We will learn about VPS, why programmers should buy a VPS, along with cool tricks we can do with it.
What is VPS? What is the difference between VPS and host?
VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a virtual server on the network, provided by hosting service providers (Digital Ocean, Linode, Hostinger …)
Simply put, it is a server located on the network, with a pre-installed operating system (Ubuntu, CentOS). You can access the server with the highest root privileges, whatever you want.
Nowadays, when we want to put a website online, we often have to hire hosting. In essence, hosting and VPS are sharing resources on a pretty big server.
However, hosting is like a dormitory (cheaper), you have to eat and drink in the same room with hundreds of people.
Meanwhile, VPS is like an apartment (more expensive), you also live together, but have your own room, private water and electricity.
So VPS is comfortable, less constrained than hosting. Hosting providers usually only provide one database, one for you to up and run, with limited capacity. You also cannot choose the PHP, C #, and NodeJS versions that the hosting offers.
With VPS, you have a whole server so you can install whatever you want. You can install docker, install 3, 4 programming languages, deploy 3, 4 apps always fly (as long as VPS can bear the load).
What you can do with VPS
Not just for deploying your application, you can do much better with VPS:
- Make a place to deploy the cool projects you write or install WordPress to create your own blog.
- Set it up as a VPN, allowing you to fake IPs and access blocked websites.
- Turn it into a place to store study materials
- Hang VPS to plug torrent, download heavy files You do not need to hang up all night, let VPS download and then pull the file from VPS.
- Take advantage of VPS to learn about Ubuntu / Linux, how to set up a Linux server to work effectively
Why should developers have their own VPS?
Of course, as a developer, we should also buy a VPS.
In addition to the interesting games mentioned above, developers will learn a lot of useful things when using VPS:
- With hosting, you only know to upload the code to the host, the host will take care of everything else. With VPS you have a lot more freedom. We will learn by ourselves how to change the port, OS, tweak the server, ensure security.
- With VPS, you can freely install all kinds of programming languages to deploy your application.
If you code NodeJS, Rust, Elixir v … v, finding free hosts for these languages is difficult. With VPS, you just need to install that language (or install docker). then run away.
- Since you have to install everything from scratch (from the database, the JDK, to the webserver like Apache or Nginx), you will understand what is required for an application to run in production environments.
- To connect to VPS, you must use Putty (On Windows) or Terminal (on Mac or Linux). To change the content of the file, you cannot open the notepad, you must use vim or nano.
Therefore, using VPS for a while, you will practice divine command-line skills.
