How to set up a VPS,
step by step

What VPS hosting is

VPS hosting gives you a virtual private server: a slice of a physical server with its own operating system, its own dedicated share of CPU, memory and storage, and full root or Administrator access. It sits between shared hosting, where your site shares one server and one control panel with hundreds of others, and a dedicated server, where you rent the whole machine. You get the control of a dedicated box at a fraction of the price, and it deploys in under a minute rather than being hand-built.

How VPS hosting works is simple once you see it: a hypervisor on the physical host carves it into isolated virtual machines, each with its own kernel, its own IP address and resources that are reserved for it. Your VPS cannot see its neighbours and they cannot see it. What you do inside it is entirely up to you, which is both the appeal and the responsibility: nobody installs or patches your software for you.

Who needs one? Anyone who has outgrown a shared plan or a free tier: a developer who wants a real server for an app or API, an agency hosting several client sites, a community running a modded game server, a trader keeping platforms online, or someone who simply wants a machine on the internet that is theirs. The UK VPS hosting page explains the plans, the hardware and the data centre behind them.

What you need before you start

Setting up a VPS (virtual private server) is far simpler than it sounds. Unlike shared hosting, a VPS gives you a whole virtual machine to yourself: your own operating system, dedicated CPU and RAM, and full root access to install anything you like.

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A VPS plan, we’ll help you choose the right size in the next section.
• A terminal, Windows Terminal, PowerShell or macOS Terminal all work out of the box.
• 15 to 30 minutes, most of this guide is copy-and-paste.

Choose the right VPS plan

The right plan depends on what you’re hosting. Undersizing causes slowdowns; oversizing wastes money, though you can upgrade at any time without rebuilding, so when in doubt start small.

Whichever plan you pick, choose an operating system at checkout. For a first VPS we recommend Ubuntu LTS; it has the biggest community and the most tutorials. Prefer a graphical desktop? Pick Windows Server and skip the SSH sections below in favour of Remote Desktop.

Connect to your VPS

Once your order completes (deployment takes under 60 seconds), you’ll receive an email with your server’s IP address, username and password.

Linux: connect over SSH

On an Ubuntu VPS or any other Linux image this is the only client you need, and it is already installed on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Open your terminal and connect as root, swapping in your server’s IP:

ssh [email protected]

Type yes when asked to trust the new host, then enter the password from your welcome email. You’re now at your server’s command line.

Windows Server: connect over RDP

A Windows VPS is managed over Remote Desktop instead of SSH. The client is built into Windows and free for macOS, iOS and Android.

Press Win + R, run mstsc, enter your server’s IP and log in as Administrator with the emailed password. You’ll get a full Windows desktop in a window.

Essential first steps

Three quick jobs before anything else. First, update every package on the system:

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Second, set the server’s timezone so logs and cron jobs make sense:

timedatectl set-timezone Europe/London

Third, create a day-to-day user so you’re not living as root:

adduser deploy
usermod -aG sudo deploy

From now on you can log in as deploy and use sudo for admin tasks, one mistyped command as root can take the whole server down, so this habit pays for itself.

Secure your server

A fresh server on the public internet starts receiving automated break-in attempts within minutes. Two changes remove almost all of the risk.

1. Switch to SSH keys

Keys are immune to password guessing. On your own computer, generate a key pair and copy it to the server:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
ssh-copy-id [email protected]

Confirm you can log in without a password, then disable password logins on the server:

sudo sed -i 's/#\?PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sudo systemctl restart ssh

2. Enable the firewall

Allow only what you actually use, and deny everything else:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Network-level attacks are already handled for you: every EUGameHost VPS sits behind our 30Tbps anycast DDoS protection, so volumetric floods are scrubbed at the network edge before they ever reach your firewall.

Set up automated backups

A snapshot from the control panel is the quickest safety net: one click captures the whole server and one click restores it. Take one now, before you change anything else, and take another before any risky upgrade. Snapshots are free; automated daily backups are available as an add-on if you would rather not remember.

For application data you also want an off-server copy, because a snapshot lives on the same platform as the server. The simplest version is a nightly cron job that dumps the database and copies it somewhere else with rsync or rclone:

sudo crontab -e
# add one line: dump the database at 02:00 and copy the backups folder to another server
0 2 * * * mysqldump --all-databases | gzip > /var/backups/db-$(date +\%F).sql.gz && rsync -a /var/backups/ [email protected]:/srv/backups/

Test a restore once. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup.

Deploy your first app

Your server is secure, let’s make it do something. The fastest way to run almost anything today is Docker:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
sudo docker run -d -p 80:80 --restart unless-stopped nginx

Open http://your-server-ip in a browser and you’ll see the Nginx welcome page, your VPS is serving traffic to the world. From here the same pattern (one docker run or a small compose.yml) deploys WordPress, game panels, databases, bots and more.

Finally, take a free snapshot from the VirtFusion control panel. It captures your fully configured server, so you can experiment freely and roll back in one click.

Set up a VPN on your VPS

A VPS makes a good private VPN endpoint: your traffic leaves the internet from a UK IP address you control, and nobody else shares the server. WireGuard is the modern choice, and on Ubuntu the quickest route is the community installer:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/angristan/wireguard-install/master/wireguard-install.sh
chmod +x wireguard-install.sh
sudo ./wireguard-install.sh

Answer the prompts, open the UDP port it chooses in ufw, and import the generated client file into the WireGuard app on your laptop or phone. If what you actually want is lower ping to game servers rather than privacy, our UK gaming VPN is built for that instead.

Next steps

You now have a hardened, production-ready VPS. Where to go from here:

• Point a domain at it, add an A record for your IP, then use certbot for a free HTTPS certificate.
• Set up monitoring, the control panel graphs CPU, RAM, disk and network live.
• Schedule backups, snapshots are free and automated daily backups are available as an add-on.

Outgrowing your plan? You can upgrade CPU, RAM and storage at any time without rebuilding, your data and config move with you.