Introduction

If you've done your dash with the big boys AWS, GCP, AZURE et el. maybe it is time to simplify your tech life a bit. Binary lane is an Australian legend of a cloud provider. Lets go through the steps to get a basic nginx webserver and test website up and running.

Step 1: Admin stuff

First up, you will need an account. Register on Binary Lane - like most things binarylane - including the portal website itself - its super simple.

Add a payment card. I added my credit card but I suspect debit cards work also.

Step 2: Domain name

If you already have one, skip this. If not and you want to go super cheap then use something like namecheap. I like the idea of having domains registered and managed in the same place as my servers. If you want that too then go here Register a domain name and grab yourself a .com or whatever suits your needs.

Step 3: Server provision

Next up, from the top menu, click on Services, then Add Cloud Server. Choose your flavour OS and distro. I went Debian 12 with the cheapest specs ($3.75 per month at time of writing - crazy price I know!). Add your domain name and tick no to backups for now. Tick the agree to terms and Complete Purchase. Wait for it to ready and make a note of the root password and server address.

Step 3: Add DNS records to Namecheap

go to your domain and point it at the server address

Step 4: Verify DNS records

setup the server to run nginx, cert manager, etc. to be honest ... all of this is can be simplified and completed with simple commands in terraform and ansible.

Conclusion

After being trolled for many years to varying degrees by other service providers, I'm happy to have found binarylane. Of course the no frills ways are not for everyone.. because that basically means no service. If thats a problem for you don't bite the bullet and go back to the big boys. Try binary lanes parent .. Mammoth Cloud instead.