this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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So I selfhost a number of servers in various locations and utilize a DigitalOcean VPS as a hub/gateway to transmit data between these nodes.

I have a consistent issue when running large backups or transfers in which DigitalOcean flags my server for a DDOS attack and sends traffic to a black hole for 3-4 hours.

Customer support has been the absolute worst and does fuck all to help remedy the situation in any way. These events have been consistent over the past 8 months.

Does anybody have recommendations for a solid VPS provider?

Price isn’t too much of a factor. I was running a $8/month server but I don’t mind something more expensive if the company has a good reputation for reliability and privacy.

As mentioned, I primarily use a VPS as a gateway/hub for file transfer services. I’m also hoping to spin up another VPS for static websites.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Try Hetzner "cloud" offer (shared vCPU). They price it by CPU, RAM and storage, the transfer is 20 TB for all plans. You can choose to be hosted in Germany, Finland or the US (typically, sometimes a specific plan is temporarily sold out in a certain region).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Looks promising. Do you know what their network speeds are? I can’t seem to find that in their FAQs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

you'll get a shared connection afaik. Speeds ranged from 1-2gbit/s on my server

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

That’s pretty decent. I tried speed testing some other recommendations and I was seeing 35 MB/s.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I don't think you'll find any guarantees about that since it will vary wildly depending on their bandwidth use at any given time, your ISP's, and everything in between. I don't think they cap it on purpose if that's what you mean, but they do have an upper capacity limit, naturally. Generally speaking you should get some pretty decent speeds, like the other comment mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Try using ICE instead of proxying all your traffic through a VPS. If you're just using the VPS for session establishment you won't be using a lot of bandwidth and won't get blocked or go over quota. Try searching for things like "wireguard mesh stun".

[–] porksoda 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's really unfortunate. I love Digital Ocean and spend about $800/month with them for work.

Can you tell me more about the traffic they are mistakenly flagging as a DDOS? I ask because I have regular DB and file backups happening and if we had traffic shutdown on production assets for 3-4 hours, it would be a big fucking deal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

So each time I get shut down is during a large extended data transfer. I have my VPS server set up as a VPN hub that connects multiple servers. So typically when my traffic gets diverted to a black hole by DO, there was a consistent roughly 35MB/s inbound/outbound vpn traffic stream for 4-5 hours going through the VPS. My server gets shut down for 3-4 hours and I get a email notice that my server was under a massive DDoS attack and they diverted traffic to a black hole. I always respond informing them that it’s not a DDoS and explain the situation. They typically respond with “Utilize a service like Cloudfare which has DdoS protection”.

I’ve been really happy with them as a provider otherwise but this is a dealbreaker for me.

[–] ikidd 3 points 8 months ago

How many servers are you connecting to on the outside? You might have to stagger them for connections and keep the number under their radar.

Though I have to wonder how a primary mirror would handle this for some large distro like Arch.

[–] porksoda 3 points 8 months ago

Hmm, that really doesn't sound like a traffic pattern that would be confused with a DDoS attack. I would be frustrated as hell too.

What's concerning is that our traffic would look very similar. We have a VPN dedicated droplet that allows access to our DO private network where the rest of our resources can be accessed. We also have high throughput periods though not as sustained as yours.

[–] kaleid 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Try linode, i used to use them in a past and it was faultless.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Linode was bought by Akamai in 2022, it might not be the same as it was previously.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I used it before and still use it. No issues with my $5 linode.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Hey, some companies still don't fix what ain't broke.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you want privacy try njalla. A bit more expensive but they do try hide as much data as possible and I've never had any downtime with them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

This looks great for privacy but their servers are hosted only in Sweden, which might be an issue since I’ll need good latency and high bandwidth.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If you're feeling adventurous, lowendtalk is quite a deep rabbit hole.

Personally, I use rsync.net for backup stuff. Way better for backup than standard vps because everything you put there is automatically snapshotted every day (you can configure how long you want to keep the snapshot). No full shell access, but you can still use rclone there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For backups, consider using rsync.net. for a server, have you looked at dedicated servers before? OVH has some cheap servers every once in a while that should be better in theory than most VPS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Thanks. I actually selfhost my backup server. So I'm not backing up to a VPS. I use the VPS as a hub in a hub and wheel configuration to connect multiple servers (including a dedicated backup server).

[–] Nibodhika 4 points 8 months ago

I have used Vultr and I'm quite happy with them, however I had not moved backup level data into the servers so can't attest that they'll work great for you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I currently run a Netcup.eu VPS. Not doing heavy datatransfers with it but never had any problems in the past 3 years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I could say something similar. I've been using one of their VPS for a few years without any surprise.

[–] jelloeater85 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I would try Vultr, if DO is being weird. They are awesome and have very similar pricing to DO. Hetzner is ok as well, but they have annoying DDoS filtering.

You could also try AWS ARM EC2, but they're expensive for bandwidth by comparison.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I can't say I have your usecase but I've been happy with RackNerd. Support has been top notch.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’ve never heard anyone else mention them, but I’ve had really good luck with https://www.ssdnodes.com for the past several years. I don’t recall ever using their support, but I did have a policy question before buying when I first signed up and they were pretty quick to reply. I think I found them on LowEndBox.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm not 100% sure, but wasn't ssdnodes one of the companies that offers really cheap deals without actually giving you the specs they say?

E.g. they say 64gb ram, but you actually get a VM with memory ballooning enabled and then your account gets suspended if you consistently use that much ram

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Could be. If that’s the case, it’s nothing I’ve noticed. I’ve got a 32gb VM and I’m running a bunch of LXC and docker containers on it without issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I might be able to help here. Is it outbound or inbound networking? Is there a ticket number you’d be okay sharing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
LXC Linux Containers
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

[Thread #380 for this sub, first seen 27th Dec 2023, 21:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Are the leading clouds off the table for cost? Azure, AWS, Google?

I can't remember if cloudflare actually hosts or just proxies.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I prefer to shy away from those companies, especially Google, for moral/privacy reasons.

[–] ndguardian 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I can’t speak to the moral side, but it’s worth noting that from a privacy perspective the major cloud providers basically don’t want to be able to interact with your data.

I work as a cloud engineer and regularly engage with support from Google and Amazon and in general they can only see stuff like metadata and resource configuration, as well as the raw hardware health for your resources. For anything further generally you’re going to have to explicitly provide information, share your screen, etc.

Just wanted to clear up that tidbit. Again, doesn’t help with any moral objections you may have though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I appreciate your insight. That’s good to know. My journey into self hosting started with searching for alternatives to google products so I’m naturally hesitant to touch anything under their umbrella.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

They have metered bandwidth so it's not suitable for OP's bandwindth-heavy usage.

[–] Seasm0ke 0 points 7 months ago

Throwing in for Dreamhost

[–] MaxVoltage 0 points 7 months ago

as an it certified technician i have an answer but its not the right one or even related to what we are talking about

[–] clegko -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Give Oracles always free tier a try. I shuffle over a TB through them every month with no issues.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago