Hetzner

What is Hetzner?

Hetzner Online provides dedicated hosting, shared web hosting, virtual private servers, managed servers, domain names, SSL certificates, storage boxes, and cloud. At the data center parks located in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Tuusula/Finland, customers can also connect their hardware to Hetzner Online's infrastructure and network with the company's colocation services. The company operates a server auction site online where the chance to rent older dedicated servers (not purchase or colocate) are auctioned off in the form of a Dutch auction. According to W3Techs, Hetzner is used by 2.7% of all websites.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetzner

Why did i choose Hetzner?

Hetzner is the leading hosting provider in Germany. I previously used https://srv.rent as my provider, but the ressources they provided were too low for me to further operate with their servers. I checked out many other providers like Strator or DigitalOcean, but the pricing didnt fit for me. Then i checked out Hetzner Server Auctions where i found a server which matched me and had enough ressources for a fair price. Specs:

CPU: Intel Xeon W-2295 (18c/36t)
RAM: DDR4 ECC reg. 4x 32 GB (Total: 128 GB)
ROM: 1x 2TB HDD Enterprise
Network: Single 1 Gbps Network
Additional IPv4: Complete additional /29 Subnet (6 IP Adresses)
Price (Total): about Single 1 Gbps Network

Server auctions: https://www.hetzner.com/sb/

Why Proxmox VE?

Proxmox VE allows me to create Virtual Machines (Short VM, basically a computer on your computer), on my server. This allows me to test different operating systems, projects and hosting sites or mc servers without using my own computer or destroying the main server or my computer if a script runs without success. On your Desktop PC you can use tools like Oracle VirtualBox which do "basically" the same job. VirtualBox allows you to use downloaded ISO files and create a VM inside your computer.

Installing a custom OS on Hetzner

When you first start your Hetzner Dedicated Server, you will see the rescue system to be booted in since there is no OS yet installed. Whne running 'installimage' you can see many OS to choose, when you want to run Proxmox VE like i did, you may choose Debian 12 Bookworm.

Source: https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/operating-systems/installimage/

After installing the OS, your server will reboot to apply the changes and then start with Debian 12. To make sure you have installed Debian 12 run these commands:

apt update -y &  apt upgrade -y
apt install neofetch
neofetch # This will list your OS and Sys specs

If it shows Debian 12, youre all set. Then continue with the Proxmox installation, you can find the docs here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_12_Bookworm

To create VMs, read this: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-beginner-tutorial-how-to-set-up-your-first-virtual-machine-on-a-secondary-hard-disk.59559/