<html><head></head><body><div dir="auto">I'm glad Bob mentioned linodes, because he set me up with one years ago, and it works great for me. I have silgro.com on it, now thanks to him also inbound and outbound email, etc. It's been reliable and simple. And it's very very cheap for my limited needs for memory... $7/month including backup!</div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto">On April 14, 2026 11:13:50 PM MDT, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre class="k9mail"><div dir="auto">Hi Steve,<br><br>Steve Wolf wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="auto">I figure my options at that point are colocation, dedicated (leased)<br>server, shared server, and cloud server. Colocation is probably off<br>the table for cost reasons.<br></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br>How much disk space are you talking about? Disk space is the main<br>decision point. If it is smaller than about 50GB then cloud hosting<br>is simplest. If it is larger than about 100GB then cloud hosting is<br>prohibitive at some level of disk space.<br><br>Because disk space is expensive for cloud providers. It must be<br>redundant to be reliable. It must be backed up.<br><br>If you can fit within the cost of a rented server then putting<br>everything there is the easiest. Then everything is very normal<br>looking all around.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="auto">What are the advantages/disadvantages of the other options? Which has the<br>most bang for the buck? Are there other options I haven't thought of?<br>Who are the best providers?<br></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br>You will require a static IP address. Generally the typical thing to<br>do is to rent a VPS/VM virtual private server / virtual machine from a<br>cloud hosting provider. This is a shared server cloud server. They<br>will supply you with a static address. That satisfies your main<br>problem.<br><br>Daniel is talking about using a VPN to connect your home system on a<br>dynamic address to the cloud server then use kernel routing to connect<br>between them. Daniel is talking FreeBSD and I am also running<br>FreeBSD. FreeBSD makes an excellent Internet facing server.<br><br>Zak is talking almost the same but using GNU/Linux and xinetd to<br>connect between the two. I would do the same but using Nginx as a<br>proxy instead of xinetd but basically the same thing. I will channel<br>Aaron and say that HAProxy is the best tool to connect them up.<br><br>In all of those cases the cloud server has the public address and all<br>of the disk space is located at your residence on a dynamic address.<br>Then one of the many methods is used to connect between them.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="auto">Optimally, I'd like a solution that gives me most of what I currently have:<br>root access, multiple domain support, email support, MariaDB support...<br></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br>You always get root access when you rent a server. I would always<br>backup everything to my own backup because I have no trust.<br><br>You can run anything you want to install so if you want MariaDB then<br>install MariaDB.<br><br>Email support means you must rent from a provider that polices their<br>customers because those that don't are scorched earth neighbors and<br>their entire network will be blocked by many. Meaning that Linode is<br>good. But Digital Ocean is blocked for general abuse by many. The<br>best answer here is not to get attached because initially if you<br>choose wrong you might have to move. Which is easy to do.<br><br>I don't understand your domains comment. You can run ten thousand<br>domains on your system if you want. It's almost unrelated to the<br>server. It's really a question of do you have control of your domain<br>name or not. If you have control of it then you can point the DNS to<br>anywhere you want.<br><br>I am sure things will not yet be clear. Ask more questions.<br><br>Bob<br><br></div></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>