Selecting VPS providers or bare metal hardware

Here are a few pointers and thoughts about selecting the right VPS provider/tier and personal hardware.

A list of recommended/not recommended VPS providers. DYOR! A VPS from the recommended list doesn't necessarily mean it will pass benchmarks.

• Recommended:

  • DigitalOcean
  • AWS
  • Linode
  • Vultr

• Not Recommended:

  • Contabo

If you select DigitalOcean as your VPS provider, please consider using the ZelCash referral code to help with our ZelCore infrastructure monthly costs: https://m.do.co/c/c9c22684c5db

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1. Not all VPS providers are the same. Typically you will get what you pay for. E.g. a BAMF-tier VPS from a provider for $50/month will almost assuredly not perform the same as one that costs $150/month. Either the cheaper provider will supply older equipment, or their infrastructure is split up over many more users, giving you less overall performance in the long run.

2. You cannot run multiple nodes on hardware spec'd for a single node. E.g. you won't pass benchmarking trying to run 2+ BAMFs on a VPS with 8vCore-32GB RAM, etc. Doing so will cause your node to deactivate and possibly lead to an IP ban if too many benchmark events are failed.

3. If spec'ing bare metal hardware to run multiple ZelNodes, remember that a single VM/container might pass benchmarking, but the system could fail when under running multiple instances and under full load. Benchmark the system as a whole, with all VM/containers running at the same time to get true benchmarking results.

4. Research your bare metal hardware thoroughly. Even though components like the CPU look good, there could be I/O bottlenecks elsewhere on older hardware that could cause failure of benchmarking, for example.

5. Sourcing and running your own hardware can possibly save costs, especially if running many ZelNodes. If pricing out possibilities, please consider the costs associated with co-location hosting, electricity and bandwidth rates, shipping, remote management/maintenance, etc.