AdGuard Home Requirements: RAM, Ports and OS for a VPS
What AdGuard Home needs to run: supported systems, what drives RAM and disk use, the ports to open, and how to install it safely on a Linux VPS.
DNS on a VPS: Authoritative DNS, Pi-hole and AdGuard Home
DNS is small, quiet software, and it’s one of the most useful things a VPS can run. This section covers two jobs: answering for the domains you own, and filtering lookups for the devices you use.
What will this section cover?
The first part is authoritative DNS. That means running your own name servers with software such as BIND, Knot DNS, NSD or PowerDNS. It also covers keeping zones in sync between a primary and a secondary, and signing them with DNSSEC.
The second part is remote filtering. You put Pi-hole or AdGuard Home on a VPS so your phone and laptop get the same blocking away from home as they do on your home network. You’d usually reach it over WireGuard or encrypted DNS rather than leave it open to the internet.
Why run DNS on a VPS instead of at home?
An authoritative server needs a fixed public address that stays reachable. Home connections often can’t promise that, and a VPS can. Open resolvers also get abused for amplification attacks, so this section focuses on locking resolvers down to your own clients.
DNS needs little RAM or disk, so a small plan covers it. Our NVMe VPS plans start at $10/mo for 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM and 30 GB disk, backed by a 100% SLA. From Boise, latency is 14 ms to Salt Lake City, 22 ms to Portland and 23 ms to Seattle.
All DNS guides
Frequently asked questions.
Yes, Pi-hole runs on standard Linux distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu, so a VPS works fine. The difference is exposure. At home it sits behind your router, but on a VPS it faces the internet. Keep port 53 closed to the public. Reach it through a VPN such as WireGuard, or use a firewall to allow only your own IP addresses.
Most registrars ask for at least two name servers for a domain, and they should run on separate machines so one failure doesn't take the domain offline. A common setup is a primary on one VPS and a secondary on another machine, kept in sync with zone transfers. Some people run a hidden primary and publish only the secondaries.
A small one is enough for most uses. Authoritative servers and filtering resolvers like Pi-hole or AdGuard Home need little memory or disk for a home or small team. Our NVMe VPS Starter preset is 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM and 30 GB disk for $10/mo. Transfer is an allowance, and if you go over it the port is throttled, never billed.