Motivation
Currently we have several discussions about data security and that the major hosting providers offering real cloud experience are simply sitting in the US. Due to several projects I’m involved in I wanted to checkout modern hosting providers, fully complaining with the German Data Protection law (no EU rules, easy german rules) also providing advanced functionality like docker hosting, easy up and down scaling etc.
So i found linevast.de and upcode.io both operated by:
Droptop GmbH
Am Grashorn 8
14548 Schwielowsee OT Geltow
As you can verify in their “Impressum”.
Registration
Registration is fairly easy. Just head over to:
Fill in all the requested data and accept their common rules and you are done.
Installation
During the test i used the free test offer, so installing the VM is done by the customer support.
They installed the following ubuntu version:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial
As a normal user you head over into their customer center and choose to buy one of the offered maschine types.
Currently they offer ():
- VPS (OpenVZ) - https://linevast.de/angebote/linux-openvz-vserver-mieten.html
- KVM Server - https://linevast.de/angebote/kvm-vserver-mieten.html
- Classic Hosting - https://linevast.de/angebote/webspace-mieten.html
- Dedicated Server - https://linevast.de/angebote/root-server-mieten.html
And you can buy a variety of addon services specifically made for these type of maschines:
- SSL Certs by Commodo / but no lets’encrypt
- Plesk Licenses
- DDOS Protection (adjustable)
- Managed Hosting (for your VServers and dedicated Servers)
- Automated Software Preinstallation for either 3 or unlimited maschines
- ISPConfig 3, ISPmanager Lite, Ajenti, Webmin, CentOS Web Panel, Vesta, Webuzo, Sentora und LiveConfig
- Teamspeak
- Linux Remote Desktop
- OpenVPN
- Extra IP
Pricing can be found on their website at https://linevast.de/angebote/hosting-services.html .
Maschines are either payed monthly or quarter yearly or yearly.
So it’s not really fully flexible cloud hosting, but more classic VPS hosting with a longer runtime of the instances.
Anyway the offerings are fair and seem to be a good choice.
Security
The bad:
- Complete Credentials sent via E-Mail
- Credentials are visible in the Product Management console
- No way to set my ssh key to avoid sending any passwords over the line
- Not installed Software updates directly after login
- old kernel
2.6.32-042stab120.6
- no rkhunter preinstalled / preconfigured
- direct login via root by default (sudo / su has to be configured manually …)
- I found no way to activate a 2FA authentication
The good:
- system seems to have a firewall by default
- you can order advanced DDOS protection
- https://vm.linevast.de/ sends out an information if somebody logs into your maschine
- They have some kind of single sign on
Docker installation
Installing Docker fails due to the old kernel version installed 2.6.32-042stab120.6
, atleast it is an x64 system.
Docker currently needs:
- Docker only works on a 64-bit Linux installation.
- Docker requires version 3.10 or higher of the Linux kernel. Kernels older than 3.10 lack some of the features required to run Docker containers and contain known bugs which cause data loss and frequently panic under certain conditions.
See https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/ubuntulinux/ for more details.
Dokku installation Test
As the motivation was to install dokku or another kubernetes or heroku replacement for testing i also tried that - but it had to fail, due to the docker problems mentioned beforehand.
modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:514 lookup_builtin_file() could not open builtin file '/lib/modules/2.6.32-042stab120.6/modules.builtin.bin'
modprobe: FATAL: Module aufs not found in directory /lib/modules/2.6.32-042stab120.6
Warning: current kernel is not supported by the linux-image-extra-virtual
package. We have no AUFS support. Consider installing the packages
linux-image-virtual kernel and linux-image-extra-virtual for AUFS support.
As the kernel is rather old and it is an OpenVZ Maschine i can’t fix that right now.
Usability
As the Login form disappears on focus loose, it’s really inconvinient loggin into the system with lastpass, as you have to use the submenu of the rightclick menu …
Additionally you can either control you VM via https://vm.linevast.de/ or via https://panel.linevast.de/ . The reason of the seperation may not be clear for every one.
Sponsoring
The motivation of the article was pure research, during that i found the article of the t3n magazine mentioning an easy free testing of the linevast products. Due to that I had free access to the resources checked for that article.
I was never forced to write something specific, it’s the pure result of free testing.
You can find the original article here: http://t3n.de/news/docker-hosting-613802/
Additionally my initial try was to test https://upcube.io for free, which was not possible at the time of writing.