To host the myriad of websites I run, I had been using AWS. i recently noticed that the performance for what I was paying wasn’t great. I set about to migrate from AWS to hetzner, and make use of a dedicated server for the same cost as what I was paying in AWS.

My infrastructure looks like this now:

To achieve I followed the guide https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/networks/connect-dedi-vswitch/ and these are the steps I took:

• Created a new NginxLB cloud server
  • Set up nginx and certbot to handle web traffic on this server.
• Set the firewall to allow my home SSH and web traffic (80/443) through to the LB server.
• Created a dedicated hetzner server
  • Used rescue image to install ubuntu 24.04
• Set the firewall to allow my home SSH through only.
• Created a vswitch
  • Created a subnet
  • Assigned the dedicated server to the vswitch
• Set up a cloud network
  • Added a subnet with the vswitch attached
  • Allowed routes to be shown to this subnet
• Adjusted the dedicated server firewall to allow ports 80 and 8080 traffic through from the private IP of the LB server.
• Adjusted the dedicated server firewall to allow ephemeral ports through – for loopback calls.

I now have a cloud server which is open to http and https traffic, that pushes the traffic to a dedicated server that is only open to the private network and not public facing.