Storage stuff which I use.

July 8, 2023 - 7 mins read

Disclaimer No brands nor manufacturers paid me to write this blog post. It is entirely based on my own experiences. Introduction In the ever-evolving landscape of the digital era, our lives have become intricately intertwined with the vast realm of the internet. From streaming our favorite movies and music to capturing precious moments through high-resolution photographs, our reliance on online services continues to grow exponentially. As we immerse ourselves in this digital revolution, the need for robust and efficient storage devices becomes paramount.

Configuring network for Proxmox VE on OCI ARM

June 24, 2023 - 5 mins read

A few months ago, I posted a tutorial on how to install Proxmox VE on the ARM instance of OCI, and this is a follow-up. Original Post Goal The goal is to create a container that has NAT IPv4 (only for IPv4 connection, no ports opened, and with PVE, it is not possible to do that, at least with no official methods), and has a dedicated IPv6 address. Requirements You need to have a working PVE instance running on OCI, tutorial above.

Hosting a password manager? Why and how (vaultwarden)

June 24, 2023 - 8 mins read

In the modern era, where our lives are increasingly intertwined with technology, the need for robust digital security has become more crucial than ever. One of the fundamental aspects of securing our online presence lies in the effective management of passwords. With the multitude of online accounts and services we use on a daily basis, it has become almost impossible to remember unique and strong passwords for each one. This is where password managers come into play, offering a convenient and secure solution to this ongoing challenge.

LiteServer 2.4€ Black Friday VPS Benchmark

June 22, 2023 - 1 min read

LiteServer started as a small byte on the big internet back in October 2007, which is now 15 years ago. During the first years of their business, they covered the hosting market in The Netherlands and Belgium. During the 2022 Black Friday, they offered 60% OFF for all their VPSes. The base model of the HDD VPS is 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 500 GB cached HDD, and 15 TB@1 Gbps network, hosted in Amsterdam, NL.

Servarica $29 annually VPS benchmark

June 22, 2023 - 1 min read

ServaRICA is a VPS merchant established back in 2010. Their campus is in Montreal, Canada currently. Their Summer Deal and Black Friday deal is very attractive and I purchased one for benchmarking. Their best seller is obviously, their “Opossum” tier. A year ago, the tier only had IPv6 addresses. That’s right, no IPv4, not even NAT. However, starting from the Black Friday of 2022, IPv4 has been added to every plan.

[NOTICE] Everything back on track

June 20, 2023 - 1 min read

After two months’ suspension, everything is back on track and this blog will continue to update as normal. 两个月后的今天，一切回到了正轨，一切都会像往常一样运作。 -- Frank Ruan, 18:57 Jun. 20, 2023 (China Standard Time)

[NOTICE] Update suspension

May 3, 2023 - 1 min read

This notice is bilingual. (Simplified Chinese & English) Due to some unexpected and unpreventable reasons, me (@orwtmc), and my blog (frank-ruan.com) won’t update until Jun. 20, 2023. Sorry for the inconveniences. 因不可抗力原因，本人（@orwtmc）以及我的博客（frank-ruan.com）将暂停更新，直到2023年6月20日晚间（中国标准时间）。为您带来的不便敬请谅解。 -- Frank Ruan, 19:02 on May 3, 2023 (China Standard Time).

Vultr Free Tier - Is it good enough?

April 15, 2023 - 2 mins read

Vultr is a cloud computing company established back in 2014. Although they entered the industry for just less than 10 years, they really have dominated the “bang for the buck” market along with DigitalOcean and Linode. However, they recently (a few months ago) announced a Free Tier. Users need to debit their account 5$ via Credit Card and enable two-factor authentication. Although they claimed that only Credit Cards would work, actually any method will work, including Alipay, PayPal, Cryptocurrency, etc.

Installing Proxmox VE on OCI

March 18, 2023 - 6 mins read

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a great virtualization platform. And Oracle Cloud Infrastructure seems to provide virtual machines for free forever. The regular x86_64 instance has only 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB RAM. However, the new Ampere instance is aarch64 (arm64) architecture. With 4 Neoverse N1 Cores and 24 GB RAM, we can fire up some decent containers on it. However, Proxmox doesn’t officially provide the tutorial (or even workarounds) to install Proxmox VE on an ARM computer.

My own opinion on the principles of cryptography

March 18, 2023 - 5 mins read

In the modern era, cryptography has become one of the most important part of our digital life. We all know, cryptography is used to encrypt, sign, authenticate. Above all, the most important is of course, the security. We would never want anyone except ourselves (or the recipients, if applicable). So here are some advices based on my own experience. 1. Use proper algorithm. It depends on your needs. For example, would you like to use symmetric or asymmetric?