Running FreeBSD for my personal website: collocation, cloud, etc.

[Chris Hill]

On Fri, 27 Dec 2013, Chris Stankevitz wrote:

> Can you recommend a place/procedure by which I can easily (and 
> cheaply) get up and running with a "publicly accessible" FreeBSD 
> machine connected to the internet on which I can run a web and mail 
> server?  Maybe I'll hookup a VPN for use when I am on a public 
> connection (e.g. starbucks).

There are lots of colo providers out there (see 2 below), but I have no 
personal experience with any of them.

> The way I see it I have these options:
>
> 1. Buy and run machines from home and figure out a scheme to deal with
> my dynamic ip address

This is what I do, but I have a static IP. If you have a dynamic IP 
address, there is a good chance that your contract doesn't allow you to 
run servers. Your ISP may also block the ports you want, or even all 
ports but a few. Check your Terms and Conditions.

> 2. Co-location (which I've never done but I think I understand the 
> concept)

The idea is that you own (or rent) a machine that is physically in a 
data center somewhere. It "belongs" to you, so you administer it 
remotely and run what you want.

> 3. Cloud (which I don't understand)

Neither do I. It smells like "new name for an old concept", though.

-- 
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
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