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VPS or buy some hardware?
nguyenthaonhi
Member
in Reviews
I'm doing some part-time kernel dev and looking for a build machine since my laptop is too slow on that. I would like to have a machine that:
build can be as fast as possible (which means SSD (60G should be enough), many cores (4+/8+) and large RAM(1G/core))
better to support nested virtualization (so that I can run it directly on that machine)
has low cost when I don't use it (only perform devs in the evening for ~3h/d)
I was wondering about the best option: should I rent a dedicated server / VPS or buy some hardware?
Comments
Judge from your name I believe you are from Vietnam.
I would suggest using cloud services. Either wait for Public Cloud by OVH, or use other popular platform that provides Singapore node like DigitalOcean/Vultr/Linode/AWS/Azure/GCP.
Instance that fits your needs
Based on the average pricing, you will pay $13.5/m for 3 hours per day
If you're doing this long term then maybe try the vps route first as it's cheaper upfront, if you require more then at least you know what hardware to buy.
Hardware.
On the long run you will save money with colocating your hardware... but if you don't want the hassle to maintain the hardware yourself then a cloud solution/VPS would be best for you.
(In case you are going with a higher end VPS of course) you can't compare colocation to a 6$ a month VPS because colocation will be around 30-50$ per month.
You might also want to have a look at preemptible machines (by GCP for example). You can have them for a fraction of the price with the limitation that they have a max lifetime of 24h and they can be shut down anytime.
You can even think about a small Jenkins server that can automatically spawn a new server on GCP, build your commit and then shut down the machine.
iirc @LunaNode has a thing where you can "shelve" your vm, allowing for lower monthly cost.
Shelving feels much much better than idling.
The alternative is to throw money at a new laptop instead of throwing it at a VPS. I'd definitely go for a new laptop, as that'd not only improve build speed but also development speed, etc.
Place it in your room, and pay the electricity only.