Why Choose a VPS or Dedicated Server? I won't go back to shared personally, I cannot!

• Cost-effectiveness: Affordable resources with extensive capabilities.
• Complete Control: Root access allows you to customize your server.
• Enhanced Performance: Greater stability and speed compared to shared hosting.
• Flexibility: Adapt to various needs and applications with ease.
• Innovation: Experiment with new technologies and solutions.

Examples of all the things I do with my servers:

Web Hosting

• Host your personal or business website with full control over settings.
• Install a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Ghost CMS for easy content management.

Development and Testing Environment

• Create a sandbox for developing applications or testing software without affecting production environments.
• Run multiple programming language environments effortlessly. Before I used to buy multiple VPS for this, now I can do it all in one server!

Game Server

• Host multiplayer games like Minecraft, Counter-Strike, Valheim, and other popular games.
• Provide a seamless gaming experience for friends or community members.
• Customize game settings and mods to enhance gameplay.
• This may be weird but I still host ventrilo, I am old school and still miss the Classic WoW days

Virtualization and App Hosting

• Create a platform to host applications like GitLab for version control. But Github is free too, just saying.
• Set up Jitsi for video conferencing. Forget paying for video conferencing!
• Deploy collaborative tools like Mattermost or Rocket.Chat. TBH - I have had issues with recent versions with Mattermost last year but I am sure they will fix it.
• Host business applications like Odoo ERP for enterprise resource planning. You can also use nocode builders in here to make your website and integrate with effectively with other things in Odoo or outside!
• Install Portainer to manage Docker environments efficiently. I did this to learn about containers better, I am a visual person.

VPN Server

• Set up a Virtual Private Network to browse securely and protect your online identity. Think about where you go, when you use public wifi and more!
• Implement SoftEther for flexibility and speed. This is my personal favorite.
• Opt for WireGuard for a modern and efficient VPN solution. Many cloud panels available today even automate installation of WG which is nice.

Top Open Source & Free Software to Install

Getting started with your new VPS is simple with the right software. Here are some top recommendations:

• Apache / Nginx: For web hosting capabilities, these are the two most popular web servers.
• WordPress: An easy-to-use CMS for anyone looking to create a stunning website or blog.
• Ghost CMS: A powerful CMS known for its simplicity and flexibility.
• Docker: Utilize containers for easy deployment and management of applications.
• GitLab: Perfect for version control, this platform aids in software development collaboration.
• OpenVPN: A secure VPN solution to help you maintain privacy online.
• Nextcloud: An open-source file sync and share solution—perfect for businesses and personal use.
• Odoo ERP: An all-in-one management software that offers a range of business applications.
• Piwik Matomo: A powerful web analytics platform to gain insights into website traffic.
• Portainer: Simplifies Docker container management with an intuitive interface.
• Emby: Host all your awesome media in one spot, this is my personal go to player and I recommend getting the Lifetime Emby premiere license!

Conclusion: Make the Most of Your Black Friday VPS Deal

I hope this guide has given you something to think about and perhaps a new passion to explore this year. Investing in a cheap VPS can open the door to a world of possibilities. Whether you're venturing into web hosting, software development, or gaming, your VPS can be a powerful ally. I remember when I started my journey long ago, and that is when I discovered the awesome LowEnd community.

Take care and have a happy holiday season all.

Giving Back

I hope you all enjoyed reading my recommendations and my Saturday morning thinking. I am going to be testing out some more cooler things this year for myself, examples include:

• Launching my first blog using Ghost CMS
• Rebuild my company website using Breakdance and Wordpress, then ship it onto cloudfare free hosting after running a static page converter
• Set up an ERP for my business and activate it on a closed network (VPN)
• Set up Serpbear to prepare to launch a (free) local nature and wildlife network in my home state, this is a stretch goal for next year

Feel free to leave a comment and share what you are going to do with your awesome deal this year!

Shrimp was built since the great Squid was > 100,000 lines of code which made it difficult for us to audit. Further, we needed a forward proxy that worked in a very specific way:

Regular Mode

• Traffic goes over IPv4 or IPv6, whichever your stack decides

Lockdown Mode

• Traffic goes over IPv6 and uses NAT64 for IPv4, locked to a specific network interface

Shrimp will be very convenient for VPN providers who use Squid to provide forward HTTPS proxy services. Besides being lighter, Shrimp hashes passwords with bcrypt which is more secure at rest than the typical hashing used in other forward proxies.

For us, we built it so that we could provide a proxy appliance to our end users on Cloud Seeder which allows them to both run their own double hop proxy where they control one of the hops and also gain plausible deniability.

Here's a video of it in action in our appliance:

We hope you find this useful just like our other open source repositories!

[1] Shrimp was released a little under a week ago but was not shared due to limitations on post frequency! The wait was small, though and we hope you think it was worth it!

[2] Shrimp is licensed under COOL (no restrictions just include attribution)

We open sourced our reverse proxy, delorean, which is used live on the IPv6rs network. Delorean receives HTTP or TLS traffic via IPv4 and if a suitable IPv6 for the same name is found, routes it to said IPv6 IP.

This is how we provide IPv4 ingress to our users' websites. We hope you find this free open source software useful!

[1] E.g., freedom of speech, freedom of access to information, etc.

Despite what the name infers this self-hosted web app isn't just for storing idling server information. By using a YABs output you can get disk & network speed values along with GeekBench 5 scores to do easier comparing and sorting.

Version 1.3 31st Jan 2021

Sample page (Add/Edit/Update/Delete disabled)

GitHub repo

Install instructions

Notes

Features

Add servers
Add shared hosting
Add domains
Auto suggest locations
Auto suggest providers
Auto get IP's from hostname
Check up/down status
Get YABs data from output
Save & view YABs output
Next due date system
Multi currency compatibility
Multi payment-term compatibility
Pre-defined operating systems
Assign tags
Assign labels
Assign server type (KVM, OVZ, LXC & dedi)
Easy to edit values
Order by table
Search items
Tally/stats card
One-page design

Screenshots

• Drag and drop a folder of jpeg files.
• Look at an array of thumbnail views of the photos.
• Choose a few photos and highlight them in the thumbnails. Photo selections may be non-contiguous.
• Create reduced copies of the selected photos for email or messaging.
• Sometimes I may want a window filling view of a photo and then flip between photos using the arrow keys on the keyboard.

What tools do you recommend to do those basic photo organizing functions? Open source?

Flan Scan is a lightweight network vulnerability scanner. With Flan Scan you can easily find open ports on your network, identify services and their version, and get a list of relevant CVEs affecting your network.

Flan Scan is a wrapper over Nmap and the vulners script which turns Nmap into a full-fledged network vulnerability scanner. Flan Scan makes it easy to deploy Nmap locally within a container, push results to the cloud, and deploy the scanner on Kubernetes.

 
Ref.: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-flan-scan/
Ref.: https://github.com/cloudflare/flan
 

Do you use any vulnerability scanner in your daily activities? Which one performs better in your opinion?