Recently I came to know that OVH has a line of storage specific "So You Start" (SyS) ARM based servers. I have been using a Kimsufi server, but some of these SyS servers are cheaper than the Kimsufi server I have been using. Also the storage available in SyS servers is larger than what I get from the Kimsufi Server for a slightly higher price. Therefore I decided to try a SyS ARM server (ARM-2T/1801armada01)
Unfortunately SyS ARM servers are not always available to order, specially the cheapest servers. I was refreshing their page regularly to order a server, but soon I understood that's not practical. I didn't see they become available in the web page even though I tried many times for several days.
Then I decided to automate the check so that I can order a server whenever they are available.
Fortunately OVH offers a REST API to communicate with their servers and services. It's easier to check the availability of a server sending a http request to their API. Using a bunch of commands, the availability can be checked using a one line Linux command.
Just checking the availability is not enough. There should be a way to notify the availability. I could setup a script to send the availability to an email easily, but I don't read emails often. The best way of doing that is to push a message to my mobile. I found a free service called pushme (
pushme.jagcesar.se) which can be used to push a message to my mobile. It also use a REST API, so I can send a message as a http POST request to pushme servers. Then pushme forwards the message to the app installed in the mobile via iCloud.
I created a simple shell script to read the server code as an argument and used it to check the availability of that server type using the OVH REST API. If a server is available, it sends a message to pushme using pushme REST API.
Then the script was scheduled to run for every 5 minutes using a cron job so that I'll get a notification whenever a server is available.
I also created another script to send a test message in every day morning to verify that the availability checker mechanism works.
After a day of implementing this, I was able to purchase the server I wanted. :)
Hope this might help you to find a server as well.
Screenshot of the notifications I received about 1801armada01 availability
But note that pushme works only with Apple. you will need another message sender if you use Android. Also this is a very simple and lazy way of doing this. No errors are checked in the script and only happy path is considered.
Here are the shell scripts and crons I used,
server_checker.sh
#!/bin/bash
server_code=$1
pushmeapi_token='replace_this_with_your_pushmeapi_token'
availability_count=`curl -s "https://www.ovh.com/engine/api/dedicated/server/availabilities?country=eu&hardware=$server_code" | json_pp | grep availability | grep -v unavailable | wc -l`
if [ $availability_count -gt 0 ]; then
curl -d "title=found a $server_code&token=$pushmeapi_token" -X POST https://pushmeapi.jagcesar.se
fi
ping_sender.sh
#!/bin/bash
pushmeapi_token='replace_this_with_your_pushmeapi_token'
curl -d "title=test message&token=$pushmeapi_token" -X POST https://pushmeapi.jagcesar.se
Cron Jobs
*/5 * * * * /home/seedbox/server_checker.sh 1801sk13
*/5 * * * * /home/seedbox/server_checker.sh 1801armada01
30 5 * * * /home/seedbox/ping_sender.sh
You can find out the server code from either their web page (look at the source of the web page) or using their API.
Examples:
In https://www.soyoustart.com/us/server-storage/ page, when you click ARM-2T, the server code is there at the end of the URL as
1801armada01
below command will provide the list of ARM server types,
curl -s "https://www.ovh.com/engine/api/dedicated/server/availabilities?country=eu" | json_pp | grep hardware | grep -v , | sort | uniq | grep armada
below command will provide the list of kimsufi server types,
curl -s "https://www.ovh.com/engine/api/dedicated/server/availabilities?country=eu" | json_pp | grep hardware | grep -v , | sort | uniq | grep sk
Anyway, here is a list of machine types of kimsufi servers and SyS ARM servers,
Kimsufi Servers
France
KS-1 1801sk12
KS-2 1801sk13
KS-3 1801sk14
KS-4 1801sk15
KS-5 1801sk16
KS-6 1801sk17
KS-7 1801sk18
KS-8 1801sk19
KS-9 1801sk20
KS-10 1801sk21
KS-11 1801sk22
KS-12 1801sk23
Canada
KS-1 1804sk12
KS-2 1804sk13
KS-3 1804sk14
KS-4 1804sk15
KS-5 1804sk16
KS-6 1804sk17
KS-7 1804sk18
KS-8 1804sk19
KS-9 1804sk20
KS-10 1804sk21
KS-11 1804sk22
KS-12 1804sk23
Sys ARM servers
France
ARM-2T 1801armada01
ARM-4T 1801armada02
ARM-6T 1801armada03
Canada
ARM-2T 1804armada01
ARM-4T 1804armada02
ARM-6T 1804armada03
