January 5, 2011 at 11:15Choosing a VPS in Germany and installing Archlinux on it
Task and site selection
Objective: choose a virtual server on a stable German site, with inexpensive traffic and cost up to 20 euros per month and install archlinux.
A search in the Habré has given some useful articles and one more resource from which you can start.
As a result, the choice fell on three applicants: server4you.net, hetzner.de, hosteurope.de.
Tariff Plans
Direct links to the tariff plans of the selected sites:
Hetzner VQ 12 - the price is 12.90 euros per month with 19% VAT (which is returned to residents of other countries), the installation is 19.90 (minus 19%). There is no test period. Payment is monthly.
1000 MB of RAM, 40 GB of space, one core.
Traffic, you can say is not limited, 2 TB at a speed of 100 Mb / s, if more, then the speed drops to 10 Mb / s.
VNC installation. Reboot from the control panel.
Server4you PLUS X4 - price 18.85 euros per month, without installation fees. Payment for 1, 12 and 24 months. (I did not understand the indicated 6 months for free.)
3072 MB of RAM is guaranteed, up to 6144 MB. 4000 MHz CPU power. 50 GB of disk space.
6 TB of traffic is included, over 0.19 per 1 GB (1 TB will cost 190 euros, in case of attacks it will cost a little, maybe I have paranoia, and the server is simply disconnected from the network?).
Hosteurope L 4.0 - 12,99 euros. Installation 0.
1 GB of RAM, 50 GB disk, performance - one star.
Unlimited traffic, 2 IP. Website in German no version.
Questions in those. the support
Sunday wrote in those. support (for server4you and hetzner, at that time Hosteurope was not yet a candidate).
The response from Server4you came in 2 hours.
Hetzner answered 20 hours later on Monday afternoon.
The answers
Only hetzner answered the question about installing archlinux. Server4you just ignored it.
The question about the possibility of switching to another tariff with a server installed was rejected by both companies, in return they offered to order the necessary one and cancel the current one. Server4you noted: “If you take the server on a long term contract then you will have to stick till the end of it” (Wait until the contract ends).
Server4you, a separate paragraph indicated a ban on VPN for lower tariffs, I also asked about this.
Answer:
“Bascially it means that you cannot setup a vpn server on any of the Pro and Plus vservers. However, that option is enabled on the Premium and the Platinum packages. "
Hetzner pro single core:
"We are using kvm as virtualization technology. This is a normal linux process on
the host system. If it is your kvm machines turn you will have 2.66 GHz CPU speed. "
registration
There was no final decision yet, but hetzner was a favorite, as he had the ability to install any systems from images documented.
Hosteurope somehow accidentally fell out of focus and then did not participate.
Registered with two hosters. Hetzner did not allow to complete registration without entering a bank card number.
After 5 minutes hetzner, they sent a request to send them a photo of a credit card and passport to confirm their identity.
5 minutes after sending the photo, they sent username and password to access the system. The cover letter indicated that they would send a notification as soon as the server was installed.
Entering Robot right there, in the server section the green box and server IP were already on. The server was ready.
After 5 hours, Server4you sent a notification that the server was ready for a trial period.
Preset Features
Via the browser, I went to the console, after the server reboots, the menu is loaded:
Distributions are ready for pre-installation.
Secret menu. We
boot into the "rescue menu", wanting to achieve the main goal - to install the distribution package from the iso image.
The host offers to use the installimage utility .
The utility only accepts packaged images of pre-installed tar.gz systems, etc., but we have iso.
Inside the finished image
Ready-made images
Finding a suitable installation method from an ISO image
We copy the downloaded iso-image to the disk in this way:
dd if = arch.iso of = / dev / sda
It should be noted that the layout of the console is unusual, “y” is on the “z” button, “/” on the minus button and t e.
We create the necessary partitions with the cfdisk utility, we do not delete / dev / sda1, we install / boot on / dev / sda2. The disadvantage of this method is the loss of 177 megabytes on disk occupied by the installation image.
After reboot, the system installer is loaded. We do everything according to the manual .
Profit!
PS: Funds were written off somewhere after 10 days in manual mode, automatically they didn’t succeed because of the limit on the card of 20 bucks. In manual mode - this is after I removed the limit for a couple of hours and wrote to them to take the money.
Update: As a friend notedTbird , there is still a good option to install Archlinux from a loaded system.