Choosing a VPS Provider
The video discusses selecting a VPS provider, noting that options like Hetzner, DigitalOcean, OVH, Hostinger, and AWS are all viable. Hetzner is highlighted as a cost-effective option suitable for both personal and professional projects.
Creating the Server Instance
A cost-optimized server is created with 4 GB RAM, 80 GB storage, and 2 vCPUs. Debian 13 is chosen for its stability, and an SSH public key is added for secure access during setup.
Server Configuration Choices
Additional features such as volumes, provider-level firewalls, backups, labels, and cloud configuration are skipped. The server is named and deployed at a monthly cost of approximately 6 euros.
SSH Access Setup
After deployment, the public IP address is retrieved. An SSH config file is created locally to simplify access, specifying the host alias, hostname (IP), private key path, user (root), and port (22).
Connecting and Managing the Server
The server is accessed via SSH using the configured alias. Once connected, system updates and upgrades are performed to ensure the server remains secure and up to date.
Server Maintenance Responsibility
The user is responsible for maintaining the server, including applying updates, monitoring storage, and ensuring security patches are installed. Basic maintenance primarily involves periodic updates and system checks.
Next Steps: SSH Hardening
The next step will focus on SSH hardening, including improving security by changing default settings such as the user and SSH port.
Alright, so we need a server or a VPS, and there's a bunch of different options. I am here in my Herzner dashboard. You can also use something like Little Ocean, OVH, there's also a Hostinger. AWS has some options. The point is, it doesn't really matter. Herzner is a really cheap option. They provide you with a lot of compute for not a lot of money, which is perfect for
for these kind of personal projects, but also more serious and professional projects. So it's a great place to start. What I want to do is I want to create a server. So we're going to go in here to Server Create. We are just going to use to have a cost-optimized version that's new. We're going to grab this one here with four gigs of RAM, eight gigs bytes of storage, and two VPUs. Let's place it in November.
Yeah, we're gonna be going with Debian 13. It's a bit more stable than Ubuntu, so it's really great for this type of projects where we just want things to be stable, right? We want an environment that is stable for a long time and consistent. We don't have any SSH keys. This is where we can add the SSH key we just created, right?
We will need to go back to our terminal and go into the SSH and then say bleeding edge dot pub. And then here we can provide it with the SSH key. And this one will then automatically get added to our new server. So add SSH key and it grabs my email as well. So we can quickly identify it.
We are not going to be doing anything with volumes. We are not going to be dealing with firewalls on the provider side. We're going to do that ourselves on the server. We're not going to do backups, but maybe for production workloads, that's nice. It's up to you. We are not going to provide any labels, and we're not going to provide any cloud config. I'm just going to say the server name is going to be called Bleeding Edge Production. So we click Create and Buy, and you'll see here it's going to be six euros per month.
There we go. So we're gonna let that create and then I'm gonna show you how we can SSH into our server now that we have set our SSH key on the server and we have our private one locally. I'm also gonna show you how you can use a config in the SSH directory to more easily access the server. All right, so our server is running. What we need to do now is we need to grab the IP or the public IP.
Then I'm in my SSH directory or dot SSH directory and I created a file called config. No extension, just config. In here we can say host and let's call this one bleeding edge, where I can say host name is gonna be this IP address. The identity, density file will be the home path, so this little,
character right here that I can't remember what it's called, .ssh, and then we called our private key bleeding edge. We will say, I identities only, yes. Identities, am I spelling this correctly? There we go. I'm gonna say the user will be root because that's the default user that is created.
And port is going to be 22. This is also the default port for SSH. In the next episode, we're going to go over how we can do what is known as SSH hardening, and we can add some more security to our server. So we'll be changing the user and the default port when we log in. But for now, this is all we need to be able to access our server. So if I write and quit, and I say SSH, Bleeding Edge.
Yes, we want to. And now I'm in the server. So this is whatever I do now is on the server that we just created. And in here, we can install things. We can make modifications to what is running, what programs is installed. We can also do sudo update. So we update the system, which is also something you will need to do. We can also upgrade.
So let's try and do that. Let's just try and update everything. So this is one of the things you also need to be aware of, that you are in charge of the server. So you need to make sure that it's up to date, that you have installed the latest security patches, that it doesn't run out of storage and all of these things. So there are layers to it, but it's for the most a lot about just association in once in a while and running these
these updates so we have the latest packages and also make sure that security patches is installed. And you can add other things to monitor stuff like disk usage so we don't run out of space. But what I just did is, for the most part, what you will be needing to do once in a while to make sure you are your service of the date and secure.
Now the thing we need to do is we need to do SSH hardening and that will be the focus of the next episode.
