Renting the server

We use Vultr: new accounts get $300 of credit through our referral link, which covers many runs.

Any provider, same spec

4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM
1000 GB disk. runfcx unpacks the snapshot one shard at a time and deletes chunks as it goes. Our run ended at 557 GB.
Ubuntu 24.04, billed by the hour

Vultr · 10 minutes

Sign up through our referral link (referral code 9929634-9J, applied by the link; we get a small bonus too). You click the server together, then runfcx takes over.

Make the SSH key runfcx uses, and add the public half under Account → SSH Keys:

mkdir -p ~/.fcx && ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N "" -C runfcx -f ~/.fcx/ssh_ed25519
cat ~/.fcx/ssh_ed25519.pub

Network → Firewall: allow SSH (22) from your IP only, and UDP 3382 from anywhere. Nothing else.
Storage → Block Storage: a bootable 1000 GB volume with Ubuntu 24.04.
Deploy → Dedicated CPU → vx1-g-4c-16g, in the same location, with that volume, your key and your firewall. Turn off backups.
Run npx runfcx provision --host root@YOUR_IP --data-dir /mnt/fcx

When you're done: destroy the server and delete the block storage. A stopped server still bills.

Your own box

Any Ubuntu or Debian machine with the spec above. Put ~/.fcx/ssh_ed25519.pub in root's authorized_keys, open UDP 3382, then:

npx runfcx provision --host root@YOUR_IP