When a Raspberry Pi is no longer enough: moving to a VPS

A Raspberry Pi in a data centre handles a surprising amount: a website, a VPN, Home Assistant, a few containers. But projects grow. When yours outgrows the board, the natural next step is a virtual server in the same data centre in Hradec Králové. This article explains how to tell it's time, what a VPS gives you and how to move without downtime.

Signs you've outgrown your Raspberry Pi

Most people don't move because of one big problem. It's usually a handful of small ones that keep coming back. If two or three of these sound familiar, it's worth looking at a VPS:

• Memory is full. A database, a few containers and a web server together easily use 4 or 8 GB of RAM. Once the system starts swapping to the memory card, everything slows down.
• The card is too small or too slow. A 32 GB microSD card fills up quickly with logs, images and backups. A database that writes all the time also wears the card out.
• The processor is at 100 %. Building software, generating images or a busier online shop can keep all four ARM cores busy for minutes.
• Software only exists for x86. Most open source projects build for ARM today, but some commercial tools, older applications and Windows don't.
• You need quick recovery. On a Raspberry Pi, restoring after a failed update means reinstalling the card. A virtual server can go back to a snapshot in minutes.
• You need more addresses or room to grow. More IPv4 addresses, more disk space or more memory for a single project.

What a Raspberry Pi is still great at

Moving doesn't mean the Raspberry Pi was a mistake. For many things it's still the best choice. It uses very little power, it's your own hardware, and it's the right place for anything that should run on ARM, like testing builds for other ARM boards. A WireGuard VPN, DNS with Pi-hole, monitoring or a personal website run on it for years without trouble.

If you're happy with what your Pi does today, stay with Raspberry Pi hosting. A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM covers far more than most people expect. The rest of this article is for the moment when it no longer does.

What a VPS adds

A virtual server (VPS) is your own server with a dedicated share of processors, memory and disk. It runs on a physical server together with other virtual servers, but each one is isolated and behaves like a separate machine. At BEST-HOSTING the virtual servers run in the same data centre as your Raspberry Pi:

• AMD EPYC processors and an NVMe SSD disk array. The physical servers are connected by 10 Gb fibre, so databases and applications respond quickly.
• Performance that fits. Ready-made plans range from 1 vCPU with 2 GB of RAM to 8 vCPUs with 16 GB, and in the configurator you set processors, memory, disk and IP addresses separately. When you need more later, you change the plan instead of buying new hardware.
• Root access and a KVM console. You manage the server over SSH just like your Raspberry Pi. If you lock yourself out with a firewall rule, the KVM console in the control panel still gets you in.
• Your choice of operating system. Debian, Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Fedora, FreeBSD or Windows Server.
• Snapshots. Regular backups are set up in the order, and before a risky update you can take a snapshot of the current state and roll back to it for up to 7 days.
• IPv4 and IPv6. One IPv4 address is included, together with a /112 IPv6 range. More IPv4 addresses can be added in the configurator.

Details and current plans are on the VPS hosting in Europe page on best-hosting.cz.

Raspberry Pi or VPS at a glance

How to move from a Raspberry Pi to a VPS

Moving a small server is mostly about preparation. If you follow these steps, your visitors won't notice the switch.

1. Order the VPS and pick the same system. If your Raspberry Pi runs Raspberry Pi OS, choose Debian, which it's based on. If it runs Ubuntu, choose Ubuntu. Package names and configuration files will then be the same.
2. Lower the TTL of your DNS records. Set it to a few minutes a day before the move, so the change of IP address spreads quickly.
3. Install the services. Install the web server, database and other software on the VPS the same way you did on the Pi. If you use Docker, check that your images exist for amd64 (most official ones are multi-architecture), and rebuild your own images for the new platform.
4. Copy the data. Use rsync over SSH for files, and export and import databases, for example mysqldump or pg_dump. Your NFS backup disk can help as a shared stopover.
5. Test on the new address. Point your computer at the VPS through /etc/hosts and go through the website and services before anyone else sees them.
6. Switch DNS. Change the A and AAAA records to the VPS addresses. Thanks to the low TTL, traffic moves within minutes. Then copy anything that changed on the Pi in the meantime.
7. Keep the Pi for a few days. Leave it running until you're sure nothing is missing. Then cancel the hosting and we'll post the Raspberry Pi back to you.

Not sure about any of these steps? The BEST-HOSTING support team will help you plan the move by phone or email.

Keep both?

Some customers don't switch completely. The VPS takes over the busy website and database, and the Raspberry Pi keeps running a VPN, DNS or monitoring that watches the VPS from a separate machine. Both run in the same data centre and both get public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, so they can talk to each other directly.