Cloud – Giovanni F. Mazzeo De Santolo https://desantolo.com That italian IT guy Sun, 20 Jun 2021 03:51:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 123042357 Finding the cheapest Virtual Private Server (VPS) providers ( https://desantolo.com/2021/04/finding-the-cheapest-virtual-private-server-vps-providers/ https://desantolo.com/2021/04/finding-the-cheapest-virtual-private-server-vps-providers/#respond Sun, 11 Apr 2021 21:36:21 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=622 Continue reading →]]> Sometimes we want to test software or do remote monitoring and testing that you may not want to pay a premium to do, or maybe you just want to do it as a hobby. In this post I will share some tips on where to find dirt-cheap providers of virtual servers (VPS).

I strongly advise against placing any production or critical workflows on any of these; use for testing or fun.

A note on production workflows

Anything that you depend on being reliable should always be hosted at a reputable hosting provider. Most of the dirt cheap providers you will find in any of the resources or websites I am sharing with you may most likely not stay in business for long.

For business or critical use VPS you can choose any of the big dogs: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud (GCP). They all have its positives and negatives. This article does not focus on these.

Aggregators / Deals lists websites

The following websites seem to aggregate deals found in multiple web forums. You should start here to see the average prices for specific features (RAM, disk space, bandwidth, IPv4 allocation, etc). Note that most aggregators make a commission on your purchases (I do not but you can buy me a beer)

  1. VPS Checker

This site lets you filter by features, recurring cost, country and features.

  1. LowEndStock (deals page)

This page list dirt-cheap specials that may not be publicly know or posted on a providers website.

  1. LowEndStock (providers list / mainpage)

Same as the first option but a different aggregator website.

  1. VNCoupon

A blog that reposts affiliate links to existing offers found or posted elsewhere.

Forums

These are some online communities dedicated to dirt-cheap VPS and hosting. Good for limited time / quantity deals, and researching providers reviews.

  1. LowEndTalk

I would start here on their forums. They also have a separate website with blog like articles called LowEndBox.com.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2021/04/finding-the-cheapest-virtual-private-server-vps-providers/feed/ 0 622 How to setup dual-stack IPv4 IPv6 Azure VM without a load-balancer https://desantolo.com/2021/04/how-to-setup-dual-stack-ipv4-ipv6-azure-vm-without-a-load-balancer/ https://desantolo.com/2021/04/how-to-setup-dual-stack-ipv4-ipv6-azure-vm-without-a-load-balancer/#respond Sun, 11 Apr 2021 20:32:31 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=616 Continue reading →]]> I wanted to document my Microsoft Azure saga in getting a public IPv6 address to work in a virtual machine without a load balancer in front of it. My needs were pretty simple and straightforward I wanted a virtual server that had a static IPv4 and IPv6 public addresses so that I can monitor my home network and other websites.

You would think this would be pretty easy, a few clicks and done? That wasn’t my experience on Azure and setting this up isn’t easy nor straightforward. Below is how to get it done, if this helps you – you can buy me a coffee or beer.

What Microsoft documentation said

You can use public IPv6 address on a load balancer which needs to be a separate paid server/product in front of your servers. This isn’t what I was looking – I complained about it on github with screenshots issue #69167.

Disclaimer: I have no expertise on Microsoft Azure prior to this (I currently work at Google and GCP is what we do). I chose to use Azure for my hobby/playground primarily because I get $50 a month free credit with my MSDN subscription.

My hacky (undocumented) way of getting it set up

  1. Create a new Virtual Machine

Use portal.azure.com – I am not going to go in depth here but I will call out the items you need to make sure to enable or change at setup.

Do pay attention to these when creating VM:

  • Use "create a resource" select "Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS" and should default to virtual server.
  • Make sure to select ‘create new resource group’ to bundle everything of this server together.
  • Disable default ‘scheduled shutdown’

Deploy it. Go back to the newly created resource group.

  1. Edit Virtual Network to add IPv6 (address space)

You should see only IPv4 listed here. Like 10.0.0.0/24 – add IPv6.

Input: ace:cab:deca::/48

Hit save.

  1. Edit Virtual Network to add IPv6 (subnets)

You should see default click it. On the right dialog that opens click Add IPv6 address space

Input: ace:cab:deca::/64

Make sure to select a network Security Group. (whatever the name you gave it). Save.

  1. Create a dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 public address

Search Azure for Public IP addresses create one.

Pay attention at creation:

  • Select IP version both
  • Select SKU standard
  • Ensure you associate it to your VM resource group and zone otherwise it won’t work
  1. Stop virtual machine.

Self explanatory, or during step 1 make sure to ensure it won’t be auto started.

  1. Associate the new NIC and delete the old NIC from the VM

With the VM shutdown, networking settings > "Attach network interface" menu. Select create and attach network interface.

At NIC create:

  • NIC security group select NONE.
  • Select Private IPv6 address. Give it a name "v6" for me.

Detach the old NIC and delete from resource group (self-explanatory).

  1. Associate the public IPv6 and IPv6 to the network interface

Go to the new NIC we created and associated, "IP configuration" menu.

You should see ‘ipconfig1’ is IPv4 and "v6" is secondary with our local IPv6 we gave on step 2.

Associate IPv4 public address by clicking ipconfig1 a new menu with a drop-down box and the new IPv4 (dual-stack) shows up. Select and save.

Associate IPv6 public address same as above. You should end up with something like this

  1. Incoming firewall rules

Make sure to add necessary firewall rules, if you created the default settings on the security group you probably already have SSH (port 22) and that’s it.

You probably want to add a rule for ICMP traffic (ping).

If you like to have no security at all (or implement your own firewall on the virtual server) you can add a blanked incoming rule for all ports 0-65535 and this should open everything.

Note microsoft IPv6 implementation sucks and ICMP ping on IPv6 incoming/outgoing WILL NOT WORK! This is what tripped me out and I spent several hours trying to troubleshoot something that Microsoft could have easily documented… but here we are… I spent hours frustrated but hopefully with this guide I wrote for you it saved you all this time. If you appreciated it – remember you can buy me a coffee 🙂

Go ahead start your virtual server and you should be able to use nmap on its IPv6 address or SSH remotely and see it work. See above in:re ping on IPv6.

Updates

June 2021: Reader “Ben R” contacted me about this article and shared some noteworthy information for folks using older VM images or installations. DHCPv6 may be disabled and must be manually enabled. See this article for enabling DHCPv6 on Azure.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2021/04/how-to-setup-dual-stack-ipv4-ipv6-azure-vm-without-a-load-balancer/feed/ 0 616 Running Windows containers in Docker https://desantolo.com/2017/01/running-windows-containers-in-docker/ https://desantolo.com/2017/01/running-windows-containers-in-docker/#respond Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:15:51 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=479 Continue reading →]]> Microsoft Windows Server 2016 now supports containers, this means we can now isolate windows applications and share the underlying kernel of windows much like we have been doing in Linux for years with OpenVZ or more recently LXC (linux containers).

On January 4, 2017 Rancher announced experimental support for Windows containers (link below).

Official Microsoft documentation on containers.
Rancher v.1.3 has implemented experimental windows container support.

This is a good reason to spin up a Windows Server 2016 node and experiment in a lab. I’ll be looking forward to trying this when I get some time.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2017/01/running-windows-containers-in-docker/feed/ 0 479 A comprehensive list of hypervisors and cloud platforms https://desantolo.com/2017/01/comprehensive-list-of-hypervisors-and-cloud-platforms-opensource-free/ https://desantolo.com/2017/01/comprehensive-list-of-hypervisors-and-cloud-platforms-opensource-free/#respond Sun, 08 Jan 2017 23:21:11 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=477 Continue reading →]]> In my last post I discussed Proxmox and SmartOS as possible alternatives to ditching vmware ESXi for my homelab.

Given the amount of information that is out there on the internet and that I spent quite a few hours trying to find other open source projects / cloud platforms that could be other alternatives, I thought why not make a post linking to all the platforms I have come across during my search, this way it will help someone else to simply click thru opening new tabs.

List last updated 01/08/2017

The hypervisors (they only support VMs):

The hybrids (allows VMs and containers at the same time under the same host – no need to spin up VMs for containers)

Obviously you can also run containers on linux without using a bare-metal hypervisor like the options above. All you need to do is install Docker. But how are you going to manage/monitor/deploy your containers? command line is an option but there’s tools out there.

Container orchestration tools

Kubernetes addons:

An interesting platform seems to be Mirantis OpenStack – if you are willing to put in the effort and deploy several of its plugins it looks like you would be able to host VMs, containers and have a web front-end to manage them all. Since this is not a single solution and it requires you to deploy several plugins I am leaving this uncategorized for now.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2017/01/comprehensive-list-of-hypervisors-and-cloud-platforms-opensource-free/feed/ 0 477 Virtualization hypervisor and containers all in one https://desantolo.com/2017/01/virtualization-hypervisor-docker-containers-all-in-one/ https://desantolo.com/2017/01/virtualization-hypervisor-docker-containers-all-in-one/#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2017 10:01:26 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=475 Continue reading →]]> I’m a big fan of virtualization, the ability to run multiple platforms and operating systems (called guests) in a single server (called host) is probably one of the best computing technologies of the past 10 years.

Personally, I have been using virtualization circa 2004. It all took off after 2006 when chip manufacturer’s started bundling virtualization technologies in their processors (Intel VT-x or AMD-v). The reason why “cloud” computing is so popular can also be attributed to virtualization.

In a container world…

However, in the past couple of years a new technology has been making making the rounds everywhere, the words “containers”, “docker”, “orchestration” is picking up steam in the past year. They say that containers are changing the landscape for system administrators and application developers.

Claims that containers can be built and deployed in seconds, share a common storage layer and allow you to resize the container in real-time when you need more performance or capacity are really exciting concepts and I think the time is now for me to jump in and learn a thing of two about this new technology when its hot a new.

Time to ditch vmware ESXi for a hybrid hypervisor?

You may remember my blog entry building a low-power sandy bridge ESXi server with ZFS – now 5 years later it is time to find a new platform that will allow me to keep my legacy virtual machines (VMs) as well as allow me to host containers using Docker.

The process of finding a suitable replacement for ESXi may take awhile and more than just a single entry on my blog. This is the first entry on my journey.

Before replacing something that works with a new platform I think it is good to point out the strengths and weaknesses of vmware ESXi (which has been my platform of choice for 6 years)

Strengths of ESXi

  • awesome windows GUI vSphere client that allows you to manage your hypervisor without the need for console or ssh
  • a web-interface to manage it too if you install a plugin
  • virtual switch with VLAN support
  • support for PCI passthrough (Intel VT-d) allowing you to assign PCI devices to virtual guests

Weaknesses

  • does not support docker containers (unless you wish to create a virtual machine and run docker from there – but I prefer a central platform if possible)
  • vmware continues to remove features from the free version of ESX – vSphere client interface is no longer availabel in their latest release
  • Nothing exciting has been released by vmware in the past 2 years (in terms of ESXi) and they push esxi users into paid licensees

The alternatives?

SmartOS is a fork off OpenIndiana/OpenSolaris, it seems to have a lot of great security features and features from Solaris that enjoy (you may have read of my love for the ZFS filesystem which is native to SmartOS). Joyent has recently open-sourced their SmartDataCenter “SDC” or they are now calling it Triton Enterprise.

What I like about it other than the fact it uses native Solaris and it uses the ZFS filesystem for storage is the fact that it is a hybrid hypervisor. It can host containers and VMs (using technology similar to virtualbox since virtualbox is also from solaris).

The downside of this platform seems to be the complexity needed to deploy containers with this tool. You need to have a “head node” to be the brains of the platform, the “head node” does a lot of critical things. It monitors the network, the other compute nodes (where you host your vms/containers), it also hosts the database for all the nodes. In dev mode you can force the head node to also be able to host VMs but this is not recommended or good practice.

The web interface (SmartDataCenter) to manage your containers and VMs is also very rudementary, there is no built-in console to your guests. You need to run a lot of commands in the head node’s shell to make JSON queries to grab the data you want like the VNC server and port address for your guests.

Honestly I have not dug much deeper into SmartOS but I probably should, it looks like an awesome project. I am sure for people that want to use their platform for scalable container/hypervisor deployments it makes sense, but to replace my single server at home doing virtualization it does not look very likely this may be a good choice given the complexity.

Proxmox is another platform I am looking at, you may recall that 7 years ago I discovered proxmox virtual environment and started using it on my lab. That was Proxmox VE 1.5 I think and I recently discovered they have made a lot of strides in the right direction.

Just a few weeks ago they released their latest PVE 4.4 and they are now supporting ZFS data pools (via FUSE/zfsonlinux), not to mention that they have replaced OpenVZ with LXC (linux containers). It may be worth it for me to download their latest release and check out their platform again.

Other than Proxmox or SmartOS, I have not come across any other ‘hybrid’ hypervisors. Please share in the comments if there is something else I should check out.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2017/01/virtualization-hypervisor-docker-containers-all-in-one/feed/ 1 475 Overriding Google Compute Engine hostname from getting reset https://desantolo.com/2016/12/overriding-google-compute-engine-hostname-from-getting-reset/ https://desantolo.com/2016/12/overriding-google-compute-engine-hostname-from-getting-reset/#comments Sun, 25 Dec 2016 12:16:26 +0000 https://desantolo.com/?p=434 Continue reading →]]> On my last post, I explained how I am experimenting with Google Compute Engine (GCE) to host my backup DNS service and my post about configuring mailjet as an exim mail relay.

I have run into a few issues on Google Compute Engine, it looks like every time the instance gets a DHCP offer the hostname of the machine will get reset to the internal hostname, overriding whatever setting you may have set… this is bad news for a server that needs to respond to DNS settings.

After a few hours of digging and testing out different approaches, including trying to setup a DHCP hook to run the “hostname” linux command I came across documentation from Google talking about “custom metadata”.

]]> https://desantolo.com/2016/12/overriding-google-compute-engine-hostname-from-getting-reset/feed/ 2 434