All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Servers specifications for VPS Hosting
Hi everyone,
I’m looking to tap into the collective experience here as I’m planning to start my own VPS hosting offering from scratch, and would really appreciate some expert input before I lock in hardware decisions.
Specifically, I’d like to hear what CPU families you typically target for a good balance between VM density and power efficiency. Are you leaning more toward recent AMD EPYC generations, Intel Xeon Scalable (and if so, which eras), or something else entirely? I’m interested both in what looks good on paper and what has proven itself in long-term, real-world hosting scenarios.
Along the same lines, what RAM-to-core ratios do you usually aim for in a VPS environment? For example, how many GB per core do you find to be a sweet spot that balances oversubscription flexibility, performance consistency, and cost efficiency?
I’m also curious about your approach to hardware sourcing:
- Do you prefer sticking with enterprise brands like HPE, Dell, or Lenovo?
- Or do you find better value with “in-between” options like Supermicro?
- Has anyone gone the route of building their own chassis (or heavily customizing whitebox systems) to maximize value for money, and if so, was it worth the extra effort operationally?
- New or refurb?
For context, I’m not starting from zero on the infrastructure side. I have extensive hands-on experience with the following in an enterprise, not service provider way:
- Rack design, power distribution, and cable management (have designed 150+ racks from the ground up for my company)
- Network architecture and operations, including BGP and OSPF routing, switching, MLAG, stacks, VLANs, and private VLANs (have implemented their ASN and routing across 2 continents and 6 upstreams, and 1 Internet Exchange)
- Linux administration and virtualization with KVM/QEMU
- Some coding skills
What I’m really trying to refine now are the hardware strategy choices that only show their strengths and weaknesses once you’re running a VPS platform at scale.
I will discuss the software stack part in a different threads, but let's start with the bare metal here. Any insights, war stories, or “if I had to do it again” advice would be hugely appreciated. I accept sarcasm, if it adds some value 
Thanks in advance!
Comments
use some dumb name and offer cheap 7$/y deals in SG location, no profit, but fun.
Why not $6/y?
why not centos 7 with open 25 port and /24 for $7/yr?
Hey krig, as someone who was invested in building cloud too I got some questions with ya and I'd like to stay in contact with ya as well
What do you think of the ramflation crisis, even ddr3 prices are raised 2x times. Are you not worried that right now might not be the best time or some other scenarios, or do you have a place which can give ram for less or do you already have hardware available (as you mention that you worked in linux admin/IT and I have heard its easier to get access to hardware cheaper that way)
What is the problem with CentOS 7? Add a TuxCare sub and it is okay.
As for port 25, most people wouldn’t even configure a proper rDNS so their messages would not get anywhere.
I am surprised though of the low value of the comments.
Hey for sure, I’d love to be in contact with you.
The RAM and flash crisis is just another one to come. I plan to start with shared hosting and then add VPS, but before I even consider offering a service, I want to play, smoke test and make sure the service is solid.
I remember when flooding took HDD factories out for years. The flash is going to have its burst period, but the AI demands will eventually slow and they will return to some norms. I am also quite sure, some smart folks out of China will offer cheaper RAM at some point. I strongly believe its a story that will not last more than 12-16 months.
I know that they are gonna go down in a few years, this isnt permanent I agree with you. Perhaps in 3-5 years at max or maybe even less time
Now regarding the shared hosting, that's interesting but what service are you thinking of shared hosting.
Are you thinking of getting your own whmcs license + virtfusion or similar and build it directly on top of dedicated hosting?
Or are you thinking of using some plan like shared hosting yourself?
What underlying resource would you be having and from which company, I am interested to know more about it as some companies (I love dear hetzner) but they are kinda strict on the matter and they could even shut down the server
Regarding shared hosting, I dont know too much about hsared hosting so I am not gonna talk about it but I am curious how you are thinking of competing against vps providers, if that becomes the case, why shall someone go with you instead of say hetzner or even other well reputed but niche people
Also, I feel like in some cases even affiliates might make you more money in the short term but how are you thinking of managing finances,
Last time I checked the finances just didnt make any sense but I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts are on it.
I'd consider it 2 (risky) and 3-5 years not 12-16 months from my estimates.
In 2027 the factories would be built, they would take a long time to produce and dram production takes or estimated idk around 30 billion $ and take a lot of time
Even china wont be able to respond so early in short amount of time. You might be hit with tarrifs as well so I am not sure but even then on average consider it 3 years when the artificial intelligence bubble pops.
Whether it lasts 12, 36, or even 60 months, we’ll adapt and find solutions. Cloud providers will inevitably pass the additional costs on to their customers, pushing prices up across the board. VPS will always be cheaper than hyperscalers. Ultimately, it all comes down to supply and demand.
Also, if Google has developed their own TPUs and does not depends on Nvidia GPUs, then you can expect other major players to have such programs. When these will stop buying Nvidia GPU, the prices will plateau and return to "some" normal.
At the end of the day, this is just one more cycle.
GL with your venture dude, from personal experience here, i can tell you what ever you will throw at us (lowend ofc) we will buy it. Just stay clear in your path, don't go with summer host, or the new winter host now.. There is couple companies here which path is good to follow. Either your account was dormant, or if you were lurker before you already know those companies
For billing, I plan to use WHMCS.
On the platform side, I’ll likely offer a choice between cPanel and DirectAdmin, paired with CloudLinux and its key benefits—particularly noisy-neighbor isolation and enhanced security controls. Capacity planning will be conservative, with a strong focus on density balance and avoiding unnecessary load on the underlying infrastructure.
One area I want to execute exceptionally well is email. For customers not using Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, or Google Workspace, email remains critical. My goal is to provide robust inbound spam filtering, along with sensible outbound protections. This includes rate-limiting mail volume across multiple time windows (per minute, hour, day, week, and month), combined with outbound message analysis to mitigate abuse while preserving legitimate use.
In addition to standard hosting, I intend to offer managed instances for customers with higher operational needs, as well as WordPress-optimized plans and dedicated SQL servers for workloads that exceed typical shared or semi-shared environments. These offerings would be complemented by priority support.
Overall, the target market is the mid-range: not the low-cost budget segment, and not the ultra-high-touch boutique end. The focus is on delivering a diverse, scalable platform with consistent quality and room to grow. I have been in this industry between 2004 and 2007 and had a decent customer base. I believe there is a market, if you can offer personable service.
I want to also develop the VPS offering, but before making it available, I need to really get the experience, and maybe team up with some good folks. I am not sure about the stack for VPS, I am considering VirtFusion and SolusVM at the moment.
TPU's still require dram
Its okay, lets not discuss this but rather which company you are gonna build your shared hosting upon and one of my other comments.
Thanks!
Oh, I forgot a detail. I will start with Switzerland, with a private facility that has a PUE of 1.1 and is not your typical Equinix or Digital Realty. I will also provide a BGP mesh that is optimized for national connectivity to the major eyeballs, as well as the right international connectivity, and quality peerings. That part already exist.
TuxCare is not enough. The Linux kernel has a serious issue with security bugs not being marked as security bugs such that backports only manage to get a fraction of the fixes necessary. The farther back the code has to be backported, the worse it gets. Same with livepatch, btw.
This is why gkh always tells everyone to run kernels directly from upstream.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t expecting someone to take the CentOS part seriously with an OS EOL since June 2024.
I work in infosec and you would not believe the kind of shit I've seen. I've even had people tell me that there is nothing at all wrong with them exposing systems with ancient 2.6-era kernels to the internet because "there are no CVEs coming out for them and all the published ones have fixes backported!". So I wouldn't be too surprised if someone said they are sticking with CentOS 7.