-
Experiments with AI: get started with LLMs using Ollama
This post will explore setting up Ollama to run a text based chat on one of our new GPU backed VPSs. Ollama is a free, open-source tool that simplifies running large language models (LLMs) locally on your computer. What is an LLM An LLM is a complex neural network trained on massive datasets of text…
-
Text prompt AI image creation using Stable Diffusion and an NVIDIA A10 GPU on a RimuHosting VM
First, order a RimuHosting VM with a GPU. When prompted you would register or login to complete the order. For most GPU applications you will need a good amount of memory (10GB+) and disk (30GB+). We recommend the Debian 12 (bookworm) distro. At the time of writing only the Dallas data center has GPU-enabled hosts.…
-
Case study: Nextcloud to the rescue for unhappy tradies using Office365
Providing effective IT solutions to franchisees is crucial for optimizing operations and streamlining business processes. In this case study, we explore how Paul, an IT support specialist at a master franchisor, successfully implemented a self-hosted alternative to Office 365 using Nextcloud on a RimuHosting VM. By doing so, he enabled franchisees, primarily tradespeople such as…
-
Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part Two
In this post I’m going to introduce playbooks, and show you how to customise the /etc/resolv.conf file on each server. I assume you have followed Part One of this series and have created a hosts file and files in ~/myansible/host_vars/. Tasks, playbooks, groups and roles A note on terminology. A task is something done on…
-
Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part One
Ansible is a system to automate the updating of server configurations and other administration tasks. In this post I’ll explain what’s necessary to get started with Ansible, creating a configuration structure, telling Ansble about your hosts and running ad-hock commands on multiple hosts. Ansible is useful when you have 3 or more VPSs and need…
-
LXD containers now available for Ubuntu
The latest Ubuntu LTS release, Xenial 16.04 , comes with support for a container system called LXD. LXD builds on the existing LXC container system, allowing for more convenient management of those containers. In this post I show how you can test out LXD containers on a Rimu VPS running Ubuntu 16.04. I assume you…
-
Using Vagrant to Manage Rimu VPS systems
Vagrant is high level wrapper around virtualization and configuration management software. It simplifies the creation and management of easily reproduceable environments. It is particularly suited for development and test enviroments where servers are brought up and down frequently. It can also be used to bootstrap production systems. It can be used with configuration management software…
-
Running Vagrant in your VPS
Vagrant is often used to set up development environments in a standardized way, so that your software project deployed via vagrant has a standard environment with all the operating system components and set-up it needs to work properly. It creates a virtual machine to provide this environment, so that different developers can work on it…
-
Free Kubernetes hosting for developers
RimuHosting are working on a command line tool set to easily setup and manage a Kubernetes cluster. We are currently in a trial phase. During this phase we will be providing free Kubernetes cluster hosting to developers needing an easy-to-setup, publicly-accessible Kubernetes cluster to hack on. Just email support at rimuhosting, mention this blog post…
-
Kubernetes support on RimuHosting VMs
“Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions. Using the concepts of “labels” and “pods”, it groups the containers which make up an application into logical units for easy management…