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I run a SaaS that makes between $1000-$2000/yr on a $5 VM. My operations are as follows: On the VM: - Nodejs + React SSR - Nginx - Certbot to manage my SSL

I run a SaaS that makes between $1000-$2000/yr on a $5 VM. My operations are as follows: On the VM: - Nodejs + React SSR - Nginx - Certbot to manage my SSL cert - Integrated with Grafana's cloud service (free tier) Outside of the VM: - Managed MongoDB cluster - API health check's every 3 min with email alerts (I use multiple uptime services to check from different regions) - DB backup cron jobs, backups are stored in 2 cloud providers - Service desk for customer's to send queries/raise issues - Alerts if CPU/RAM usage is too high (never got an alert for the past 2 years) I also nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc. Future work: - Find way to backup my DNS records - Probably need to monitor the SSL cert expiration in case certbot breaks - CI/CD

anyfactor 3y ago
That is really awesome. > nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc That is really interesting. What are you using to re-setup your entire infrastructure after purging a VM? How do you manage the down time between one vm purge to setting up the next one. I would love to know, going beyond the VPS what is your total infrastructure + maintenance cost.
- lightning19 3y ago
  Thanks :) I set things up again on the new VM manually. I have a runbook for it, usually takes me 30 mins or less. To not have any downtime I keep the old VM up and attach a new public IP to the new VM. I then update the DNS records and after a while when the new IP is mapped to my domain I then stop the old VM. Costs: Managed Mongodb cluster: $9 but I share it between multiple side projects so let's say $3 API health checks - free! I use digital ocean and fresh ping Service Desk - free! I use Jira DNS: Usually $0.3 DB backups: within the free tier on both cloud providers. I have it set to only keep the last x backups so this should always be free Cron job to run the backup: I have a serverless function for this, still within the free tier SSL cert - free because I use let's encrypt Docker image storage costs: <$1 Total ~$9.5
  - anyfactor 3y ago
    Truly incredible. Thank you very much sharing.
  - nerdyadventurer 3y ago
    Can you please say the services you use for DNS, Docker image storage?
    - lightning19 3y ago
      DNS - I use GCP as the domain was purchased with domains.google because I get free email addresses which I can receive and reply to from my personal gmail (e.g. support@saasapp.com). I'm not 100% sure if this setup will work with another DNS provider. Docker Image - Since I'm running this most of the operation on AWS I use ECR

anyfactor 3y ago

That is really awesome. > nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc That is really interesting. What are you using to re-setup your entire infrastructure after purging a VM? How do you manage the down time between one vm purge to setting up the next one. I would love to know, going beyond the VPS what is your total infrastructure + maintenance cost.

lightning19 3y ago
Thanks :) I set things up again on the new VM manually. I have a runbook for it, usually takes me 30 mins or less. To not have any downtime I keep the old VM up and attach a new public IP to the new VM. I then update the DNS records and after a while when the new IP is mapped to my domain I then stop the old VM. Costs: Managed Mongodb cluster: $9 but I share it between multiple side projects so let's say $3 API health checks - free! I use digital ocean and fresh ping Service Desk - free! I use Jira DNS: Usually $0.3 DB backups: within the free tier on both cloud providers. I have it set to only keep the last x backups so this should always be free Cron job to run the backup: I have a serverless function for this, still within the free tier SSL cert - free because I use let's encrypt Docker image storage costs: <$1 Total ~$9.5
- anyfactor 3y ago
  Truly incredible. Thank you very much sharing.
- nerdyadventurer 3y ago
  Can you please say the services you use for DNS, Docker image storage?
  - lightning19 3y ago
    DNS - I use GCP as the domain was purchased with domains.google because I get free email addresses which I can receive and reply to from my personal gmail (e.g. support@saasapp.com). I'm not 100% sure if this setup will work with another DNS provider. Docker Image - Since I'm running this most of the operation on AWS I use ECR