NixOS friendly hosters

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Revision as of 17:40, 15 September 2020 by Kimat (talk | contribs) (the latest version available in their public library wasn't obvious)
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1st class NixOS support

Inception Hosting The 18.09 ISO can be selected in the VPS control panel (KVM VPSes only).
Linode Install and Configure NixOS on a Linode
Packet NixOS on Packet
RamNode A NixOS ISO can be used with RamNode's KVM machines (only). RamNode supplies a NixOS ISO in its ISO library, and will update it to the latest release on request.
VPS2day When ordering or configuring, the "Manual Install (Advanced)" option includes NixOS. Installation is done through a web-based console.
Vultr Vultr has a 19.09 NixOS ISO in its public ISO library and also allows the upload of custom ISOs. nixos.wiki is running on a NixOS VPS at Vultr.
vpsFree.cz Non-profit association providing free as in freedom VPS services for its members.
NixOS on vpsFree

Support NixOS via custom ISO

BuyVM BuyVM no longer provides first party support for NixOS. You can install NixOS using the custom ISO functionality, however the resulting install will need some form of static IP configuration.
Hetzner Online From Hetzner's rescue image one can boot into the nixos installer using a custom kexec image that is configured with the IPv6 provided by Hetzner and also contain your ssh key.

Tip: The kexec tarball as generated by nixos-generators can remain put into the /boot partition for future use. Hetzner also provides an interface to upload your own ISO-images. Also here you may want to build your own iso-image, which has openssh with ssh keys due the lack of a remote console. An easier method to install NixOS on Hetzner, is to use the existing integration into NixOps. Also see Install NixOS on Hetzner Online for future information

Hetzner Cloud Hetzner Cloud has NixOS ISO images that can be mounted on a running instance. You cannot directly choose NixOS as initial distribution when creating a VM.
LiteServer NixOS ISO is available from the control panel.
netcup NixOS ISO can be uploaded via FTP to be available in the server control panel.

(in the SCP, navigate to: 'Media' → 'Images') See the official netcup documentation. It may be necessary to create a bios-boot partition for grub.

Online A NixOS ISO can be use with iDrac (Dell) or iLo (HP). You can upload your own iso or use virtualmedia. You must have a Dell or HP server. Here is the documentation if you don't know DRAC at Online.


Other means of installation

Amazon EC2 See NixOS on Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean nixos-infect can be used to transform an existing installation into NixOS. This method will be also used in NixOps.
Google Cloud Platform See Installing NixOS on GCE
Online See Install NixOS on Online.Net
OVH / Kimsufi / So you Start Blog posts for OVH and SoYouStart
Rackspace See Install NixOS on Rackspace Cloud Servers
Scaleway The kexec method (see Install NixOS on Scaleway X86 Virtual Cloud Server) works well, but bear in mind it only works with the 'virtual' class of servers, as they run under a hypervisor which attaches the disks before the kernel boots. The 'bare-metal' servers rely on a special Linux kernel booting to attach network /dev/nbdX drives which works only with Scaleway supplied images. There is a image proposal to add full NixOS support.

Hoster-agnostic means of installation

This section links to or explains methods that can be used on various providers. As always, with unsupported hosts and unsupported distributions, your mileage may vary.

Not all providers allow to upload own images or provide NixOS images for installation. However there are a few ways to install NixOS anyhow. nixos-in-place and nixos-infect are generic approaches to install NixOS from an existing Linux. A different approach is to build an kexec-based image to start the installer from an booted linux as shown in this repo, this allows for changing the underlying filesystem. See Install NixOS on a Server With a Different Filesystem.

See also the NixOps project, which also provides interfaces to different cloud providers.