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Ask HN: Using spare VPS compute for?
I have a VPS on DigitalOcean and I use it just to host my personal website which takes almost no resources. What are some cool (legal) things I can do with the extra compute I have?
It is the smallest droplet (512 MB, 1 vCPU), but I figured that's enough for something.
- MalcolmDiggs 12y agoMaybe you could run a Tor exit node, or setup a public mirror of your favorite code bundles. Or you could donate the processing power to a large distributed-computing project like Stanford's Folding-At-Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/ http://folding.stanford.edu/). Or you could always just turn your server into a little bitcoin miner. Probably won't make any money from it, but it might be fun to do regardless.
- auganov 12y agoDigital Ocean will likely ban you for bitcoin mining (and other software that constantly stresses any resources.) A quick search reveals tat a Tor exit node is likely to get you banned on there too. Cut-rate cloud providers like Digital Ocean are basically in the business of getting as many low use customers and getting rid of the everyone else [as long as it doesn't totally wreck their reputation/goodwill].
- i0nutzb 12y agoCats! You can always post cats! Now, on a more serious note: you could host your friend's sites (and probably can do a split of the payments), use it as a host for various tests (if you are a developer). If you are living in a non US country you could make an instance in US then use it as a proxy to access various services that requires you to be in US (hulu, netflix, etc)
- ctb_mg 12y agoYou could host a mumble/vent for a gaming clan/scene you're involved with. Run a dedicated server for whatever games you could manage with 512 mb ram.
- lfx 12y agoYou can run your own secure vpn, to access web when browsing in coffee shop and in similar places.
- jhildings 12y agoWhich software(linux) would you recommend for this on the server side ?
- lfx 12y agoDoes not really matter, since majority of solutions will work on all flavors. I can speculate that most of tutorials will by on Ubuntu. But you can look here for basically on-liner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7586775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7586775 Also there is "full" solutions https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-openvpn-access-server-on-ubuntu-12-04 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-inst...
- auganov 12y agoJust for web browsing or even a lightweight VPN-like experience I'd go with an SSH tunnel and the socks5 built into openssh. Much more flexible. Actually in countries (PRC et al) that do DPI it could be the only thing that reliably works.
- mtmail 12y agoYou can search for alien life or help cancer research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_...
- ing33k 12y agoUse can host and use ownCloud https://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/