Buying your first VPS can feel daunting: what spec do I need, and what do I do once I have it? This guide walks the whole flow so you can go from zero to running.
1. Decide Three Things Before Ordering
- Purpose: hosting a site / running an app / a cross-border store? Purpose drives spec and region.
- Audience: users mainly in mainland China → pick Hong Kong / Japan for low return latency; targeting the West → pick the US.
- Spec: a light site is fine on 1 vCPU / 1GB; databases or multiple services → 2 vCPU / 2–4GB. When unsure, start small — cloud servers can scale up later.
2. What You Receive After Ordering
After provisioning you typically get: a public IP, a root password (or SSH key), and an SSH port (default 22). Keep these three and you can log in.
3. Your First SSH Login
- Mac / Linux: in a terminal run ssh root@YOUR_IP, then enter the password.
- Windows: use the built-in ssh command, or PuTTY / Windows Terminal.
- With a key: ssh -i keyfile root@YOUR_IP.
4. Security Basics to Do First
- Change the root password or switch to key-based login; disabling password login is safer.
- Update the system: on Ubuntu/Debian run apt update && apt upgrade.
- Enable a firewall: with ufw, allow only ports 22 (SSH), 80, and 443.
- If you can, install fail2ban to block SSH brute-force attempts.
5. Next Steps
Install a runtime (Nginx / Docker / a control panel) and you can deploy your first site or app. The SharkCloud Help Center has follow-ups on domain binding, free HTTPS, and Docker deployment you can follow directly.