On demand VPSs with easy snaphots

[graeme]

I am looking for a provider that supports quickly creating and destroying VPSs (to save the cost when they are not being used) but allows them to the easily restored.


The point of it is to test and demo stuff, so I am not looking for performance or a high spec. I am looking for low cost because I may well end up running several at a time so high costs will add up. I am also looking for paying by the day or hour rather than full months.


AWS ad Digital Ocean support this, and I think Vultr does too. Who else?

 

[DomainBop]

Scaleway, just about any OpenStack based cloud  (LunaNode, CloudVPS.com, OVH Public Cloud, Nephoscale), VMware based clouds like ArubaCloud, CloudStack based clouds like Prometeus/IWStack and iKoula, OnApp based clouds (SeFlow/DomFlow, Peer1 On Demand and Quadranet).


tl;dr it's offered by just about everybody who sells "cloud"

 

[graeme]

@DomainBopI did not think Scaleway did that: not only can you store a snapshot cheap, you can also just discontinue the compute instance and IP and keep just the storage going.


Thanks for that list - there are several names I either did not know, or did not know of as cloud providers, and several are cheap (cheap and convenient are my main criteria here).


Do you recommend any of them, or is it just a list?

 

[graeme]

In case other people with similar requirements look at this, I looked at a few of them, and found a few things that may be useful to know.


Vultr currently has a $5 signup credit which means you can try a bottom end VPS free for a month. It also has free snapshot storage and nice UI. Very easy to get going.


Lunanode has a $12 minimum payment, which is an irritant if you want to try it for a few days first.


ArubaCloud has a VERY cheap bottom end VPS (1 euro a month for 1GB RAM, 20GB storage) but upgrading from that increases costs well out of proportion to the increase in capacity (6.50 euros for 2GB RAM and 40 GB storage). Very good if you want a lot of bottom end VPSs. Not sure whether they have hourly pricing.

OVH starts at a higher price than the others, so is not great for testing and demos, unless you are testing something pretty heavy.

 

[radwebhosting]

You can try Limestone Networks. They have OnePortal Rapid, which is essentially what you are describing. Their IaaS cloud instances provide snapshot features and can be terminated/created/stored as volumes on-demand. Additionally, their pay per use is ideal for what you are describing.