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Comment by Scotrix | Hacker News Reader

We have a lot of experience with Hetzner servers and I used and recommend this hoster since at least 10 years intensively with tens and hundreds of servers.

The most important thing with Hetzner Servers is to monitor everything very closely:

- CPU Temperature

- RAM

- Disks (SMART)

- Software- and Hardware raids

- Network (interface) errors

The servers are usually consumer-grade hardware components which have more often issues under heavy load so you have to expect down-times and broken components. However, if you are aware of that and you can easily shift around that with your software Hetzner will save you serious money (10 to 15 times cheaper than GCP and AWS). Also to mention is that their customer support is first class if you tell them all required details and exactly what to do. Usually they respond in minutes and do hardware replacements within an hour and small downtimes.

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What do you mean by RAM monitoring? Just keeping an eye on how much RAM you are using? If so how does this relate specifically to Hetzner?

As for temperature monitoring: how do you act on events? If the server runs heavy workloads for a while it will get hot, yes. Heck sometimes it goes above a threshold (say, 80 C) for a minute for seemingly no reason (maybe it is the period software update job?). But what do you do when you get a temperature notification? Shut the server down? For every such event? I am currently leaning towards not monitoring temperature at all because if the hardware breaks Hetzner will replace it anyway (I have backups).

What do you think of their more 'server-like' offerings like the PX61 line [0]? What do I have to expect in terms of downtime and component replacements?

[0] https://www.hetzner.de/de/hosting/produkte_rootserver/px61nv...

Those are actually (I think Fujitsu) Workstations. You should expect the same downtime you would expect from your own workstation if you were to use one at home. Maybe a bit less downtime since there would be less startups and the temperature differences would be smaller as well. Obviously, server grade hardware will perform and last longer under heavy loads.

I believe if you don't go with the Server auction thing, then you get quite new hardware. So I guess you would not really have to expect a lot of downtime. But as always, downtimes can happen. Always plan accordingly.

Absolutely, the new servers are ok but after a while of permanent load (a year or so), you'll also have to expect issues, at least in our experience. The server auction itself is worse but they replace hardware without any issues and most often the replaced hardware is new as well.

In bit more detail, PX61 has Fujitsu D3417-B1 motherboard.

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