UpCloud is a popular European cloud server provider that offers affordable cloud hosting services across the globe. What makes it especially striking is that UpCloud gives you a 100% Uptime SLA – which makes it one of the top choices for hosting your websites.
UpCloud uses its own proprietary MaxIOPS storage technology to deliver industry-leading performance and reliability. It’s claimed to be faster than SSD – built on enterprise-grade SSDs, but up to 2x faster compared to industry-standard cloud servers.
UpCloud offers a very simple pricing plan. The cheapest plan costs only €7/month, which includes 1GB Memory, 1 CPU Core, 25GB SSD, and 1 TB Transfer.
UpCloud has 12 worldwide data centers, including digital hubs such as:
- Amsterdam
- Chicago
- Frankfurt
- Helsinki
- New York City
- London
- San Jose
- Singapore.
This gives you the flexibility to deploy your applications close to your customers and reduce latency.
In this post, we will show you how to set up an UpCloud server to host your websites with the help of RunCloud.
Why Choose RunCloud to Setup Your UpCloud Server?
RunCloud simplifies server management, allowing you to manage multiple servers and web applications with ease. You can easily change web application stacks and PHP versions, clone web applications, and secure them with SSL/TLS.
RunCloud supports a range of web applications, including WordPress and Laravel, and offers features such as Git deployment and custom Nginx configuration. The Team feature is useful for agencies assigning different members to different servers with separate permissions.
Professional WordPress developers can use the one-click WordPress Staging feature to create a staging version of your website easily. If you don’t have a RunCloud account, you can sign up for a 5-day free trial, with no credit card required.
Method 1 – UpCloud Server Provisioning (Recommended)
With our server provisioning feature, you can set up a server in UpCloud directly from the RunCloud dashboard by connecting to UpCloud using their API in RunCloud.
Video Tutorial: Setup UpCloud Server
Create UpCloud API Key
In UpCloud, your API key is in the form of the username and password of your UpCloud account. You only need to enable the “Allow API connection” option from your UpCloud account settings.
It is NOT a good practice to use your main UpCloud username and password for the API key. We strongly recommend you create a dedicated subaccount that you can use for the API key.
You can create a subaccount in UpCloud from the People tab within the account settings.
For this subaccount permission, uncheck the “Access to control panel” option, and only enable the “Allow API connection” option. This subaccount will be dedicated to API connections only and can’t be used to access your UpCloud control panel.
Add UpCloud API Key to RunCloud
After creating the key, you need to add it to RunCloud. You can either use the “Add a new key” shortcut when building a new server using RunCloud, or you can go to the “3rd Party API Key” menu by clicking your profile (top right), then clicking the Settings menu. There you will see the list of all server provider API keys that you have added to RunCloud.
Click on UpCloud and add the login credentials of the new account that we just created. Once you have added your API key, you can start building the UpCloud server directly from the RunCloud dashboard.
Deploying Your UpCloud Server
To get started, go to your RunCloud dashboard and click on the “Connect a Server” button to set up your first server.
A screen will pop up showing you a list of available server providers – select UpCloud and click the “Deploy Server Automatically” option.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and give your server a suitable name, select the API key from the list, then click “Continue”.
On the next screen, you can pick your desired operating system, data center region and instance type according to your requirements. After this, you can deploy your server by clicking the “Add This Server” button – RunCloud will begin provisioning your server automatically.
This step usually takes 5-10 minutes. Once the provision is complete, you will be returned to the RunCloud dashboard.
Method 2 – Connect UpCloud With Direct Server Installation
You can also use the direct server installation method to connect a server to RunCloud. To do this, go to your UpCloud dashboard and create a new server using either the Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS OS image in your desired datacenter.
Next, configure any other settings that you want to change, such as adding SSH keys or updating the name of your server. Make sure to also allow TCP traffic on port 80, 443, and 34210 as it is required by the RunCloud agent to function properly.
After creating your server, it should be visible in your UpCloud dashboard. Wait for the server to finish provisioning. Once it has, log into it using SSH.
After logging in to your server, go to the RunCloud dashboard and click on “Connect a Server”. In this method, instead of using “Direct installation” select “Connect via IP Address”.
On the next screen, you will see a bash command. Copy this command and paste it in your SSH terminal. You’ll need to execute this command as the root user, so make sure you have the necessary permissions to do so.
This will install all the necessary dependencies on your server that are required to run websites. After the installation is complete, you can close the terminal, and manage your server from the RunCloud dashboard.
