Running your BBS in the Cloud
Why would you run a BBS in the cloud? Simple – no hardware for you to maintain! No electricity for you to pay for! And most of all, you can maintain it from pretty much anywhere you have an Internet connection.
It’s relatively cheap to run a BBS in the cloud, especially if you run Linux (Ubuntu in particular) at roughly $5 to $10 per month. Windows options are there, but they’re typically about twice the price at $10 to $20 per month. Either way, there are many options out there if you choose to run a BBS in the cloud and not at your residence or business.
The trick is to properly balance the amount of CPU cores needed, the hard drive storage you need, and monthly throughput for the price point you wish to pay. The more of any one item will increase the monthly price you pay.
Overview Cloud Computing (Amazon, Google, VPS) Services
Cloud Computing or Virtual Private Hosting (VPS) are two terms that are similar but for the purposes of running a BBS remotely can be almost synonymous. The goal is that a BBS Sysop no longer has to rely on a local computer under their control to host a BBS. Before now, you either had to dedicate a computer or have it run in the background of a computer that is running 24/7. That means that the computer needs to be operational at all times for your users to access. But what if your area is prone to frequent power outages? Frequent Internet outages? What if you just don’t want to dedicate hardware or electricity or an Internet connection for running a BBS? The modern solution to these problems is to run a BBS in a “cloud” or VPS environment where you don’t have to worry about “up time”.
There are an increasing amount of choices – from a small Virtual Private Server (VPS) to running on a micro instance of an Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud to Google Cloud, etc.
Examples of Cloud Services for Bulletin Board Systems
The following is a brief list of Cloud Computing services that either cater directly to BBS Sysops or are known to work with modern or legacy BBS systems. Bear in mind that when setting up a BBS system that if you’re running a Windows based BBS system and supporting older DOS based BBS doors (16-bit) that your Windows system must be 32-bit. An alternative is using Linux and DOSESMU (DOS Emulator) to run 16-bit BBS door games.
AWS is considered to be the forefront of hosting in the cloud. A number of BBS systems use AWS for hosting. Free for the first year, around $15 (based upon CPU and bandwidth) after that for a micro instance (plenty for most BBS systems). For both Windows and Linux based systems.
Synchronet BBS Fansite Hosting
Synchronet BBS Fansite is run by a Synchronet BBS Sysop who understands the demands of a Virtual Private Server host to run a BBS. Linux based Synchronet BBS hosting only. $14/month with the first month free.
Examples of Virtual Private Servers for Bulletin Board Systems
There are a number of Virtual Private Servers (VPS) that can run a BBS. Again, the goal is to balance the CPU cores, hard drive storage, and monthly throughput for the price point you wish to pay. This is just a quick list of known providers where Sysops are hosting BBS systems currently.
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