Proposal to ask users about their experiences with VPS

[Peter Boy]

Folks,

We decided for „Fedora Server in a virtualized runtime environment“ as our second priority work project. As a first step I consider to send a mail to user list and to "Ask Fedora“ and probably discussion #server-wg to collect experiences with this.

Maybe, a mail like:
> - - - - - <

Subj.: Who has experience with Fedora as VPS at a hosting provider?

Text Body:
The Server WG is looking for users who run or have run Fedora, especially Fedora Server, as a virtual private server (VPS/VDS) with hosting providers such as Contabo, netcup VPS, or AWS (Lightsail) and others. We are interested in providing/accepting custom images for installation as well as Fedora offerings by the host provider (Completeness, up-to-dateness).

Would you share with us your experiences? How can we make it easier? What were / are you missing in Fedora?

Please, reply to this mail or share your knowledge in the server-wg channel https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags/c/project/7/server-wg
> - - - - - <

Any ideas? Comments? Better ideas? Better wording?  Objections?

What are the best locations to send such a message to?

--
Peter Boy
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
[e-mail]

Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST /UTC+2)

Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
Java developer and enthusiast

[Daniel Schier]

HI Peter,

I might be one of the attendees to the above questions. In general, it 
is a good idea to ask the users, too.

Anyway, from my experience, most users do not respond in a conclusive 
way to these kind of requests. Instead, having some one-click-surveys 
or super simple questions has generated way more data.

But, to do the same, one has to come up with opportunities and fitting 
solution ideas (hypothesis). I think ,you already identified such an 
opportunity (Fedora on VPS). If there are any proposals regarding a 
better fit for the same, I would start with proving the hypothesis. 
This might look like the below:

-->
As Fedora Server WG, we identified that some of you are using Fedora 
Server on a VPS like Netcup, Hetzner, Exoscale, etc. We want to improve 
your experience with the same by creating specialized images. Please 
let us know:

Q: Which VPS provider do you use on a regular basis?
A: Netcup|Contabo|AWS|Hetzner|other

Q: What is the most cumbersome task for you on a VPS?
A: Initial Setup|Network configuration|Finding the proper image

Q: Is your SSH/Cockpit available via a public IP address?
A: yes|no|only SSH|only Cockpit
<--

Each of the above question/answer combinations can be a dedicated 
survey and therefore make it super easy for the user to answer. Each of 
these questions can be asked via Fedoramagazine, fedora project page, 
fedora discussions and some might be suitable for the mailing lists. 
One might even ask somebody who has answered to subscribe to the 
mailing lists afterwards and share more details.

You can create concrete tasks from the results. For example, providing 
an easy way to harden the SSH access.

Lastly, since there is already Fedora Cloud images, I am not entirely 
sure if users will get the difference between these.

Looking forward for the improvements.

Best,
Daniel
---

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On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 16:01:36 +0200, Peter Boy  
wrote:
> Folks,
>
> We decided for „Fedora Server in a virtualized runtime 
> environment“ as our second priority work project. As a first step I 
> consider to send a mail to user list and to "Ask Fedora“ and 
> probably discussion #server-wg to collect experiences with this.
>
> Maybe, a mail like:
> > - - - - - <
>
> Subj.: Who has experience with Fedora as VPS at a hosting provider?
>
> Text Body:
> The Server WG is looking for users who run or have run Fedora, 
> especially Fedora Server, as a virtual private server (VPS/VDS) with 
> hosting providers such as Contabo, netcup VPS, or AWS (Lightsail) and 
> others. We are interested in providing/accepting custom images for 
> installation as well as Fedora offerings by the host provider 
> (Completeness, up-to-dateness).
>
> Would you share with us your experiences? How can we make it easier? 
> What were / are you missing in Fedora?
>
> Please, reply to this mail or share your knowledge in the server-wg 
> channel 
> https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags/c/project/7/server-wg
> > - - - - - <
>
> Any ideas? Comments? Better ideas? Better wording?  Objections?
>
> What are the best locations to send such a message to?
>
> --
> Peter Boy
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
> [e-mail]
>
> Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST /UTC+2)
>
> Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
> Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
> Java developer and enthusiast
>
> server mailing list -- [e-mail] 
>
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail] 
>
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[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hi!

On Monday, 29 May 2023 at 16:28, Daniel Schier wrote:
> HI Peter,
>
> I might be one of the attendees to the above questions. In general, it is a
> good idea to ask the users, too.

Same here, great idea.
> Anyway, from my experience, most users do not respond in a conclusive way to
> these kind of requests. Instead, having some one-click-surveys or super
> simple questions has generated way more data.

I agree. A survey seems like an idea that might get more responses. You
can always add an "Any additional comments?" free-form text field at the
end.
> But, to do the same, one has to come up with opportunities and fitting
> solution ideas (hypothesis). I think ,you already identified such an
> opportunity (Fedora on VPS). If there are any proposals regarding a better
> fit for the same, I would start with proving the hypothesis. This might look
> like the below:
>
> -->
> As Fedora Server WG, we identified that some of you are using Fedora Server
> on a VPS like Netcup, Hetzner, Exoscale, etc. We want to improve your
> experience with the same by creating specialized images. Please let us know:
>
> Q: Which VPS provider do you use on a regular basis?
> A: Netcup|Contabo|AWS|Hetzner|other

I'd add Digital Ocean, OVH, and Oracle Cloud to the list (Oracle has a
generous free ARMv8 offering). Personally, I use the last two.
> Q: What is the most cumbersome task for you on a VPS?
> A: Initial Setup|Network configuration|Finding the proper image

For OVH, I did a full regular installation from the Server image to
enable disk encryption. Which means I don't have unattended reboots as I
need to provide the LUKS password at every boot, but that's my choice.

For Oracle, I had some trouble with the right machine options to run the
Fedora Cloud Aarch64 image. I had to select Firmware: UEFI_64 and then
it booted fine.
> Q: Is your SSH/Cockpit available via a public IP address?
> A: yes|no|only SSH|only Cockpit

only SSH

Regards,
Dominik

[Neal Gompa]

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 11:13 AM Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski
 wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On Monday, 29 May 2023 at 16:28, Daniel Schier wrote:
> > HI Peter,
> >
> > I might be one of the attendees to the above questions. In general, it is a
> > good idea to ask the users, too.
>
> Same here, great idea.
> > Anyway, from my experience, most users do not respond in a conclusive way to
> > these kind of requests. Instead, having some one-click-surveys or super
> > simple questions has generated way more data.
>
> I agree. A survey seems like an idea that might get more responses. You
> can always add an "Any additional comments?" free-form text field at the
> end.
> > But, to do the same, one has to come up with opportunities and fitting
> > solution ideas (hypothesis). I think ,you already identified such an
> > opportunity (Fedora on VPS). If there are any proposals regarding a better
> > fit for the same, I would start with proving the hypothesis. This might look
> > like the below:
> >
> > -->
> > As Fedora Server WG, we identified that some of you are using Fedora Server
> > on a VPS like Netcup, Hetzner, Exoscale, etc. We want to improve your
> > experience with the same by creating specialized images. Please let us know:
> >
> > Q: Which VPS provider do you use on a regular basis?
> > A: Netcup|Contabo|AWS|Hetzner|other
>
> I'd add Digital Ocean, OVH, and Oracle Cloud to the list (Oracle has a
> generous free ARMv8 offering). Personally, I use the last two.
> > Q: What is the most cumbersome task for you on a VPS?
> > A: Initial Setup|Network configuration|Finding the proper image
>
> For OVH, I did a full regular installation from the Server image to
> enable disk encryption. Which means I don't have unattended reboots as I
> need to provide the LUKS password at every boot, but that's my choice.
>
> For Oracle, I had some trouble with the right machine options to run the
> Fedora Cloud Aarch64 image. I had to select Firmware: UEFI_64 and then
> it booted fine.
> > Q: Is your SSH/Cockpit available via a public IP address?
> > A: yes|no|only SSH|only Cockpit
>
> only SSH

Most of these use Fedora Cloud Edition rather than Fedora Server
Edition if you use their images, which may influence what people would
experience on various cloud/VPS solutions. Fedora Cloud has existing
relationships or is in the process of building them for a number of
these providers.

[Peter Boy]

Hi all,

First af all a big excuse for my really late response here. I was so swamped, I couldn't keep up. That's a big bummer, but I couldn't do it any other way.
> Am 29.05.2023 um 16:28 schrieb Daniel Schier :
>
> HI Peter,
>
> ...
>
> Each of the above question/answer combinations can be a dedicated survey and therefore make it super easy for the user to answer. Each of these questions can be asked via Fedoramagazine, fedora project page, fedora discussions and some might be suitable for the mailing lists. One might even ask somebody who has answered to subscribe to the mailing lists afterwards and share more details.

Many thanks for your proposal. I agree, it makes it really a lot better!
> Lastly, since there is already Fedora Cloud images, I am not entirely sure if users will get the difference between these.

Yeah, with Server it’s a VPS, either autonomous or maybe in a cluster. The cloud images are not meant as such a server, they are instances in a cloud runtime system. Therefore they lack some features ba default, e.g. Firewall.

But yes, it needs some explanation.
> Am 30.05.2023 um 11:12 schrieb Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski :
>
> Hi!
> > ...
>
> I'd add Digital Ocean, OVH, and Oracle Cloud to the list (Oracle has a
> generous free ARMv8 offering). Personally, I use the last two.

Thanks for the hints. Regarding Oracle cloud. I had a short look, and it seems they are not for VPS, i.e. fixed resources intended for the long term (very much abbreviated). But I have to check it more carefully.
> > Q: What is the most cumbersome task for you on a VPS?
> > A: Initial Setup|Network configuration|Finding the proper image
>
> For OVH, I did a full regular installation from the Server image to
> enable disk encryption. Which means I don't have unattended reboots as I
> need to provide the LUKS password at every boot, but that's my choice.

The need for full installation we want to eliminate. Encryption we hadn’t in mind yet. We’ll check.
> Am 30.05.2023 um 11:41 schrieb Neal Gompa :
>
> ...
> Most of these use Fedora Cloud Edition rather than Fedora Server
> Edition if you use their images, which may influence what people would
> experience on various cloud/VPS solutions. Fedora Cloud has existing
> relationships or is in the process of building them for a number of
> these providers.

Yeah, but Cloud and Server have different use cases in mind, as we discussed a year or two ago. I hope, we can improve user experience if we offer specific solutions for each use case.

I am looking forward when we can benefit from these contacts and experiences.

BTW: I’m glad we had the opportunity to meet in Nürnberg.

--
Peter Boy
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
[e-mail]

Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST /UTC+2)

Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
Java developer and enthusiast