Hostwinds offers several operating systems to choose from, either Linux or Windows, in various versions. This guide intends to list the minimum requirements each of these systems requires to operate to be successful while using your services. All of our current Dedicated and VPS server plans meet these requirements.
Since etcd writes data to disk, SSD is highly recommended
2 CPU
2GB RAM
80GB of Disk Space
Devuan
1 CPU
2GB RAM
15GB Disk Space
Finnux
1 CPU
32MiB RAM absolute minimum
2GB of disk space
FreeNAS
1 CPU
8GB RAM
8GB Disk Space
NixOS
1 CPU
768MB RAM
8GB Disk Space
OpenBSD
1 CPU
128MB of RAM, however, depends heavily on the use case.
OpenBSD can be installed in as little as 512MB, but using a small device is something for advanced users. Until you have some experience, 8GB or more disk space is recommended.
OpenSUSE
1 CPU
1GB RAM
3 GB available disk space for a minimal install, 5 GB available for a graphical desktop
pfSense
1 CPU
512MB RAM
4GB Disk Space
Ubuntu (14.04, 16.04, 18.04 w/ i386 or x86_64)
2 GHz dual-core processor
2 GiB RAM (system memory)
25 GB of hard-drive space
RancherOS
1 CPU
512MB RAM
20GB Disk Space
Vyos
1 CPU
For small branch offices, Atom/C3 CPU and 256-384M RAM should be enough; for edge routers, large VPN concentrators, and other high load appliances, you should consider powerful servers