Cheap dedicated server

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2007
Posts
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Location
England
I'm looking for a cheap dedicated server to do testing and programming on. I won't be doing any production stuff on it.

The only real requirements are that it needs 32GBs of RAM (or more) and the ability to install different operating systems so something like IPMI or iDRAC or whatever. Location doesn't matter.

Ideally I'd like to get a dedicated server without a setup fee but realise this is probably unrealistic.
 
Semple said:
Any particular reason you're looking at something hosted as opposed to running some compute at home?
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Yep. My computer is a Mac and runs on Apple Silicon (ARM64) and I need to test on AMD64.

Edit: Oh and my computer doesn't support nested virtualisation so I can't test running VMs inside a Parallels VM.
 
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Cromulent said:
Yep. My computer is a Mac and runs on Apple Silicon (ARM64) and I need to test on AMD64.

Edit: Oh and my computer doesn't support nested virtualisation so I can't test running VMs inside a Parallels VM.
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Thought I'd ask :) , as the obvious would have been running something at home. Although if it's something you plan to do for several years you might find the costs of buying the hardware and the home leccy costs being less than the same duration of a hosting service.
 
Semple said:
Thought I'd ask :) , as the obvious would have been running something at home. Although if it's something you plan to do for several years you might find the costs of buying the hardware and the home leccy costs being less than the same duration of a hosting service.
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Problem with that is I live in a shared house so everything needs to fit in a single room. If I had the space I'd definitely get a PC.
 
Worth looking at Kimsurfi, it's OVH's "cheap" dedi offerings although the boxes tend to be more on the lower end of things.
Otherwise you could trawl through LowEndBox as i have in the past (a fair few years ago) found dedi boxes there.

Does it have to be a dedi though? As a lot of VPS boxes will do what you're after with the ability to install different OS's (via SolusVM or similar).
 
visibleman said:
Worth looking at Kimsurfi, it's OVH's "cheap" dedi offerings although the boxes tend to be more on the lower end of things.
Otherwise you could trawl through LowEndBox as i have in the past (a fair few years ago) found dedi boxes there.

Does it have to be a dedi though? As a lot of VPS boxes will do what you're after with the ability to install different OS's (via SolusVM or similar).
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Yeah it does need to be a dedi unfortunately as I need to be able to run VMs on it.
 
If you have the resources on your Mac you can easily emulate x86 architecture via QEMU or any of the QEMU wrappers, UTM being a fairly common choice.

What are you specifically looking to emulate, most people overspec and overcomplicate things, especially for home stuff.
 
Throrik said:
If you have the resources on your Mac you can easily emulate x86 architecture via QEMU or any of the QEMU wrappers, UTM being a fairly common choice.

What are you specifically looking to emulate, most people overspec and overcomplicate things, especially for home stuff.
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Thank you. Unfortunately I need to be able to test making virtual machines using bhyve and I don't think the M1 supports nested virtualisation so I'll need a dedicated server to do this stuff.
 
Cromulent said:
Thank you. Unfortunately I need to be able to test making virtual machines using bhyve and I don't think the M1 supports nested virtualisation so I'll need a dedicated server to do this stuff.
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I'd grab a cheap as chips n100 or n105 minipc and install FreeBSD on it. Otherwise you're generally going to be having to spend a decent amount to run something bare metal, bear in mind most providers like Vultr who have a FreeBSD offering are running it via a virtualisation layer which is never gonna be amazing, unless you go for bare metal which is extremely costly. N100 won't take up any more space, is pretty much silent and will run Bhyve perfectly. Case in point, it's running in my homelab at the moment.
 
Throrik said:
I'd grab a cheap as chips n100 or n105 minipc and install FreeBSD on it. Otherwise you're generally going to be having to spend a decent amount to run something bare metal, bear in mind most providers like Vultr who have a FreeBSD offering are running it via a virtualisation layer which is never gonna be amazing, unless you go for bare metal which is extremely costly. N100 won't take up any more space, is pretty much silent and will run Bhyve perfectly. Case in point, it's running in my homelab at the moment.
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That is a good shout. I never knew mini PCs were so cheap. I could plug it into my TV and use my RPi keyboard and mouse to get it up and running and then once I've configured it move it somewhere out of the way. I think I'll do that.

Thank you!
 
Do you need it running permanently or just for testing? Hetzner server auctions can be rented by the hour with no setup fees.

If permanent keep an eye on the upcoming black friday deals at OVH, last year I picked up a E3-1245 v5, 64GB RAM, 2x 500GB SSD from OVH for £10/mo
 
PaulM said:
Do you need it running permanently or just for testing? Hetzner server auctions can be rented by the hour with no setup fees.

If permanent keep an eye on the upcoming black friday deals at OVH, last year I picked up a E3-1245 v5, 64GB RAM, 2x 500GB SSD from OVH for £10/mo
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Cool. Thanks. I'll look into those options.
 
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