I'm a student wanting to dive into DevOps and cloud skills, but I need a super cheap server. I'm talking about options that are basically free or just a dollar a month. I've tried using Oracle before, but they cancelled my server without any notice. What are your recommendations for affordable solutions that could help me practice?
5 Answers
There are loads of options out there! You can grab some free credits from major cloud providers like AWS, GCP, or Azure. If you want something more budget-friendly, I'd recommend checking out Hetzner. They have solid VPS offerings for decent prices.
If you're looking for the absolute cheapest way to practice, using your own hardware is the way to go. Consider running a local Minikube cluster or grabbing an old machine. You won't have to spend any money, and you can play with all the cloud-native tools.
I have an old laptop, but I’m unsure how to get a public IPv4 address. Any thoughts on that?
Try the small instance classes in AWS, like the t4g types. Those can only cost you a few cents per hour. Just remember to destroy your instances after you're done practicing to save money. I learned a ton with the AWS free tier, which lasts for a whole year!
I had a bad experience with the AWS free tier. I spun up a couple of nano instances, and pretty much lost my credits within a day and ended up with charges. I’d suggest looking for a cheap VPS instead.
Check out the LowEndBox website for some great deals on VPS. I'm currently using OVH; it's reliable and cheap and has given me good service.
LowEndBox is definitely the way to go for finding deals!
If you're a student, the Azure student plan is fantastic. You get $100 worth of credits to use. Just be cautious with Kubernetes, as it can consume your credits fast!
I got 200€ to test AKS, and it went through my credits like crazy.
I use the cx-32 instance from Hetzner with an extra 100GB volume and daily backups. It costs me about 15 euros a month, and it's a big upgrade from the overpriced reseller services I used before.