Howto setup your personal Linux VPS
This is the second article of a small series about taking care of your own VPS. This one is about all necessary non admin things to think about when setting the VPS up.
Articles of this series
2021-08-04 Howto setup your personal XMPP server
2021-07-01 Howto setup your personal CalDAV/CardDAV server
2021-02-12 Howto proxy your self-hosted services using web server
2021-01-08 Howto setup and secure web server
2020-12-30 Services you can selfhost on you personal Linux VPS
2020-09-22 Howto secure your personal Linux VPS
2020-08-21 Howto setup your personal Linux VPS
2020-07-20 Why setup your personal Linux VPS
Choosing the domain
Domain is almost necessary part when it comes to connecting to your VPS and the services you deploy on your virtual machine. It doesn't really matter what domain you choose. If you don't care, go for the cheapest TLD, if you want something fancy, go for fancy :) Some domain registrators will also give you the ability to manage DNS. If you choose one that does not support such a feature, then you should double check if your VPS provider has such option, otherwise you are stuck with setting up your own DNS server instance, or using 3rd party service to manage DNS.
Choosing the provider
There is plethora of VPS providers these days. Just choose the one you like. If you're choosing from world wide providers, then you can compare them on several vps comparison portals. Be sure to check the price, SLA, how good is their VPS management website, how good is their support, if they support linux distro you would like to have installed. I personally use local central european provider called Websupport. They are bit on the expensive side, but they have great admin page, online chat support, they are also a domain registrator, they provide free DNS management, free VPS snapshot feature, their VPS are super stable and they almost never have their IP segments in Email blacklists. This, together with ability to set reverse DNS record is crucial if you want to host your own email server.
Selecting hardware parameters
The price of VPS is based on HW params you choose. I personally always target the lowest possible and upgrade if necessary. Almost every provider gives an option to upgrade HW parameters of an existing VPS. Be aware, that not every one gives you the ability to downgrade. One more reason other than price to go for lowest possible settings is also the fact, that then your are forced to care about how carefuly selected and optimized are the services you host. By tweaking them and reading about them, you learn. And one great reason to host your own server besides the privacy, is that you learn the Linux more deeply and in a different way, as in this case you are not only the user, but also an administrator. My VPS never had more than 1vCPU, 1GB RAM and 20GB of space. But it all depends on what services you would like to host. I currently run only one VPS with 512MB RAM and I host email server, webdav, carddav, caldav, task management app, rss feader and aggregator and webserver.
Creating the VPS
Most of the providers will let you choose the name, distro, HW parameters, additional features and a root password you will use to log in to the machine for the first time. Some providers will give you the option to upload certificate to use for ssh authentication. After submitting the form, you will need to wait some time for VPS to be generated. In most cases it doesn't take longer than couple of minutes. After that you are ready to log in to your machine.
Setting up DNS and optional provider features
Before you start any work on your VPS, it is good thing to setup at least DNS 'A' record as you already have the VPS public IP. In some cases, it takes several hours to propagate DNS update so let's do it as soon as possible. The VPS IP is in most cases shown in the admin page, but if not, you can get it in terminal using commands 'ip a' or 'ifconfig'. If you are planning to setup reverse DNS, do it now. Reverse DNS are based on PTR records, but most of the providers give you dedicated GUI form for setting it up. If you have opted for any form of monitoring, backup, snapshot generation and so on, you can configure it now if applicable.
Summary
Now you should have your VPS set up and running. It is time to secure and harden it before you will start installing any services. I will cover it in [next article](https://mizik.eu/blog/how-to-secure-your-personal-linux-vps/).