4.9 Ubuntu Linode

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Linode is one of the oldest cloud providers with compute and data storage. An account with an email address and a credit card (to establish identity) can be easily set up in 5 minutes. A USD100 credit is available for a two month trial for new Linode customers at, for example, https://linode.com/lan.

Linode can be cost effective for a server running 24/7 (from $5 per month). However, the full cost is charged irrespective of whether the server is running or powered off, unlike Azure. So to minimise costs you can create a script to deploy a server and its app and data initialisation and then simply run that each time the server is required (see Section 4.12). You will be charged up to each hour used. The cheapest server is a g-nanode-1 at 0.75c per hour and a decent server is the g-standard-2 at 3c per hour.

A snapshot of an attached disk can also be created and then delete the server and then deploy a new server with this disk but that is limited to 6GB storage (see Section 4.15).

After signing up at Linode you can create a new Ubuntu virtual machine server to suit a variety of purposes. The virtual machine will have a public IP address and disk. To create the VM:

  • Click on the Create button
  • Choose Linode for a high performance SSD Linux server
  • Basic Setup:
    • Choose a Distribution as Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
    • Choose a Region
    • Shared CPU with Linode 4 GB is a good baseline
    • Linode Label to name the server
    • Add Tags for basic documentation
    • Provide a Root Password
    • Add SSH Keys for password free connection
  • Click Create Linode to create the virtual machine.

The server is now available with a base install of Ubuntu. Connect to the server using ssh as in Section 4.2 and then continue to install useful applications as described in Section 4.1.

A Linode 1 GB (Shared CPU, 1GB RAM, 1 CPUs, 25GB storage) is $5 per month or 0.75c per hour up to the maximum (the cap) of $5 per month. This is a pretty basic server.

A Linode 4 GB (Shared CPU, 4GB RAM, 2 CPUs, 80GB storage) is $20 per month or 3c per hour up to the maximum (the cap) of $20 per month.


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