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Guides and measurements on VPS hosting, Docker, Proxmox, DNS, and game servers.

October 31, 2026

Forgejo on Docker with signup locked

Forgejo 17.0.1 answered healthz in 1.955 seconds and sat at 110 MiB. Signup stayed closed. A one-file push took 0.324 seconds.

NodeRings Inc.

October 30, 2026What one Proxmox node costs per sold GB of RAMA €72 auction node with 64 GB of RAM has to earn €1.61 per sold gigabyte at 70% full. The same rent at 30% full is €3.75.NodeRings Inc.
October 29, 2026Snapshots are not backups: restore times measuredRollback restored an 8 GiB file in 2 seconds. The local archive took 21 seconds to write and 53 to 100 seconds to put back.NodeRings Inc.
October 28, 2026Cloud egress fees vs unmetered: the 2026 maths1,024 GB out of AWS is $83.16. A Hetzner CX23 includes 20 TB at €0 of traffic, and a full 1 Gbit port moves 324 TB in 30 days.NodeRings Inc.
October 27, 2026Why friends cannot join: NAT and port forwardingA drop on TCP 25565 timed out in 2.002 seconds. The forward on that port returned ok, and UDP 2456 needed a rule of its own.NodeRings Inc.
October 26, 2026Why Pterodactyl hosts hesitate to share an API keyWHMCS wants your Pterodactyl Application key in its password field. That key can create users and servers, and it keeps working after a password reset.NodeRings Inc.
October 25, 2026WireGuard on Ubuntu 24.04wireguard-tools 1.0.20210914 on Ubuntu 24.04.5. UDP 51820 allowed, handshake 3 seconds ago. iperf3 median 895.5 Mbit/s on one bridge.NodeRings Inc.
October 24, 2026Windows on KVM: VirtIO, cloudbase-init, licenceA 4 vCPU Windows guest bills 8 core licences, €26.40 Standard. The lab VM started on x86-64-v2-AES with VirtIO SCSI and configdrive2.NodeRings Inc.
October 23, 2026Proxmox VE 9: what changed, and what to testProxmox VE 9.2 uses kernel 7.0 and can migrate HA guests. Test the template, firewall, backup, and one live migrate on one node first.NodeRings Inc.
October 22, 2026IPAM for a small host, and how a /24 leaksGuest A on a bridged /24 answered ARP for 192.0.2.11. A /24 holds 254 host addresses, a /32 holds one, and the filter dropped a 28-byte spoof.NodeRings Inc.
October 21, 2026Benchmark a VPS in ten minutes with YABS and nr-livevalYABS v2026-10-31 finished in 2 min 49 sec. 4k mixed IOPS were 242.8k, and nr-liveval scored this KVM guest 1413 against a 1000 reference.NodeRings Inc.
October 20, 2026OpenVPN on Ubuntu 24.04: one client, then a pingOpenVPN 2.6.19 on Ubuntu 24.04.5. One client at 10.8.0.2, AES-256-GCM. Three 10-second iperf3 runs, median 192.1 Mbit/s, once UDP 1194 was open.NodeRings Inc.
October 19, 2026An empty VPS node is a bill with no revenueIdle RAM still sits on the colo and power invoice. Hosts already debate margins in public. A channel fee only makes sense on a sale you did not already have.NodeRings Inc.
October 18, 2026What a game-server sponsorship costsOne public catalog prices a 30-day Discord post from $2.64 to $421.77. The typical offer is $21.10. A creator's fee is the rate card you ask for.NodeRings Inc.
October 17, 2026What billing costs a 250-client host in 2026WHMCS Plus is $34.95, and the Proxmox module is $53.95. At $4 a client, a 15% marketplace fee passes that $88.90 stack at 149 clients.NodeRings Inc.
October 16, 2026Install Jellyfin with Docker on a VPSJellyfin 12.4 on Docker: 156.8 MiB idle, Direct Play on one H.264 file, transcoding off. Compose, Caddy, and a restore.NodeRings Inc.
October 15, 2026AdGuard Home on a VPS without an open resolverAdGuard Home v0.107.80 on Docker: 52.0 MiB idle, DNS on WireGuard only, a blocked query and a clean one. DoH stays optional.NodeRings Inc.
October 14, 2026A provider-side firewall does what ufw cannotufw 0.36.2 denied tcp/8080 and counted 0 packets. nginx:alpine returned 200. A bridge drop took guest softirq from 78.5% to 0 on a SYN flood.NodeRings Inc.
October 13, 2026Meilisearch on a 1 GB VPSMeilisearch v1.56.1 on Docker: 19,653 movies under a 1 GB cap in production, 271.3 MiB indexed idle, port 7700 on loopback 127.0.0.1, master key, snapshot.NodeRings Inc.
October 12, 2026Why your Proxmox API token should never leave the clusterBilling modules ask you to paste a Proxmox API token into WHMCS. Privilege separation helps, but the real question is where that secret lives after you create it.NodeRings Inc.
October 11, 2026Authentik on a VPS: one login for the stackAuthentik 2026.8.5: 9000 only on 127.0.0.1, generated secrets, bootstrap admin, one OAuth2 Application, Caddy reverse proxy. Idle 965.7 MiB stack.NodeRings Inc.
October 11, 2026RustDesk server on a VPSPin RustDesk Server 1.1.16: TCP 21115 to 21117 and UDP 21116, the public key in both clients, idle cgroup medians of 2.2 MiB for hbbs and 1.0 MiB for hbbr.NodeRings Inc.
October 10, 2026k3s on a single VPSk3s v1.37.2+k3s1 on one node: Traefik disabled, kubeconfig mode 600, one whoami Deployment, Caddy proxies to NodePort. Idle 1371.3 MiB k3s.service.NodeRings Inc.
October 9, 2026Changedetection on a VPSChangedetection 0.60.10: 5000 only on 127.0.0.1, SALTED_PASS login required, one watch fetched, Caddy reverse proxy. Idle 60.0 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 9, 2026Stirling-PDF on a VPSStirling-PDF 3.2.2: 8080 only on 127.0.0.1, change admin/stirling after first login, idle at 1116.5 MiB cgroup. Keep login on for a public hostname.NodeRings Inc.
October 8, 2026ntfy on a VPSntfy 2.37.2: 2586 only on 127.0.0.1, deny-all, anonymous publish forbidden (403), one authenticated publish and subscribe, Caddy. Idle 13.4 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 8, 2026WireGuard vs Tailscale vs Headscale on a VPSTailscale 1.104.4 on Headscale 0.29.7. Direct iperf put 66 bytes on the hub. Kernel WireGuard through it: 722 Mbps. The relay: 108.8 Mbps.NodeRings Inc.
October 7, 2026Syncthing on a VPSSyncthing 2.1.7: one folder under /var/syncthing, GUI only on 127.0.0.1:8384, firewall allows 22000/tcp and 22000/udp. Idle at 27.4 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 7, 2026Umami on a VPSUmami 3.4.1: 3000 only on 127.0.0.1, admin/umami changed, one website and tracker, Caddy reverse_proxy. Idle 220.0 MiB umami + 78.7 MiB Postgres.NodeRings Inc.
October 6, 2026Audiobookshelf on a VPSAudiobookshelf 2.37.2: 13378 only on 127.0.0.1, first root user, one library scanned, Caddy reverse_proxy for websockets. Idle 51.6 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 5, 2026Ghost on a VPSGhost 6.74.0 on Docker: 2368 only on 127.0.0.1, MySQL 8, one url, one published post behind Caddy. Idle 126.9 MiB ghost + 567.4 MiB MySQL.NodeRings Inc.
October 5, 2026Paperless-ngx on a VPS with PostgresPaperless-ngx 3.4.2 on Postgres 18: 8000 only on 127.0.0.1, DB password changed from paperless, one PDF consumed. Idle about 1185.9 MiB across webserver, db, and broker.NodeRings Inc.
October 4, 2026PocketBase on a VPSPocketBase 0.40.6: 8090 only on 127.0.0.1, superuser from the CLI, Caddy read_timeout 360s, pb_data copied after a stop. Idle 7.3 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 3, 2026code-server on a VPScode-server 4.144.0: 8080 only on 127.0.0.1, argon2 HASHED_PASSWORD, /healthz without a login, one workspace mount. Idle at 539.0 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
October 3, 2026OpenClaw on a $5 VPSOpenClaw 2026.10.9 on a 1 GB guest. The gateway listened on 127.0.0.1:18789 at 656,808 kB RSS, with 10,188 kB still available.NodeRings Inc.
October 2, 2026Woodpecker CI on the Forgejo hostWoodpecker v3.20.1 + Forgejo: OAuth, loopback UI, one green pipeline, shared network, Caddy. Idle 28.7 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
September 30, 2026Order the game from the host you wantPlayers pick a provider and a game. NodeRings runs the panel, from power and files to graphs that go back 30 days.NodeRings Inc.
September 26, 2026CVE-2026-98432: the Proxmox kernel to bootKernel 7.0.14-24-pve and older miss CVE-2026-98432. 7.0.14-25 and 7.0.14-26 have the fix. uname -r, full-upgrade, then reboot.NodeRings Inc.
September 25, 2026The registrar still trusts the old keyHow DNSSEC checks the parent's hash of your key, and why a leftover DS at the registrar returns SERVFAIL after the nameservers change.NodeRings Inc.
September 25, 2026GeoDNS follows the resolverHow GeoDNS chooses an address from the resolver that sent the query, and from a client prefix when that resolver includes one.NodeRings Inc.
September 22, 2026How NodeRings worksA marketplace for infrastructure. Virtual machines and game servers today, with dedicated servers and sandbox VMs on the way.NodeRings Inc.
September 19, 2026ZFS vs LVM vs Ceph: what survives a dead diskA 64 GB node caps ZFS at 6.4 GiB. Ceph wants three nodes, 12 OSDs, and 10 Gbps. LVM-thin stays on the one box. Pick by which failure you can afford.NodeRings Inc.
September 17, 2026Incus on Ubuntu: one container, then a VMIncus 6.0.0 on Ubuntu 24.04. Container launch 12.43 s (3.19 s cached), VM --vm 19.27 s (3.41 s). Memory 22.77 MiB vs 193.96 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
September 16, 2026Game server hosting price per GB: 20 hosts comparedShockbyte Emerald 8 GB lists $31.99 and $22.39 with a recurring 30% code. Apex renews at $27.99. Compare renewal $/GB, then the NodeRings marketplace.NodeRings Inc.
September 15, 2026Minecraft lag: TPS vs ping, and reading a spark report20 TPS means each tick finished in 50 ms. Idle Paper 26.3 MSPT med 0.09 ms; hoppers raised it to 1.58 ms. Read spark before you buy RAM.NodeRings Inc.
September 14, 2026The hosting price-change log, 2019 to 2026cPanel extra accounts went from $0.20 to $0.55, WHMCS Plus from $18.95 to $34.95, Hetzner CCX13 from €15.99 to €42.99. The table says who kept it.NodeRings Inc.
September 13, 2026Pterodactyl vs Pelican vs AMP vs Crafty in 2026Four game panels pinned: Pterodactyl 1.15.2, Pelican rc.2, AMP's resale rule, Crafty 4.11. Pick by licence, daemon, and games.NodeRings Inc.
September 12, 2026CS2 dedicated server: tick rate and what to buyCS2 stays at 64 tick. Our SteamCMD app 730 tree used 69G; de_dust2 idled near 746 MiB RSS. Buy a fast core, disk, and route.NodeRings Inc.
September 11, 2026WordPress hosting vs a plain VPS for WordPressManaged WordPress sells labor and defaults. A plain VPS sells root: our Compose lab idled near 197 MiB with 45.1 ms warm homepage TTFB.NodeRings Inc.
September 10, 2026What a dedicated IP buys you: mail, rate limits, and SSLSNI puts many HTTPS certs on one IP. Pay for a dedicated address when mail reputation or IP allowlists are yours alone.NodeRings Inc.
September 9, 2026Hermes Agent on a $5 VPSHermes Agent v0.22.5 on a 1 GB guest. The web build kept a 4096 MB heap, and the kernel killed node at 593,212 kB anon-rss.NodeRings Inc.
September 8, 2026WordPress on Ubuntu with Docker Compose, end to endWordPress 7.1.4 + MariaDB 11.4 in Compose: pinned digests, loopback 8089, installer finished, idle 98.4 + 89.7 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
September 7, 2026Valkey on a VPSValkey 9.1.3: 6379 only on 127.0.0.1, requirepass, maxmemory 256mb, one SET/GET, RDB backup. Idle 3.4 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
September 6, 2026LEMP on a fresh VPS: Nginx, MariaDB, PHP, CertbotUbuntu 24.04 LEMP: Nginx 1.24, MariaDB 10.11, PHP 8.3-FPM. Idle MemoryCurrent 6.6 / 11.9 / 144.7 MiB, phpinfo over FastCGI, Certbot ready.NodeRings Inc.
September 5, 2026Node.js app on Ubuntu with systemd, not foreverNode 20 under systemd: 6.7 MiB MemoryCurrent, 40.9 MiB VmRSS, EnvironmentFile, journalctl, and a kill/−9 restart with no forever daemon.NodeRings Inc.
September 4, 2026OpenRouter pricing: 5.5% on the creditsThe models API returned 451 models. gpt-5-mini lists at $0.25 per million prompt tokens, and a $100 Standard credit purchase carries a $5.50 fee.NodeRings Inc.
September 3, 2026CyberPanel vs Hestia vs aaPanel on a 2 GB VPSMeasured idle RAM on three 2 GB Ubuntu guests: Hestia 452 MiB with Nginx, CyberPanel 543 MiB, aaPanel 563 MiB before LNMP.NodeRings Inc.
September 2, 2026Discord bot on a VPS with PM2: idle RSS and uptimediscord.js 14.25.1 under PM2 6.0.14: 70.5 MiB idle VmRSS, PM2 daemon 53.5 MiB, kill −9 restart proof, ecosystem.config and loopback health.NodeRings Inc.
September 1, 2026Plex on a VPS: bandwidth bill vs a home NASPlex on Docker: 241.9 MiB idle, one Direct Play sample, and 360 stream-hours at 5, 25, and 60 Mbps priced on AWS and an unmetered plan.NodeRings Inc.
August 30, 2026TensorFold on a $5 VPS: the binary wants CUDATensorFold 1.2.1 on a 1 GB guest. info printed a 3.63 GiB memory floor, serve exited on no CUDA driver, and max RSS was 247,040 kB.NodeRings Inc.
August 26, 2026Authelia vs Authentik: SSO for a five-service stackAuthelia 4.39.28 idled near 53 MiB with Redis; Authentik 2026.8.5 near 832 MiB. Five lab hostnames behind Caddy forward-auth all returned 302 to login.NodeRings Inc.
August 25, 2026ZFS vs LVM-thin vs Ceph: IOPS and RAM measuredThe same guest did 248,000 4k read IOPS on LVM-thin, 186,000 on ZFS, and 72,000 on Ceph. A 64 GB node caps the ZFS ARC at 6.4 GiB.NodeRings Inc.
August 20, 2026AgentGateway on a $5 VPS: switch models yourselfAgentGateway 1.7.0 on a 1 GB guest. Model strong hit the second mock, a Luhn-valid card returned HTTP 400, and VmRSS stayed at 44,124 kB.NodeRings Inc.
August 19, 2026Homarr vs Glance vs Homepage: start-page RSS and load timeGlance v0.8.7 idled near 6 MiB, Homepage v2.7.0 near 173 MiB, Homarr v2.11.1 near 206 MiB. Warm HTML load on loopback: 0.46 ms, 8 ms, and 44 ms.NodeRings Inc.
August 16, 2026Synapse on a VPSSynapse v1.163.0 + Postgres: 8008 on loopback, registration off, one admin, Caddy. Idle 249.7 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
August 15, 2026Docker Compose on a VPS: the production checklistFifteen Compose settings for one production VPS. UFW denied 5432, nmap said open, and a drop in front of the guest made it filtered.NodeRings Inc.
August 12, 2026Easypanel vs Coolify: Docker UI RAM and deploysSame 2 GB Ubuntu guests: Easypanel idled near 102 MiB of containers, Coolify 4.6.0 near 561 MiB. One whoami deploy hit HTTP 200 in about 1.9 s vs 4.6 s.NodeRings Inc.
August 10, 2026A Minecraft Paper server as a systemd servicePaper 26.3 build 237 on a 4 GB guest. The 4G heap failed to map 4294967296 bytes, and the unit reached Done in 16.326s on a 2G heap.NodeRings Inc.
August 6, 2026Cloudron on a VPS: apps with backups, measuredCloudron 10.1.6 after cloudron-setup: ~1042 MiB host used idle, three platform containers ~486 MiB, one filesystem backup ~2.1 s / ~432 KiB before any App Store app.NodeRings Inc.
August 5, 2026Caddy with automatic HTTPS: the leaf lasts 12 hoursCaddy 2.11.7 on a 1 GB guest. The local leaf for app.internal lasts 12 hours, and a name with no DNS record got NXDOMAIN from Let's Encrypt.NodeRings Inc.
July 31, 2026Uptime Kuma with alerts: 73.805s to the webhookUptime Kuma 2.5.9 on a 2 GB guest. The down webhook arrived 73.805 seconds after docker stop, and the up webhook arrived 11.437 seconds after docker start.NodeRings Inc.
July 30, 2026CasaOS on a VPS: the homelab UI taxCasaOS v0.4.15 after get.casaos.io: ~322 MiB idle across gateway, app-management, storage, rclone, and friends, before any App Store app.NodeRings Inc.
July 26, 2026Twelve thousand SSH attempts, counted properly12,000 SSH connections from one address wrote 60,000 auth.log lines. With port 22 dropped, sshd logged zero lines for the next 80.NodeRings Inc.
July 24, 2026Navidrome on a VPSNavidrome 0.64.2: 4533 only on 127.0.0.1, admin created, one track scanned, Caddy. Idle 16.3 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
July 23, 2026Netdata on a VPS: what 3 percent CPU buys youNetdata Agent v2.12.3 on Docker: quiet-window median 3.39% CPU, ~90 MiB VmRSS, ~137 MiB docker mem, UI bound to 127.0.0.1:19999.NodeRings Inc.
July 21, 2026Five paid tools, one VM, the year of costNotion, Zapier, Make, and Airtable list $743.88 for one seat for a year. PostHog stays at $0. An 8 GB guest idled the replacements at 1,633.6 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
July 17, 2026Sentry self-hosted: the ingest tax on a small VPSSelf-hosted Sentry 26.10.1 idled near 12.6 GiB across 53 containers. Official docs want 16 GB RAM. A 4–8 GB VPS does not carry this compose.NodeRings Inc.
July 16, 2026Free Minecraft on a cloud trial, and the lagThe 1024M heap on a 1 GB guest was killed at 789,080 kB RSS. On a 4 GB guest that heap held 20.0 TPS, median tick 22.3 ms.NodeRings Inc.
July 11, 2026There is no DNS propagationThe nameserver had the new address in 0.017 seconds. Eight caches kept the old one until the TTL they stored ran out, the last at 60.5 seconds.NodeRings Inc.
July 10, 2026Plausible vs Umami: events per second on 1 GBSame-host ingest lab under a 1 GB memory ceiling: Umami 3.4.1 hit 178 events/s with no OOM; Plausible CE v3.2.1 idled ~615 MiB and OOM'd under concurrent POSTs.NodeRings Inc.
July 6, 2026PTR records and why VPS mail lands in spamNine of ten public MX addresses had a matching PTR. Outlook's five MX addresses were NXDOMAIN. Gmail's block for that miss is 550 5.7.25.NodeRings Inc.
July 4, 2026Collabora or OnlyOffice with Nextcloud: RAM floorMeasured idle RAM: Nextcloud 31 alone ~268 MiB, plus Collabora CODE ~759 MiB total, plus OnlyOffice Docs 9 ~1030 MiB. Vendor 1 GB / 4 GB guides vs quiet containers.NodeRings Inc.
July 2, 2026Listmonk on a VPSListmonk v6.2.0: app on 127.0.0.1, Postgres password replaced, bootstrap admin, one list, Caddy. Idle 126.2 MiB app+db.NodeRings Inc.
July 1, 2026What fail2ban and CrowdSec each blocked in 30 daysThis host logged 4 invalid SSH users in 30 days and 0 failed passwords. fail2ban refused the fifth try. CrowdSec answered until the bouncer.NodeRings Inc.
June 27, 2026Seafile vs Nextcloud: sync CPU and disk for 100 GBSame-host lab: Nextcloud 31 WebDAV vs Seafile CE 12 api2. 2000 small files, one 400 MiB blob, CPU, idle RAM, and a linear scale to 100 GiB first sync.NodeRings Inc.
June 26, 2026Test a route from outside with RIPE AtlasRIPE Atlas measurements 1001 and 10001 to k-root, twenty probes. Three IPv4 pings were 0 of 3. Probe 910 got a SOA back in 18.303 ms.NodeRings Inc.
June 21, 2026Five checks before you prepay a year to a new host25 of 569 LowEndBox offers later deadpooled. Read the domain date, the IP's ASN, and the two nameserver addresses before a year is paid.NodeRings Inc.
June 20, 2026Outline wiki on a VPSSelf-host Outline 1.12.0 with Postgres, Redis, and OIDC: no local passwords, URL match, local or S3 files, idle ~358 MiB. Notion-shaped docs on your VPS.NodeRings Inc.
June 16, 2026What 4 vCPU means on EPYC 9004 vs Xeon E5Four dedicated vCPUs are two physical cores. Geekbench 6 lists an EPYC 9554 at 1,821 single-core and an E5-2680 v4 at 993. The 9654 cell prints 0.NodeRings Inc.
June 14, 2026BookStack on a VPSSelf-host BookStack 26.09.2 with MariaDB: APP_KEY, matching APP_URL, 6875 on loopback, /status all true, stack idle ~146 MiB. Docs as books on your VPS.NodeRings Inc.
June 11, 2026PBS vs vzdump vs snapshots: restore timesA qm rollback of the 16 GiB disk finished in 2 seconds. vzdump restore took 60, PBS 4.2.8 took 59, and the sha256 matched every time.NodeRings Inc.
June 9, 2026Healthchecks on a VPSHealthchecks v5.0.3: 8000 only on 127.0.0.1, SECRET_KEY set, one check pinged green, Caddy. Idle 380.9 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
June 7, 2026Jitsi on a 4 GB VPS: one call, CPU and bandwidthDocker Jitsi Meet stable-11248-3 on a 4 GB-class box: PUBLIC_URL, UDP 10000, ~387 MiB idle stack, and a one-call SFU bandwidth table from handbook bitrates.NodeRings Inc.
June 6, 2026Ryzen 9000 vs EPYC vs Xeon for game serversMinecraft's tick budget is 50 ms, on one server thread. A Ryzen 9 9950X bases at 4.3 GHz and an EPYC 9555P at 3.2, and the MSPT cells are blank.NodeRings Inc.
June 1, 2026Hytale server hosting: what the server needsHytale's manual asks for Java 25, 4 GB, and UDP 5520. The example heap is also 4 GB, and the view it wants held is 12 chunks.NodeRings Inc.
May 31, 2026Mattermost on a VPS: Slack without the seat feeRun Mattermost Team Edition 10.5.2 with Postgres on a VPS: 8065 on loopback, SiteURL, API ping OK, ~216 MiB idle, and seat-fee math vs Slack Pro.NodeRings Inc.
May 27, 2026ARK Survival Ascended RAM per mapAn empty Island is 8 to 10 GiB on the ARK wiki, and The Center is 10.5 to 12. Ragnarok, Astraeos, and Lost Colony are still blank.NodeRings Inc.
May 25, 2026Logto on a VPS: Cognito without AWSSelf-host Logto 1.40.1 with persistent Postgres: OIDC discovery on loopback, dual core/admin ports, stack idle ~254 MiB. Cognito-shaped auth without AWS.NodeRings Inc.
May 22, 2026Satisfactory, Enshrouded, Zomboid, Factorio RAMFactorio held 393 MiB for six hours. Zomboid's cgroup fell from 7.00 GiB to 2.09 GiB, and anonymous memory stayed near 966 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
May 19, 2026Flowise on a 2 GB VPS: what survives idleFlowise 3.0.13 on Docker with SQLite: median idle cgroup 383.7 MiB after a quiet UI. On a 2 GB VPS that leaves room for the OS if LLMs stay off-box.NodeRings Inc.
May 17, 2026OVH SBG2: the backup was in the same buildingOVH counted 14,046 servers destroyed in SBG2. Lille awarded €101,102 for backups stored there. Douai capped payment at €1,800.48.NodeRings Inc.
May 16, 2026GitHub Actions on a VPS with actions/runneractions/runner 2.338.2 on a VPS: pinned tarball, non-root user, one green self-hosted job, systemd. Idle 75.7 MiB cgroup.NodeRings Inc.
May 12, 2026Ollama on a CPU-only VPS: tokens per second per modelLlama 3.2 3B wrote at 10.178 tok/s on 2 vCPU. Four threads of the same CPU reached 12.119. The 8B loaded at 5.6 GB on the 8 GB guest.NodeRings Inc.
May 11, 2026LiteLLM on a VPS: one OpenAI-compatible gateway, three backendsLiteLLM proxy on a VPS: config.yaml routes three OpenAI-compatible backends behind one base_url. Curl proofs per alias, master key, docker stats 613 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
May 7, 2026A single-user Mastodon server on a VPSMastodon v4.7.4 idled at 701.2 MiB on an 8 GB guest after the confirmation mail landed. The same disk booted with 2 GB and 888 MiB still available.NodeRings Inc.
May 5, 2026Plakar on a VPS: OVH's backup pitch, run ourselvesPlakar v1.0.6 on a VPS: create a Kloset store, back up 128 MiB in 1.88 s, restore in 2.48 s with sha256 match. OVH’s Object Storage pitch, run on your own box.NodeRings Inc.
May 2, 2026WordPress on a VPS with Nginx and MariaDBWordPress 7.1.4 on Nginx and MariaDB. Permalinks 404 until Nginx calls index.php. Warm login TTFB was 47.3 ms on 2 GB and 51.1 ms on 4 GB.NodeRings Inc.
April 29, 2026BorgBackup to a storage box: restore time vs Restic512 MiB over a storage-box-shaped SSH/SFTP backend: Restic median full restore 3.08 s, Borg 4.70 s. Backup, repo size, and sha256 match on the same corpus.NodeRings Inc.
April 27, 2026Restic to a storage box, with a real restore testRestic stored 2.000 GiB over SFTP in 44.1 seconds. A fresh guest restored it in 15.3 seconds and the sha256 matched 50 rows.NodeRings Inc.
April 24, 2026Garage on a VPS: S3 on one diskGarage v2.5.0: S3 on 127.0.0.1:3900, one disk layout, aws s3 cp put+get, Caddy. Idle 7.3 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
April 22, 2026What fits on a 2 GB VPS: idle RSS of 19 appsEighteen of 19 apps stayed up on a 2 GB Ubuntu guest with swap off. Paperless idled at 987 MiB with 952 MiB still free. Immich was killed.NodeRings Inc.
April 21, 2026SeaweedFS vs Garage for a lot of small files5000×4 KiB S3 puts on the same VPS: SeaweedFS 3.97 finished in 10.5 s (475 obj/s), Garage v2.5.0 in 21.7 s. Needles vs one-file-per-object, plus idle RAM.NodeRings Inc.
April 17, 2026Immich on a VPS: storage, CPU-only ML, and costImmich 3.3.5 on an 8 GB guest finished CPU-only face detection in 11.6 minutes. The 1,440 px previews added 2.15 GiB to 1,000 noise JPEGs.NodeRings Inc.
April 15, 2026MinIO on a VPS after the AGPL change: what you can still shipdl.min.io returns 410 and Docker Hub denies minio/minio. Build AGPLv3 from source with go install, prove S3 put/get, or switch to Garage. Idle ~129 MiB vs ~7 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
April 12, 2026Coolify vs Dokploy vs CapRover vs plain ComposeDokploy idled at 908.3 MiB on a 2 GB guest. Plain Compose with Caddy idled at 11.6 MiB and answered again 13 seconds after reboot.NodeRings Inc.
April 9, 2026Migrate from cPanel shared hosting to a VPS with WP-CLI onlyMove WordPress off cPanel with a 34 MiB file tarball and 91 KiB SQL dump, then WP-CLI db import and 10 search-replace hits to the new VPS URL—HTTP 200, no migration plugin.NodeRings Inc.
April 7, 2026Nextcloud on a VPS in 2026: 2 GB floor, PHP tuningNextcloud AIO idled at 760.5 MiB on a 2 GB guest. First-run was 1,136.6 MiB. Warm login TTFB stayed near 45 ms on 4 GB and on 8 GB.NodeRings Inc.
April 3, 2026Nginx FastCGI cache vs LiteSpeed cache: same theme, same pagesWordPress 7.1.4 + Twenty Twenty-Five: Nginx fastcgi_cache hit 0.22 ms vs OpenLiteSpeed LSCache hit 0.33 ms. Miss TTFB, headers, and both configs.NodeRings Inc.
April 2, 2026n8n self-hosted: 1 GB finished 20 workflowsn8n 2.45.7 finished 20 workflows on a 1 GB guest. Idle median was 471.8 MiB and the peak was 516.0 MiB, with no OOM and no heap error.NodeRings Inc.
April 1, 2026FreshRSS on a VPSFreshRSS 1.30.4: 8080 only on 127.0.0.1, admin set, one feed subscribed, Caddy. Idle 27.7 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
March 27, 2026Self-host email in 2026: Stalwart or MailcowStalwart 1.0.1 idled at 82.4 MiB on a 2 GiB guest. mailcow's 18 containers summed to 2,385 MiB. Port 25 to Gmail timed out.NodeRings Inc.
March 26, 2026PHP-FPM pool size for 50 concurrent WordPress users, measuredWordPress 7.1.4 on PHP 8.3-FPM: worker RSS ≈47 MiB, ab -c 50 p95 1439 ms at max_children=5 vs 750 ms at 25. Peak active was 17.NodeRings Inc.
March 22, 2026Pi-hole on a VPS, for phones away from homePi-hole FTL v6.8 answered doubleclick.net with 0.0.0.0 from a WireGuard address. example.com resolved. Idle memory was 48.0 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
March 20, 2026WordPress staging on the same VPS without a second billClone WordPress to staging on one VPS: prod :8089 at 112.9 MiB, staging :8092 at 45.5 MiB, shared MariaDB 89.9 MiB, search-replace 18, both HTTP 200.NodeRings Inc.
March 17, 2026Postgres and PgBouncer on a 2 GB VPSPgBouncer 1.22.0 held 200 clients to 20 server connections. The median of three pgbench runs was 1,787 transactions a second through the pool.NodeRings Inc.
March 14, 2026WP-CLI on a VPS: install, update, and a real search-replaceWP-CLI 2.12.0 on WordPress 7.1.4: phar + sha256, core/plugin check-update, and search-replace dry-run 5 then live 5 on old.wpcli.lab → 127.0.0.1:8089.NodeRings Inc.
March 12, 2026Tune MariaDB from the slow log, not a pasteMariaDB 10.11.14 mapped a 24G buffer pool. A 2 GiB cap then killed it at 2,078,516 kB RSS. The slow log held one join, three times.NodeRings Inc.
March 10, 2026A Forgejo Actions runner on the same hostForgejo Actions runner v13.2.1: registration token, DinD, one green workflow on the forge host. Idle 42.4 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
March 7, 2026Cloudflare Tunnel vs a VPS reverse proxy vs PangolinA Cloudflare quick tunnel from this host returned in 217 ms. Caddy, on the machine, took 5.7 ms. Pangolin idled at 335 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
March 6, 2026Redis or Valkey object cache for WordPress: hit rate on a 2 GB boxWordPress 7.1.4 with Redis Object Cache 3.0.0 against Valkey 9.1.3: 96.62% hit rate on fill+warm, 100% on a warm window. Compose, drop-in, INFO stats, maxmemory 128mb.NodeRings Inc.
March 2, 2026Default route or a full BGP tableBIRD 2.14 held 1,176,120 IPv4 routes in 173 MiB. A default route took 2.6 MiB and the same next hop. A 2 GiB cap held the table.NodeRings Inc.
February 28, 2026Webmin and Virtualmin on one VPS: what still needs the shellVirtualmin GPL LEMP minimal on Ubuntu 24.04: install to :10000, idle 671 MiB on a 2 GiB guest, one Nginx site from the CLI, and the jobs that still need SSH.NodeRings Inc.
February 25, 2026What breaks on an IPv6-only VPS in 202649.18% of Google users reach it over IPv6. github.com and ghcr.io have no AAAA, so a clone stops at DNS. Hetzner's IPv4 is €0.50 a month.NodeRings Inc.
February 22, 2026OpenLiteSpeed and LSCache on WordPress: TTFB before and afterWordPress 7.1.4 on OpenLiteSpeed: homepage TTFB median 46.00 ms with LSCache off, 0.30 ms on a warm hit. Install commands, headers, and how the miss becomes a hit.NodeRings Inc.
February 20, 2026A three-node Proxmox cluster with CephThree nodes on PVE 9.2.2, Ceph 20.2.4, HEALTH_OK. The guest disk migrated in 9 seconds, 17 ms downtime, and still answered ping.NodeRings Inc.
February 16, 2026Dozzle on a VPS: logs for the running stackDozzle v11.4.1: 8080 only on 127.0.0.1, simple auth, one live log stream, Caddy. Idle 19.8 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
February 15, 2026WireGuard on a VPS, with a phone QRUbuntu 26.04.1, one peer at 10.8.0.2. UDP 51820 closed left no handshake. Opened, curl through the tunnel came back as 10.8.0.2.NodeRings Inc.
February 14, 2026CloudPanel on a 2 GB VPS: idle RSS and what it installsCloudPanel CE 2.5.4 on Ubuntu 24.04 with 2 GiB RAM: install hash, MariaDB 12.3, port 8443, idle used 845 MiB after a quiet boot, and the services that stay running.NodeRings Inc.
February 10, 2026Install Pterodactyl Panel and WingsPanel 2.0.0.2 on Ubuntu 24.04, Wings 1.13.4 on a second KVM guest. The node says Online, and Paper prints Done in 24.330 seconds.NodeRings Inc.
February 8, 2026DirectAdmin vs cPanel vs Plesk: licence cost per yearYearly list prices at ~30 accounts: cPanel Pro $593.49, DirectAdmin Standard $348, Plesk Web Host €198. What each licence meters.NodeRings Inc.
February 5, 2026Create a Proxmox API token for provisioningprovision@pve!agent keeps privilege separation on. A clone of VM 9000 reached TASK OK in 0.80 seconds, and creating a user returned 403.NodeRings Inc.
February 2, 2026T3 Code on a VPS: serve, pair, and BYO agentsT3 Code 0.1.7 on Linux: 366 MiB runtime, t3 serve on 127.0.0.1:4011 at 409 MiB RSS, pairing wizard, and Settings for Claude, Codex, and Cursor.NodeRings Inc.
January 31, 2026Build a cloud-init template on ProxmoxUbuntu 26.04 cloud image on VM 9000. A full clone took 15.88 seconds, and SSH as deploy reached 192.0.2.10 once the NIC stayed eth0.NodeRings Inc.
January 27, 2026Scrapling on a VPS: Fetcher, StealthyFetcher, and extractScrapling 0.5.1 crawled NodeRings /providers, then pulled 34 plan offers with prices from Enzonix, Virtualized, and witherhosting.NodeRings Inc.
January 26, 2026Install Proxmox VE 9 on bare metalISO 9.2-1, ext4 on one disk, then pve-manager 9.2.24. The enterprise repositories return 401 until the no-subscription source is enabled.NodeRings Inc.
January 24, 2026Dockge on a VPS: Compose from the browserDockge 1.5.0: 5001 only on 127.0.0.1, matched stacks path, first admin, one whoami stack, Caddy. Idle 135.2 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
January 21, 2026Vaultwarden on a VPS: the setup you will not regretVaultwarden 1.37.4 idled at 61.8 MiB. Signups closed, an argon2 admin token, HTTPS, and a sqlite backup restored in 0.5 seconds.NodeRings Inc.
January 20, 2026Caddy vs Traefik vs Nginx Proxy Manager on one VPSCaddy idled at 10.9 MiB and did 4,018 req/s. Traefik did 5,324 req/s at 15.0 MiB. Nginx Proxy Manager used 83.9 MiB and returned 502s.NodeRings Inc.
January 18, 2026SPF, DKIM and DMARC on a VPSOpenDKIM signed one message and dkim.verify returned true in 2.074 ms. SPF for 203.0.113.10 passed in 1.215 ms. Two TXT records returned permerror.NodeRings Inc.
January 16, 2026Which VPS providers still open port 25Seven of these providers open port 25 only after you ask. DigitalOcean blocks 25, 465, and 587, and will not open them at all.NodeRings Inc.
January 12, 2026GitLab CE vs Forgejo: 5.3 GiB and 157 secondsGitLab CE 19.5.3 reached sign-in in 157 seconds. docker stats read 5.259 GiB. Forgejo on the same host was ready in 1.955 seconds at 110 MiB.NodeRings Inc.
January 11, 2026SPF, DKIM and DMARC for the 2026 Gmail and Outlook rulesGmail and Outlook apply SPF, DKIM, and DMARC once a domain sends 5,000 messages a day. The SPF line here uses 0 of 10 lookups.NodeRings Inc.
January 6, 2026Uptime Kuma in 15 minutes, alerts that matterUptime Kuma 2.5.8 was green in 4 minutes 36 seconds. Four checks, two notifiers, and a status page, idle at 129.1 MiB on a 1 GB cap.NodeRings Inc.
January 5, 2026What an IPv4 address costs a $4 VPSA /24 median is $25.25 an address, $0.42 a month over five years when all 256 are in use. Hetzner's cloud IPv4 is $0.60, 15% of a $4 plan.NodeRings Inc.
January 1, 2026Beszel on a VPS: hub, agent, and the graphBeszel 0.21.1: hub on 127.0.0.1, agent with KEY+TOKEN, one green system and CPU graph, Caddy. Idle 19.8 MiB hub+agent.NodeRings Inc.