately, but for new VPS I will surely look into the alternatives. There are a lot of new contenders in the market since I choose to go with DO several years ago, now netcup or Contabo look like real alternatives - at least for VPS instances. The installation routine via mfsBSD and some auto-config-magic via e.g. REST API will be very similar for every hoster that doesn't support FreeBSD or whose images come with lots of bloat (e.g. python for some full blown cloud-init shenanigans if all you need is some IP auto-configuration). So There's not much to gain here except maybe setting a statement by showing there is actual interest and demand in FreeBSD VPS/Servers.
For DNS I don't see any benefits in moving away from DO yet - I use their API a lot, especially for certificate validation via acme.sh/letsencrypt. Migrating that would be a tedious task and I definitely know better things to spend my time with.
 
freezr said:
I am looking for others providers that have a reliable history in supporting FreeBSD, please any suggestion and advice is very welcomed!
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I made extremely good experiences with Tilaa.com: https://www.tilaa.com/
They are based in the Netherlands.

I ran anywhere from 1 to 24 FreeBSD based VPSs at Tilaa over the course of the past 10 years. Never had a single complaint. It works extremely well, their support is awesome etc.
 
I first referred to Tilaa.nl in this thread and I was sure one or more members (SirDice most likely would be the first) will root for her too.
Tilaa is good. I started my journey into FreeBSD with the beautiful people there - Sven and co. I guess they have a few Tilaa employees in the forum.

I stopped using them over five years ago in favour of in-house hosting.

Liteserver.nl is also good and cheaper, I suppose. They cater for a specific niche like backup with HDD. I have not used DO in over a decade ago.
 
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