Tall buildings start from the ground. A personal digital toolkit is no different. The traditional version of infrastructure is roads, power grids, and water supply. The digital version is the internet, data centers, and the services that keep them running. For a personal setup, the foundation I care about is small: one cloud server and one domain.
Cloud servers
A cloud virtual machine, often shortened to CVM, gives you elastic compute. You can expand or shrink resources as your needs change, and you pay only for what you use. It cuts the cost of buying hardware and makes operations much simpler. You no longer need to buy a physical server and pull a network cable just to get started. A provider takes care of power, connectivity, and hardware failures. That removes a lot of the marginal cost that used to come with running your own box.
Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and similar providers often run promotions. At the right time, a personal cloud server can be very cheap. But in mainland China there are practical differences between a mainland server and an overseas one.
<table> <thead> <tr> <th></th> <th>Mainland China server</th> <th>Overseas server</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Bandwidth</td> <td>Low</td> <td>Relatively high</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Network</td> <td>Cannot reach overseas sites</td> <td>Cannot reach mainland sites</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Speed</td> <td>Fast</td> <td>Not guaranteed</td> </tr> <tr> <td>ICP filing</td> <td>Supported</td> <td>Not supported</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Domain</td> <td>Must be filed to work normally</td> <td>No filing requirement</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>Broadly speaking, a mainland server is fast and supports domain filing. An overseas server needs no filing and can access websites. Neither option is automatically better, and both have their own traps.
What configuration is enough?
It depends on what you actually need and how much you want to spend. On my current server, daily memory usage sits around 70%, which leaves some headroom for spikes. In general, cloud server CPUs are idle a lot of the time. Memory is the more important indicator. Network bandwidth shows up in access and download speed.
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Memory</th> <th>Suitable for</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>1GB</td> <td>Blogs, static sites, small forums</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2GB</td> <td>NextCloud, RssHub, Gitea, Docker, and similar services</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4GB and above</td> <td>Common productivity tools, forums, and so on</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>Mainland or overseas is not only about location
Whether you choose a mainland server or an overseas one, the first thing to understand is this: you cannot violate the laws and regulations of the place where the cloud provider holds its commercial license. If the provider is Chinese, such as Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud, then even a server in the United States or the European Union must comply with Chinese law. Likewise, a server from a US provider must comply with US law.
Under Article 15 of the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services, providers of internet information services may not create, copy, publish, or disseminate information that: (1) opposes the basic principles established by the Constitution; (2) endangers national security, leaks state secrets, subverts state power, or undermines national unity; (3) harms national honor and interests; (4) incites ethnic hatred or discrimination, or undermines ethnic unity; (5) undermines national religious policy, promotes cults or feudal superstition; (6) spreads rumors, disrupts social order, or undermines social stability; (7) spreads obscene, pornographic, gambling, violent, homicide, terrorist content, or incites crime; (8) insults or defames others, or infringes on others' lawful rights and interests; (9) contains other content prohibited by laws or administrative regulations.
For example, my Tencent Cloud server in Silicon Valley is physically overseas, but it still cannot be used for things Chinese law prohibits. Content that crosses the line can still face an unconditional ban. Buy according to your real needs, and do not choose a mainland server while expecting the advantages of an overseas one. If you have extra needs, spend a little money to move the risk instead of stubbornly testing whether you will be banned.
Which one should you buy?
If you do not have a must-have requirement for a mainland server, I would suggest going overseas. With the same configuration, there is usually no obvious performance gap between mainland and overseas servers. The main difference is network access. Mainland cloud servers can be very slow or even unable to reach sites such as GitHub and Docker Hub, and network problems can cause all kinds of unexpected errors. An overseas server also lets you bind a domain without filing, and its bandwidth is often higher. In practice, the speed is not dramatically slower than a domestic one.
My previous Tencent Cloud server in Shanghai had a ping of around 50. My current Tencent Cloud server in Silicon Valley is around 200. In actual use, I barely notice the difference. But an overseas server does not support ICP filing, so keep that in mind.
Which provider is better?
Start with a large provider, then look for a discount. Common mainland options include Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud. Overseas options include Amazon Cloud, BandwagonHost, and many others. I have used Tencent Cloud servers for about five years. Overall, it has been fine for personal use, and I have not run into any major problems.
If you watch for sales such as Double 11 or Black Friday, the prices can be very good. When I upgraded my server, I caught Tencent Cloud's second-anniversary promotion for Lightweight Cloud. I paid around 1,400 RMB for seven years of a 2-core, 4GB server.
Would a Synology or Raspberry Pi be cheaper?
Not necessarily. It depends on the situation. If you need a home data center, a Synology, a Raspberry Pi, or similar hardware can meet that need better. But for most people, I would still recommend a cloud server. A home data center is a lot of fiddling. It takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and cost.
<table> <thead> <tr> <th></th> <th>Home data center</th> <th>Cloud server</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Network</td> <td>Fast, unstable</td> <td>Slow, stable, elastically upgradeable</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Storage</td> <td>Large capacity</td> <td>Small capacity, elastically upgradeable</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Performance</td> <td>High performance</td> <td>Low performance, elastically upgradeable</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Electricity</td> <td>0.5 to 10 yuan</td> <td>None</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Cost</td> <td>Lower for the same performance</td> <td>Higher for the same performance</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Operations</td> <td>Extremely high marginal cost</td> <td>None</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>Just on electricity, a home data center with four drives at roughly 50W total costs about 0.5 yuan a day. Over seven years, that is 1,277.5 yuan. My server cost only 1,400 yuan for seven years and needs no maintenance. If the power goes out unexpectedly, a drive can fail. If the drives are in an array, rebuilding it takes time and can fail. Then there is the network: very few individual users in mainland China get a perfect fixed IP, and business bandwidth is extremely expensive.
A home data center is not useless. It can beat a cloud server on network, storage, and performance. Terabytes of storage, an 8-core processor, and 16GB of RAM are not things a cloud server will give you cheaply. People who enjoy tinkering with home data centers probably are not reading this anyway. 🤣
Domains
A domain name is a string of dot-separated characters that identifies a computer or group of computers on the internet. It is used to identify a machine's electronic location when data is transmitted. In simple terms, a domain is a stand-in for an IP address, and its purpose is to make the address easier to remember. For example, wikipedia.org is a domain. People can visit wikipedia.org instead of an IP address, and the Domain Name System, or DNS, translates it into an IP address that machines can recognize. That way, people only need to remember a meaningful string of characters instead of a meaningless set of numbers.
Since the point of a domain is to be memorable, register something meaningful and easy to remember. Beyond that, register what you like.
Are free domains good enough?
Free is often the most expensive option. If you already have a cloud server, do not register a free domain. A .xyz domain costs only about ten-plus RMB a year. Free domains can be unstable in resolution, and one day access may simply stop. They are also not great for SEO.
Which TLD is better?
I suggest registering common extensions such as .com, .org, and .dev. Domains have value, so do not waste money registering random names. Stick to the extensions people commonly use.
Is filing a domain in mainland China easy?
It depends, and some domains cannot be filed at all. For example, .org domains cannot be filed in mainland China. If you want to file a domain, make sure you know which TLDs are allowed. Filing is not a one-time permanent thing either. The industry and information technology authorities conduct random checks. If you are unlucky, you will have to deal with it again. Filing usually takes about 10 to 20 days. Chinese cloud providers will help you with the process, so the overall difficulty is average.
How long should you renew for?
Eight years is a good renewal length. Promotions can tempt you to renew for ten years, but try not to. If you later need to transfer the domain, you may have to wait a year or two. In most cases, a domain transfer requires renewing for one more year at the receiving registrar, so eight years leaves more room.
Where can you find domain discounts?
I bought an eight-year .org domain through Google Domains using Turkish regional payment for just over 200 RMB. It felt like a steal. A ten-year .xyz domain was only around a hundred RMB. So go for it.
A domain is just the label. The server is the foundation. Get those two right, and the rest of the digital toolkit has somewhere to live.