Running production on ARM VPS

Migrated our entire stack from x86 to Ampere at Contabo last month. To be honest, I expected more pain.

Before / after

• Previous: 8x x86_64 vCPU, 32 GB, $144/mo
• Current: 4x Ampere Altra, 32 GB, $86/mo

What broke

• One proprietary monitoring agent had no aarch64 build. Replaced with open-source alternative.
• Three Docker images in our compose stack were x86-only. Two had arm64 tags already, one required manual build.

What worked
Everything else. Debian, Docker, nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, our Go binaries. Compiled without changes.

Performance
Web tier: roughly equivalent. Compilation is slower, as said. Not a production concern.

Cost
40% reduction. That is the entire story.

I will maintain a compatibility list below. Reply with your findings and I will edit this post.

• nginx: official arm64 tag
• postgres: official arm64 tag
• redis: official arm64 tag
• Node: official arm64 tag
• Prometheus: official arm64 tag
• Grafana: official arm64 tag

Pieter, thank you for wite this
1. I wun on Ampere at Oracle Cloud free tier, very stable
2. My docker image for proxy no have arm64, I buiwd manual very much
3. Cost is lice 60% cheap, I happy very much
4. One pwoblem: some golang binawy no work, I compile again and it ok very much

Can you add to list:
5. Caddy: official arm64 tag
6. Traefik: official arm64 tag

Thank you for maintain this

@minhdock Good call on the free tier. Pro tip: Oracle's Ampere A1 always-free tier gives you 4 OCPU and 24 GB RAM if you know how to request it.

Quick mini-guide for newcomers:

1. Sign up at oracle.com with a real card (prepaid works, heads up: they do a $1 hold).
2. Create an Ampere A1 instance in your home region — this is the only place the always-free 4 OCPU applies.
3. Choose "VM.Standard.A1.Flex" shape, set OCPU to 4, memory to 24.
4. Do NOT exceed these numbers or you enter pay-as-you-go rates.
5. Install Ubuntu 22.04 arm64 image, not the x86 default.

I have been running this since 2023. Uptime is solid. The catch: support is community-only and they occasionally terminate idle accounts without warning. Keep backups on a second provider.

Olya's free tier survival rules:

• Snapshot before any major change
• Monitor email for "action required" notices
• Never use it for production you cannot rebuild in 2 hours

Contabo had a flash sale last week, Ampere 2core/4GB for €4/MO ARE YOU KIDDING — I grabbed 3 Price history:

• Jan 2026: €4/mo (1core/2GB, gone in 20min)
• Mar 2026: €4/mo (2core/4GB)
• Aug 2026: €4/mo (2core/4GB) ← me

Compilation is slow yeah but for a secondary DNS node? Who cares.

@pieter_rtm can you add coredns to the list? Official arm64

Pieter what disk setup on that Ampere box, NVMe or SATA