[tor-relays] VPS Hardware Specification & Advice

Tor Pids torpids at yahoo.com
Tue Aug 6 18:40:11 UTC 2013


Hi,

i just saw this post on the web archive and felt I can contribute 
something here so I finally registered. Maybe this reply will not be 
correctly recognized to the thread, sorry.

The VPS specs you posted should be more than enough - but the price is 
too expensive!

I currently run about 20 Tor relays on cheap VPS all around the world: 
http://globe.rndm.de/#/search/query=torpids

Basically I just care for the bandwidth/included traffic when choosing a 
VPS. 256MB RAM is enough, disk space doesn't matter at all. Tor doesn't 
scale that well with CPU cores so 1 core is ok. For only 1 or 2 of my 
VPS the CPU is the bottleneck (at about 20-30MBit/s), but most are fast 
enough. Most cheap VPS are based on the OpenVZ virtualization which 
limits you to their old kernel and sometimes they limit the number of 
tcp connections (see "cat /proc/user_beancounters"). KVM or Xen 
virtualisation is better because you have more control on the VM. Most 
VPS providers add up the incoming and outgoing bandwidth, meaning that 
you might be able to just send about 500GB with your 1TB plan.

For example with a VPS from www.jiffybox.de for 15€ per month it is 
possible to push more than 1TB PER DAY(!) (and not per month as with the 
18€ plan you mentioned). OVH just released a server for £2,99 per month 
with unlimited 100MBit/s as well: 
https://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml
Other typical offers are like 10TB for 10$ or 20MBit/s unlimited for 3€.

Good places to find cheap VPS deals:
http://www.lowendbox.com/ and http://lowendtalk.com/categories/offers
http://www.wjunction.com/46-vps
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104

Best,
Torpids


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