Can A Virtual Private Server Ever Be Free?
Everybody likes to have something for nothing, not least a free virtual private server. Unfortunately, a truly free VPS is somewhat of a unicorn, a mythical creature you can’t find. You can get close to free though so let’s look at how.
Building an (almost) free VPS
First off, you’ll need a computer, generally the more powerful the better and preferably with more RAM than you will need. This can be an old one you no longer need or a hand-me-down from a friend. You’ll need an operating system installed such as Windows or Linux, along with some software called VirtualBox, which is available for free for Windows, Linux, MacOS and UNIX. VirtualBox is a complete solution for creating virtual machines. It provides a simple interface to configure the virtual machine with the specification you require, and once set up you can install an operating system to it from an ISO image of the installation media. This cheap and basic setup is something you can use as a virtual private server for the ongoing cost of your electricity running the system, and your internet connection where required.
This is fine for basic testing of your virtual private server, whether experimenting or learning. Unfortunately, if you want to do something more substantial with it then normal broadband internet is generally not adequate. To start with, there are limitations with having an IP address that can change when your ISP feels like changing it. Also, broadband ISPs generally block a lot of traffic such as email servers to prevent spammers and may also block web connections to your house. Even if they don’t block it actively, many ISPs will disallow these servers in their terms and conditions, and if they find this traffic on the network they may disconnect you. This can severely limit the usefulness of the server.
Connecting your not-so-free VPS
To get an internet connection where you can run all these services on your computer, the next step is to put the server in a data center. This is where things start to get expensive, as hosting your own server in a data center (colocation) can cost a lot of money (dependent on its size), as most data centers charge by the space that you use, in addition to power and network usage. Also, a computer designed for use as a server in a data center is a lot more expensive its desktop equivalent. This is where public cloud VPS providers give value for money.
When you obtain a virtual private server on a public cloud, you are paying for more than just the cost of the electricity and network bandwidth for your server. It also covers the costs of the hardware used in the cloud, which is generally top-of-the-range high-performance hardware to provide both good server performance and high reliability. Finally, it pays for a support team being on standby to fix hardware problems as they occur, and to help users if they encounter any problems with their VPS. Redundant self-healing cloud setups incur more cost as they run multiple spare computers, so should a single one have a failure then the virtual private servers can then run on one of the spares while it is repaired.
Not the best deal for cloud VPS
Once you start accumulating these costs, the public cloud VPS that you can get from a hosting a provider starts to look like really good value for money. As you can see, even if you started making sacrifices – such as second-hand hardware and minimal or no support – the costs of running a VPS online still mean that one couldn’t actually be free. In fact, the technology has probably already gotten about as cheap as it can do.