I recently found this cheap VPS site http://www.vpstree.com/ and signed up for the $0.99 plan. I've never used VPS hosting before, so I didn't really know what to expect, but for a buck I thought it would be worth trying out. I just wanted a system that I could use to host some simple services I enjoy: a sql server, a web server, a git server etc. I don't plan on putting much demand on the resources, I just want root access so I can tinker with things. So the one buck plann sounded really nice.
The trouble is that it only comes with 64MB of ram, burstable to something like 76MB. This has been fine for everything that I wanted, except for installing things. This wasn't enough ram to install MySQL, and I have run into several other packages which have similar issues. Sometimes I can get around this by just stopping all the services, but sometimes it still needs more memory.
I tried adding a pagefile for some more memory, even it was slow, but that doesn't appear to be allowed. I can upgrade for a few bucks to get more burstable memory, but it's only 128MB. Would this likely be enough to get some basic things installed, or should I look into a new VPS solution with more resources?
Best Answer
I would avoid a 64Mb VM unless you know for sure that what you plan to do with it will function adequately in that little. It'll be fine for a small DNS server, a small mail relay, a very simple (all/mainly static content) web server, a location for backups, but not a lot else. You could test if your desired tasks will run in a 64Mb VM by running them locally using a small Virtual Box VM or similar, though at one one dollar per month getting one of these for a month or two to try things out is hardly going to break the bank and gives you a publicly routed IP address.
If you do run a 64Mb VM you'll need to chose components that are optimised for small environments (nginx instead of apache, SQLite instead of mySQL, and so on).
I don't know of any VM solutions that off burstable RAM and also permit the use of paging areas defined in the VM - and if your host is cramming my $0.99 VMs onto one host server (and they will be - if they don't cram many in there is no way they'll avoid making a massive loss) there will be plenty of I/O contention so you don't want to be swapping anyway as that contention will kill performance even more than swapping normally would.