Spring Server VPS Readme

Important information to know about DynDNS® Spring Server℠ VPS instance

Dedicated Hosting Resources

The DynDNS Spring Server platform offers virtualized private servers with dedicated resources. When you purchase a Spring Server VPS instance, you receive part of the resources of a powerful server that is sufficient for nearly any application. If you grow beyond a single machine, you have the flexibility to add additional instances or expand the allocation for your existing instances. The Spring Server service utilizes the XenŽ platform, which ensures resources are reserved for each instance, rather than being shared among multiple users on a first-come, first-served basis.

Technical Support Limitations

Our company provides power, port, and ping. If you can ping your machine from the Internet, we consider our work done; unfortunately, we cannot provide detailed technical support for system administration or application-specific installation and configuration. We do recognize the possibility that you may become locked out of your server, leaving you unable to access your machine; to resolve this, we provide a root reset tool accessible via SSH and a way to rebuild your machine through your DynDNS.com account in the event that you are completely unable to access your instance. At this time, backups are your own responsibility.

Spring Server Restrictions

You are free to offer whatever services you wish with your Spring Server instances, with a few obvious exceptions. Of note, we prohibit customers from using the Spring Server platform for spamming and from hosting illegal content (by United States federal law or New Hampshire state law). If we find illegal material or receive a valid spam complaint, we will disable network access to your machine and notify you of the action; depending on the nature of the violation, once the issue has been resolved (e.g. malware has been removed) we re-enable network access. Repeat offenders may not be allowed to regain access to their server. Any instances permanently disabled due to policy violation will be ineligible for refund.

For a complete set of restrictions, please see the Web Services Agreement. If your Spring Server instance has been suspended, please contact our abuse team.

Spring Servers and E-mail

The Spring Server platform offers unrestricted access to port 25, and provides the ability to edit each instance's reverse DNS.

As noted above, however, we prohibit the use of Spring Server instances for spamming purposes. In brief, we define spam as unsolicited e-mail; the nature of the messages are irrelevant. The first time we receive complaints about your activities, we will send a warning to the e-mail address on file for your account. You are requested to reply to this notice within the first 24 hours so we can help you to resolve the issue. The second time that we receive complaints, depending on the nature of the violation and whether you replied to the first warning, we may terminate your Spring Server instance or your account itself without further warning or notice.

Since the IP addresses of the Spring Server instances are in a shared block, we cannot guarantee whether those addresses will be clear of any blacklists.

Default Firewall Rules

Starting August 12, 2009, new Spring Server instances are pre-configured to allow only ports 22, 80 and 443 with iptables.

Using Serial Console

Serial Console access to your Spring Server instance can be obtained by SSH'ing to springconsole.com for Chicago-based servers or frankfurt.springconsole.com for Frankfurt-based instances. When prompted for login, use your DynDNS.com username and password, after which you be given a menu of your available Spring Server instances. Select the server you wish to connect to by number, then press the "Enter" key a few times to get your login shell to come up. Log in and make the needed changes; to exit, just close your SSH session to springconsole.com

For the security-conscious, the public key fingerprint for the springconsole.com and frankfurt.springconsole.com SSH servers are:

A2:C6:50:F8:88:32:D8:20:F5:8D:F7:4D:2B:81:3D:40

Bandwidth Transfer Limits

Each service plan has a listed "soft" bandwidth limit. If you exceed the transfer limit two months in a row, we will not cut your Internet connection, but we will upgrade your plan to the one that best matches your current usage. For server-side traffic monitoring, we suggest vnstats and munin.

Getting Started

We have a knowledge base article Spring Server VPS Basics for Ubuntu/Debian which gives some suggestions on how to use your Spring Server VPS. Please understand that we cannot help with any server specific configuration or package installation.