# FreeBSD is available in Google GCE now



## marcus123 (May 25, 2018)

Good news! It is more convenience to use FreeBSD on Google GCE now.

*GCE Launcher for FreeBSD*
https://console.cloud.google.com/launcher/details/freebsd-cloud/freebsd-10
https://console.cloud.google.com/launcher/details/freebsd-cloud/freebsd-11

*News*
https://googlecloudplatform.uservoi...racking_code=f255eecea197fa22efdba3a6285e5e5b


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## ralphbsz (Jul 25, 2018)

For many years, our household has relied on an external host that is "somewhere" in the cloud as a place to store a few files, run cron jobs, and generally do functions that are inconvenient or unreliable over the connection to home.  One particularly necessary function is to monitor whether the network to our house is still working with a cron job that runs every few minutes, and warn me if our house vanishes from the internet, or if our weatherstation stops updating, or stuff like that.  About 10 years ago, I rented a small FreeBSD machine from a cloud provider in San Francisco for about $10 per month, but that was quite expensive for minimal usage.  And that was before web-based administration of virtual machines: the service provider configured the machine by hand while I was on the phone, and any interesting configuration change required more phone calls.  Then I switched to just using a shared login on a shell machine that my ISP provides, but (a) it is just a user account on a shared machine, so I feel guilty about running cron jobs and having servers on network ports, and (b) the machine is a bit unreliable.  And it's insane to have an unreliable machine that's supposed to monitor how reliable something else is.

In spite of the fact that I work in software engineering for storage on large computers, I had actually never really used "the cloud".  Strange, isn't it?  Another odd disability: in spite of the fact that for over a decade I worked in the same building as the people who invented the relational database, I've never really learned how to use databases, or write good clean SQL.  Which all proves that education by osmosis doesn't work.

So I was toying with the idea of renting the cheapest possible machine from one of the large cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.  Microsoft is out; I really didn't feel like dealing with administering a Windows machine (I hardly ever use Windows, and I don't administer any Windows servers, and I don't feel that learning that skill would be a good investment.  It turns out that Amazon has a completely free machine you can rent (it is weak and small), so I created an account and started setting it up.  Then I found that their web UI for administering the virtual machines is not very user-friendly (at least not for *this* user), and that selecting a FreeBSD machine instead of the standard Linux was harder than pulling teeth, so after wasting a few evenings on it, I gave up.  Then a few months ago I saw the above post that Google cloud now has FreeBSD available too.  And as we all know, Google also offers a free level of small virtual machines.  A friend of mine works at Google, among other tasks  on improving the usability of their cloud virtual machine management, so I decided why not try it.  As a first test, I set up a Linux host, which was completely trivial.   Within a few minutes I had it up and running, configured the IP address and DNS, and logged in, and was able to set up a home file system, scp files back and forth, and host very simply web pages.  So losing my "cloud virginity" was painless and pleasant.  So a week ago, I decided to take the plunge to more adventurous things, and dumped the Linux virtual machine, and got a FreeBSD one instead.  Once again, everything went incredibly smoothly.  Key management for ssh was easier than pie.  And the nice thing is that administration tasks (like installing packages and configuring servers) is identical to my FreeBSD server at home.

The other thing that worked really well: If you have a question, you just google for it, and usually the first hit is some documentation from GCE which shows how to do it.  Fundamentally, the whole thing comes with an illustrated manual.  To continue my dirty joke of losing my cloud virginity in a pleasant way: this thing has an illustrated kamasutra built in.  It's really very fun and easy to do.

Setting up to send and receive e-mails took some doing, one whole evening: They blocks all outgoing and incoming SMTP traffic (a very wise choice, otherwise badly administered hosts turn into open relays and spam bots), so I had to create a free account with an outside mail delivery company, and set up OpenSMTPD: I'm too old to configure sendmail, and ssmtp is too limited for my taste, and requires storing passwords in cleartext, which is simply immoral.  But after a few hours, that works good too.

Tonight's first task: Tell everyone how happy I am with my FreeBSD machine in the cloud, and how much fun I'm having with it.  Tonight's second task: Get the web server set up on it, and get some of my CGI scripts up and running.  I just installed apache, now I'll copy my setups from home, and it will probably just work.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 25, 2018)

I don't understand why one would pay almost $30/month to do that on GCE.


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## Phishfry (Jul 25, 2018)

I am working on a Poudeiere and pkg repo for a low cost startup project.

drhowarddrfine what would you suggest for hosting FreeBSD for a small commercial package build server and nano repository.
Low storage needs like 2GB. More about a remote machine. No powerful machines needed.
Packages will have a month to build between updates. Really slim package list of around 25 overall packages for building
The amount off traffic in the beginning will be low but hopefully that will change.

I am really thinking Digital Ocean. I find their tutorials so well wrote they are sometimes better than the manual.


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## Phishfry (Jul 25, 2018)

So looking at Digital Ocean, $5 bucks a month is the entry point. It sounds like a great plan.
1TB of transfers. Everything the plan offers looks fine. Something about the term droplet is bothering me.
Please just call it a VM. We are not stupid.
I guess it's no different than a 'compute-engine'.
All just marketing terms.


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## ralphbsz (Jul 25, 2018)

Both Amazon and Google have a free tier for very small virtual machines; for a small server, both are more than sufficient.  If you go over the usage limit, you pay.


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## obsigna (Jul 25, 2018)

The free tier offers are limited to 12 months. My AWS-EC2 free tier instance is going to expire by the end of this month. I will let it go at least until end of august in order to see the effective costs per month. This is hosting a low traffic mail server on FreeBSD 11.2, and because on AWS a fixed IPv4 address is included in the package, I don't need to relay my outgoing mails through a 3rd-party mail forwarder. I installed also an L2TP/IPsec service which I use with my mobile clients when I am outside of my LAN, in order to prevent MITM frauds when surfing the internet. Anyway, if the costs really come to $30 per month, I will stop using AWS.


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## robroy (Jul 25, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> So looking at Digital Ocean, $5 bucks a month is the entry point. It sounds like a great plan.



I've had one of their $5 VMs for a while and it works well.


Phishfry said:


> Something about the term droplet is bothering me.
> Please just call it a VM. We are not stupid.



I feel exactly the same way.  Oh well.  'time to go _spin up_ my car to _enable lean mobility as a service, going forward_.  What's wrong with this sentence is "car!"  'should have called it a "seedling!"  THEN I'd be agile...


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## ekingston (Jul 25, 2018)

FWIW, Digital Ocean, Linode, and Atlantic.net all have a small US$5/mo VM option. They all include a fixed IPv4 address. You can install FreeBSD on all of them. Digital Ocean has a ready-to-go image whereas, the last time I checked you had to upload your own image on the other two.

I personally went with Vultr.com. They have an even cheaper (and smaller) US$2.50/mo VM and they have a pre-built FreeBSD image so setup takes seconds. You also get a static IPv4 address and the management interface is simple. Mine is running 11.2 at the moment. I can send you a referral link that will give me a bit of credit if  you sign-up using the link. I've had it for about a year.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 25, 2018)

I've used Vultr in the past and liked it a lot though I recently saw an article about someone complaining but it's just one guy. I've used Ramnode for many years. Very accessible people who work with you even on a live chat line, $3.50/month for a small server, FreeBSD, two IPv4 address and six IPv6(!).


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## ralphbsz (Jul 25, 2018)

obsigna said:


> The free tier offers are limited to 12 months.


I don't know about Amazon or Microsoft.  I only used Amazon for a few days, before I got tired of them, so I haven't had to figure out whether their free tier expires after a year or not.

At Google, there is a tier that remains always free.  I think you get a very small virtual machine (slow CPU, less than 1gig of RAM), a small amount of storage (either 5GB or 32GB, I forget which), and not very much network bandwidth (I think it is 1GB, but I've forgotten whether it's per day or per month).  For my usage, that's more than enough.  There is also another program where you get "a free year", which really just means that Google gives you a $300 credit on cloud services, which you can use up within a year.  Since my usage fits within the free limits, I haven't had to explore that other program.


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## Phishfry (Jul 30, 2018)

Well I went with Linode. I don't know how or why.
I didn't like the sound of over provisioning at Digital Ocean.
Ramnode had no space for many of their cheap plans(Except Seattle). I did like the sound of NVMe but I don't see the need$$
I wanted a east coast home too.

Really weird experience with Domain Registrars. I haven't had a domain in 15 years and used NSI then.
Man the landscape has changed. Go Daddy looked horrible and stories to suit.
namespace.com was OK but thier goofy cartoon website bombed so I ended up with Hover.
I recognized TuCows from way back when. So I am happy where I ended up.

Even if I am serving from a place with Lin** in the name. I didn't realize they didn't have pre-spun images.
That is fine I noticed some places still using 11.1 images for spinup. Lish was really easy to use and Linodes instructions worked.
I got Atlanta with the $5 plan and the Linode control panel is very straightforward so far. Not bad for a rookie VM user.
Knowing serial console and the loader (had to use `set kern.vty=sc` along with comconsole) really helped.
Beta site up in one day.


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## Chris_H (Jul 30, 2018)

IMHO you may want to reconsider your use of Linode. They're _notorious_ for hosting abusive users, and will do nothing, when informed. As a result DNS providers (day $JOB$) around the globe, simply drop packets from their origin. IOW if (your) being/becoming popular is an intent, they might not be your best choice.
Just thought it worth mentioning. 

--Chris


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## Chris_H (Jul 30, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> Really weird experience with Domain Registrars. I haven't had a domain in 15 years and used NSI then.
> Man the landscape has changed. Go Daddy looked horrible and stories to suit.
> namespace.com was OK but thier goofy cartoon website bombed so I ended up with Hover.
> I recognized TuCows from way back when. So I am happy where I ended up.


LOL _indeed they have_!
They're all pretty bad now, by comparison. Most of the (smaller) ones are simply "partners" of one of the bigger ones, anyway. TuCows is a portal (partner) to the other big ones.
FWIW I own/host ~160 domains. I found internet.bs (love the name) aka; internetbs.net to be an easy registrar to deal with, and their prices generally beat all the competition. No, I _don't_ work for them, and I'm _not_ an affiliate. In case anyone wonders. 

--Chris


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## geolscott (Jul 30, 2018)

I've run VMs all over the place in the last five years, but mostly at AWS and GCE. As a former AWS TAM, I find EC2...ohhh...underwhelming. But then again, I've seen behind the curtains, and I might say the same if I saw behind the curtains at Google as well. <shrug>

GCE isn't *that* expensive, really...the fractional instances are around $12/month on the heavy end, if I recall correctly.

I've been running 11 in GCE for the better part of a year now. It's a custom image, the importing of which (if you follow the instructions in the GCE docs) is super easy to do. Far easier than with AWS, IMHO. At any rate, one of the things I love best about GCE is the ability to resize instances. But the absolute best thing (absolute best!) is the ability to interact with the instances via a serial console.  

Google does block outbound SMTP, but that's easily worked around with a little bit of configuration in postfix, an SPF record in DNS, and a sendgrid account. ;-)


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## DeadLoco (Sep 11, 2018)

Can anyone explain for the newbee how can I install the GCE 11.2-RELEASE image 32GB large into the free-tier VM having 30GB disk max?


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## marcus123 (Mar 29, 2019)

I have been running FreeBSD on GCE for 3 years, and it is very stable (both of FreeBSD and GCE), the price is lower than the data center we used before, and it is more flexible.


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## balanga (Mar 29, 2019)

marcus123 said:


> I have been running FreeBSD on GCE for 3 years, and it is very stable (both of FreeBSD and GCE), the price is lower than the data center we used before, and it is more flexible.



Where can I see a pricelist?


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## obsigna (Mar 29, 2019)

obsigna said:


> The free tier offers are limited to 12 months. My AWS-EC2 free tier instance is going to expire by the end of this month. I will let it go at least until end of august in order to see the effective costs per month. This is hosting a low traffic mail server on FreeBSD 11.2, and because on AWS a fixed IPv4 address is included in the package, I don't need to relay my outgoing mails through a 3rd-party mail forwarder. I installed also an L2TP/IPsec service which I use with my mobile clients when I am outside of my LAN, in order to prevent MITM frauds when surfing the internet. Anyway, if the costs really come to $30 per month, I will stop using AWS.


Replying to myself, only for telling that the price per month of said AWS-EC2 turned out to be ~US$ 12/m (including sales tax of 19 % in Germany).

Does Google Cloud Computing offer instances on data centers in Europe now? 2 years ago, I could install an instance in the U.S. only, which for European non private uses is a non starter. Even for private uses the performance penalty of every data packet has to travel more than 10 thousand km is considerable, and in this respect only, for Europeans the AWS subsidiary located in Frankfurt/Germany offers „more bang for the bucks“.


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## aragats (Mar 29, 2019)

obsigna said:


> Does Google Cloud Computing offer instances on data centers in Europe now?


Not sure about Google, but I use LiteServer in Europe for many years, they have good plans for good prices, and good customer support too.


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## aragats (Mar 29, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> I don't know about Amazon or Microsoft. I only used Amazon for a few days, before I got tired of them, so I haven't had to figure out whether their free tier expires after a year or not.
> At Google, there is a tier that remains always free.


There is also one-time payment options with cloudatcost, they have plans starting from $35. I have a small VPS with and it's not bad at all.
The bad thing is that they still provide just FreeBSD 10.4, so I had to upgrade it manually to 12.0.


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## ralphbsz (Mar 29, 2019)

obsigna said:


> Does Google Cloud Computing offer instances on data centers in Europe now? 2 years ago, I could install an instance in the U.S. only, which for European non private uses is a non starter.



Made me look ... there are a half dozen different locations in Europe (including Frankfurt, Brussels, Amsterdam and Zurich), another half dozen locations in Asia, and a few in South America and Canada, in addition to the locations in the US.  This applies to paid service.  I didn't bother looking whether the free service has location restrictions.


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## ralphbsz (Mar 30, 2019)

And what I forgot to mention: All of the big three (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) offer a free virtual machine for 1 year.  Honestly, I don't even know whether Microsoft offers FreeBSD or not, but they do have a 1-year-free Linux offering.  Amazon and Google definitely do have a FreeBSD offering, I've used both.  In addition, Google offers a small virtual machine that will always be free; neither Amazon nor Microsoft seem to have that (their free machine starts costing money after a year).  The forever-free storage is quite limited on all providers, a handful of GB (in addition to the boot disk of the free machine; my current free machine has a free 30G boot disk, of which 6.2G are in use by the OS install, and about 21G are available).  But what Amazon and Microsoft have is free event-driven compute service; if you can structure your application to respond to RPCs with events, you can run it forever free.

I'm sure there are zillions of other providers; I like the CloudAtCost offer of $35 one time and then forever free, but I don't know whether (how?) they intend to stick around which that business plan.

Detailed price lists can be found on their respective web sites.


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## Datapanic (Mar 30, 2019)

Microsoft Azure has FreeBSD and it's not too bad.  RELEASE11.2 or RELEASE 12.0.  They give you $200.00 of virtual cash to do things so you can actually spin up more than just one VM or SaaS if you want.  Documentation wise, I like MS a little bit better.


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