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A call for providers to provide minimal templates
If your a provider and currently provide ubuntu/debian/centos/fedora packages, please consider providing minimal ovz images with the minimal installed.
Many people who are just starting with VPSes don't know how to strip them down (nor setup an appropriate firewall) and having stuff like bind9, apache, postfix, and samba installed by default just sucks up memory and creates a larger attack surface for the VPS.
Having minimal images also reduces the amount of work that people who don't use such services like apache/samba/etc to clean up the server.
This especially goes for providers who have those tiny 64/128/256M RAM images. Stripped down, a debian 7 image should use around only 5M of ram, and not the amount that is used on non-minimal images.
Comments
Would you like to pay the provider for their time and effort in developing (or hiring a sysadmin) a stripped down image? Or would you like to develop it yourself, open source it, then see the difference?
Are you suggesting a custom minimal template for every OS they have a "normal" template for? That could result in lot of support that unmanaged providers probably don't want to offer. I tried to maintain an Arch Linux template once and it cost me hundreds of dollars in man hours trying to support it (Arch Linux doesn't like it when somebody new to Arch Linux starts doing things they aren't supposed to do so I'd have to edit the template so they couldn't break it again).
Maintaining and supporting a few templates isn't bad, but 10+ could be a headache if they don't all work 100%, especially for people new to Linux and if the provider is completely unmanaged. Our biggest "issue" people have with our minimal templates is that they don't act like they would if you installed the OS from a CD.
I've nearly finished the development of my project called TemplateLayer. The project offers OpenVZ templates, fully updated and minimal along with some templates having preinstalled software such as SoftEther, ownCloud, WordPress etc...
These templates can be accessed by providers at a small quarterly/yearly fee that allows them to sync the templates to their servers easily and hasstle free.
I have first hand experience of deploying a VPS and having to spend 10-15 minutes updating and removing all the crap I don't need.
All the plain Linux templates I'm going to offer are going to be minimal and updated regularly, providers can sync these updates via RSync.
I've been testing all these templates manually and have a few providers actively using these templates, one of which is HTTPZoom.
If your a provider and would like to get a list of templates and my pricing please PM me.
The site and templates will be live by next Sunday, as I said all templates are tested so if any providers want early access I can work something out.
There are already providers that provide such templates (ex: vmbox, cloudshards), which proves that it is possible to maintain minimal templates of 2-3 OSes. Atm it seems that debian/Ubuntu/cent minimal images are most common.
I think that only providing minimal templates is the right way to go (TKL is okay, but that's an exception). It really doesn't make sense to include cups, samba, and bind by default, IMO. I can understand why apache might be installed (to make it easy for newbies), but I think that letting folks install things themselves is part of the VPS adventure.
The more you include, the larger an attack vector as well, since specific versions could be out-of-date and vulnerable. It'd be a lot more time-consuming to keep updating the template's packages than to just have a bare OS that you can rely on the end-users to update.
I put in a lot of time to just clean up packages from templates before using them, and it sucks.
Surely it is in the providers interest to provide minimal templates, less crap idling = more RAM available on the node.
It looks like OpenVZ.org now provides and maintains their own minimal templates so that's pretty awesome. I like it because I don't have to provide support for them so I'll get those added to Wyvern now.
apt-get purge apache2* bind9* samba*
I am feeling people who want to strip down vps, might have the energy/motivation to do a bit of researching.
Nice. The last minimal template I saw was a unofficial one. It's nice to have official ones around. Granted, the difference between the unofficial one and the official one is a dbus-daemon (why is this on a template with no GUI, I don't know), but they were the same except for that.
Don't forget sendmail in the event you want to run a different MTA.
Users can minimize the template them self's by removing things they don't want or need. Many of my customers do this all the time doesn't take long.
not everyone likes to waste time by removing tons of unnecessary crap.
You don't need to waste time, use a bash script.
Job done.
Minimal should be standard in my opinion, why would you have Apache and Samba(!) preinstalled anyway. This should be Opt-In not Opt-Out. When I order a new VPS and see Apache preinstalled in the default Debian template I am always disappointed. And when they are then in addition using Google's DNS my frustration is at a maximum. Sure I can change those things very quick, but it doesn't really give me a good impression.
What's wrong with using Google's resolvers?
some ppl hates Google
I don't think it's appropriate for a server system to use them. Maybe it's just me, but I support the thought of regionality (yes I know Google uses Anycast and is regional from a technical point) and fragmentation when it comes to DNS. So I personally don't like it when one extremely huge company has everything and knows which domain has been resolved by which machine. It's just an unpleasant feeling and I honor providers, that don't just use Google.
I'm not saying it's a complete no-go, but I don't think it's good.
@netomx: I don't hate them, I just honor the use of alternatives (There are many universities and organisations who run DNS servers in each country)
This is something I wouldn't really argue about, it's just my taste, but I really wonder why Apache is a standard package in many OS templates. This is really something where I don't see the point.
it's a ton easier to build from the ground up without cleaning up the scraps of a 'default install' template first
also, who the hell would want samba in an ovz container? openvz has no reason to include that in a template
And I think Google ones and OpenDNS ones are far more reliable than those
Solid. I love providers who provide minimal templates for OpenVZ/XEN/KVM, it saves alot of memory usage and potential security leaks. If I need anything extra i'll install it myself.
Both of these issues seem like a personal preference more than a necessity. It's very simple to change your resolvers and remove apache.
I prefer having many templates rather than having minimal template. E.g. TurnKey
It is harder to install some stuff than removing the default programs installed.
I'm working on a stripped base CentOS template that I plan on using to build other templates off of and release for free. Question is whether they get adopted.
On another note, if anyone else is interested in helping out with the effort, let me know. I'd like to develop some standards to live by.
Since there are 2 threads for the same topic, I'm link to my post about the new OpenVZ.org minimal templates here.
http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/652239/#Comment_652239
INIZ has a pretty good minimal CentOS install