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Comment by SparklingCotton | Hacker News Reader

Many good reasons why this would work in Europe.

- Logistics in Germany is awesome, and Amazon really doesn't have a leg up on the already existing logistics solutions there.

- For a cloud provider, negotiating deals now when AMD is on the rise must be perfect.

- Beating AWS on EC2 pricing is easy. AWS EC2 pricing is insanely expensive. German providers like Hetzner Cloud entered the market at 1/10th of the EC2 price.

- A k8s-focused cloud provider gets an enormous number of already existing k8s services without the need to compete directly with all the AWS services.

A "Hetzner Cloud" + K8S in Germany? I'd move all my stuff there.

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We host a lot of our infrastructure on Hetzner Cloud and are very happy, but to be fair it's a long long shot away from what AWS offers. You basically only have compute, storage and networking, only three datacenters and two regions to choose from and no managed services at all. You also can't do advanced networking like announcing your own IP addresses (Hetzner only allows that in colocation). You also only have a few instance types available, with RAM maxing out at 32 GB and no GPU servers available.

Don't get me wrong I love Hetzner and their cloud offering and I think they're doing a fantastic job, but it is not comparable to platforms like AWS, Azure or GCP. It's good enough for simple use cases but I think most large companies that want to switch from on-premise would have a hard time adopting it since so many crucial features are missing.

The LIDL cloud will have the same problem I think: They will probably build it on top of OpenStack or Kubernetes but will never reach feature parity with AWS, Azure or GCP. I think in their niche (retailing, logistics) they might be able to get some good adoption if they offer specific services and infrastructure based on their own use cases and experience, but this isn't really competition for AWS, at least not in the broader sense.

> RAM maxing out at 32 GB

This part is just not accurate. I'm running their dedicated server with 256 GiB RAM right now.

Looking at https://www.hetzner.com/cloud, the top of the line dedicated option seems to be CCX51, which only has 32GB (edit: 128GB, I must have misread). Do you have some sort of special deal with them?

Me and the parent commenter are talking about the Hetzner cloud offering, where the largest instances have 32 GB of RAM (https://www.hetzner.de/cloud). Sure you can get a dedicated server there with much more RAM and you can host your own hardware in their colocation facilities, but that has nothing to do with cloud computing in the common understanding of the term.

He's taling about the cloud servers, they are indeed capped at 32GB. You're talking root servers. https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

For their dedicated servers you can have at least 712GB RAM.

But for their cloud offering the maximum is only 128GB RAM.

See https://www.hetzner.com/cloud and click on "dedicated vCPU". btw: do not confuse "dedicated vCPU" with dedicated server.

I wasn't aware of that offering, thanks for letting me know.

Honest question, Kubernets does not helps in closing the gap between AWS and Hetzner Cloud?

I would think that an honest setup supported by k8s would, at least alleviate the need of managed solution?

Are there AWS services without a competitive open source solution deployable in k8s?

Kube removes some of the infrastructure burden of running your own solution but not all of it and that's not the only burden.

For example, I can deploy Kafka on k8s. I still need to know enough about Kafka to be able to deploy it correctly (zookeeper, etc.). I need to know enough about k8s to know how Kafka can run on i and to fix issues. I then need to know enough about Kafka itself to tune it, fix issues, manage it, etc. Then there's interaction events such as upgrades which require coordinating between k8s and Kafka. And in the end I'd still be a novice at all of it.

I would guess that we could just give an external company control over a kube master and have them run their operator, which in turn will spin up all the necessary pods and stuff.

You give a SSH certificate and you get back an IP address in your on-premises / cheap host with Kafka running along with monitors.

Serverless? K8s is explicitly not operating in the same space as triggers and code not bound to any real instances.

https://github.com/kubeless/kubeless seems pretty healthy to me

Hetzner is great until you have some sort of issue.

They seem to either not have much in the way of internal procedures or just ignore them if they exist.

As long as you're prepared for all of your data and backups to just disappear, it's a great low-cost environment.

If you expect their operational team to not accidentally delete your environment, it just hasn't happened to you yet.

> They will probably build it on top of OpenStack or Kubernetes They are building it on top of OpenStack you can see it in there job offerings [1]

[1] https://stackit.de/de/karriere/

Also, retailers don't like AWS. For them using AWS is gifting money to your biggest natural predator.

Wouldn't they have the same situation with LIDL? LIDL is also a (very) successful retailer, other retailers would have little incentive of helping them make more money.

Also, I'm quite surprised about this announcement. I knew LIDL was in a really good position, but to attempt to compete in the cloud market is impressive. Good luck to them.

Maybe, but it's not the "biggest natural predator" the one so big it already started to squeeze you out of your habitat by sheer quasi-monopoly power.

Lidl is easier to keep in check. For at least WalMart (it's happening in Europe) and Aldi a fighting them on their home turf.

Last time Walmart tried to get a position in germany they just failed outright, nobody accepted the Walmart shopping culture here, not even the employees.

What's Wallmart shopping culture?

I seem to remember them from spending time in Mexico 20 years ago. It was just a large supermarket from what I remember. Nothing especially unusual that I can remember.

Fish and water I guess?

Look up any of scores of articles that come up when you search for 'How to shop at Aldi?' (like eg https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/aldi-101-how-to-shop-at-aldi/) to see how German shopping culture works.

Oh, and Germans don't like greeters nor people to bag their groceries for them. When they see them, they suspect they could have saved 10 cents going to shop that doesn't have them instead.

(And baggers also violate the German sense of social equality, I guess?)

I am still confused. We have Aldi and Lidl here, they have an unusual selection, but good value for money. I am still missing from what happens at Wallmart that is unusual. I don't remember greeters in the ones I went to in Mexico.

I meant, to Germans Aldi and Lidl are the norm. Whatever you found normal at Walmart is unusual in Germany.

I'm also interested. Apart from not unboxing on shelves, Lidl/Aldi are pretty typical European grocers. I wonder what is different in the US. Clumsy paper bags and greeters, what else?

Shopping carts require 50 cents or 1 euro to be used, customers return them themselves so nobody has to push those around.

Also, Aldi makes great efforts to not change store layout. I think in the past 5 years I shopped at Aldi, the core part of their layout (ie, minus the seasonal offerings and the special offerings) it has only changed once and they changed back to what they had before within a week.

If you need a specific thing from Aldi, you can go in and straight to where you need to go, grab it and checkout.

Well yeah, I am European and I asked what Walmart is like. Your description covers pretty much all European supers I know.

Are you saying Walmart might move the meat section with some frequency? Why wouldnthay be useful?

> Also, Aldi makes great efforts to not change store layout.

Actually I really appreciated that with Lidl moving from Austria to the UK, I knew where things were. (Supermakets shifting their stock around does my head in). The stock seems to be more regionalized over the years so not sure how similar it will be these days.

Amazon sells everything.

Schwarz group doesn't. Most products won't compete with them.

Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days.

It is not.

You'll need to give some more detail.

When I worked with a European cloud host, customers in Germany demanded German data centres and EU ownership. I've seen enough people/companies ask for that to convince me there's at least some demand.

What's your reason for saying it's not a good differentiator?

That's a specific thing in Germany. Not true for Europe as a whole.

> Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days.

Everyone operating in the EU is under EU law, including Amazon, so it's certainly not a competitive pitch vs. Amazon, however much it might be on a checklist of things customers are looking for.

From the perspective of a customer who cares about these things, though, there is a difference between a non-EU company bound by EU law and an EU head quartered company.

I'm not saying it's enough to build an AWS-sized business or that Lidl is in a position to do it but there are cloud hosts who sell themselves specifically on that, such Exoscale.com

In opposition to the rules from the American authorities, which begets things like PRISM.

Also, it's a matter of culture, the native law context of a company drives a lot of the things they do internally.

I can understand this. I would never prefer a German company if there was an equivalent American company providing the same service. In some ways it must feel like a loss of sovereignty to be so heavily reliant on American companies for necessary services. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc.

> I would never prefer a German company if there was an equivalent American company providing the same service.

Why?

If the service and quality is equivalent then I would prefer to give my money to an American company since I'm American

I would prefer to keep my money, if I can.

Otherwise, I don't think any of Germans or Poles or Chinese or Americans etc are better humans than the other. Or more deserving.

There's a bit of an argument in favour of buying from poorer countries, like China or Bangladesh, I guess.

It's not about being better humans or more deserving. More just about being self-reliant and supporting the economy that most directly affects me.

Hmm, perhaps. Thanks for explaining!

Though if you actually want to support America, I'd suggest you buy from the foreigner that's most likely to hoard and never spend your USD: that would mean America would get to consume some goods and services in return for ink and paper (or these days, 0s and 1s.)

The Fed targets inflation. A dollar hoarded might as well be burned. So they'll just replace it with a fresh new dollar.

(And if the foreigners eventually spend the dollar and it comes back to the economy you know and love, that's not much different than if you had spend the dollar directly in America in the first place. America just got an interest free loan of some goods and services while the dollar was abroad.

If enough dollars flow back to impact inflation, the Fed will shrink their balance sheet to accommodate. Ie they'll sell government bonds from their inventory to soak up excess dollars.)

The situation is slightly different, if you eg want to support your very local economy, eg your brother-in-law's company, or your city, your county or your state. Because the Fed target inflation in the whole country, not in one specific location.

You know the game and the meta game better in your own country. Plus, there is nationalism, solidarity, proximity, proudness, language barrier, favoritism, etc. that all enter in consideration.

I guess I'd be in solidarity with all humans? Perhaps more with poorer humans, eg there's a reason to buy from China rather than America?

But really, just buy from the vendor that has the best balance of quality and price, I guess.

It's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat...

There are absolutely companies who won't use Amazon due to concerns over things like that.

Right. Plus, let's not forget the legal implications for the companies that will be able to keep their data within Europe.

This is big. And it can only grow with future legislation. This could tie in to security measures and standards in the future. We will see what happens, but it is a strategic advantage as for now.

What legal implications? AWS customers can choose to keep user data wholly within the EU regions, or they can transfer data freely between EU and US regions thanks to Amazon's certification under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework.

One of the great strengths of AWS is their phenomenal compliance department - whatever regulations you're subject to, AWS offer tools, guidance and support to help you maintain compliance. That's one of many, many reasons why AWS is simply incomparable with cheaper cloud offerings from smaller providers.

https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/

Nobody would or should trust Amazon, an American company, to actually stand by those promises. It will syphon off any trade secrets and other infos, especially if the NSA asks. It has literally happened.

I think after Snowden we should have gotten wise on how much official treaties and promises are worth. Before, this was the thinking of conspiracy nuts. Now it is prudent consideration.

Germans would now, the US literally wiretapped their head of government, and also ran operations to extract trade secrets. Without reprise to this day, by the way.

At end of the day, the new name of the game is America first. Having a EU company handle your data is really an advantage.

US laws and treaties come with and asterisks.

This is a weak argument, because that prudence should be extended to Lindl as well. Do you think Lindl would resist if Germany intelligence service (BND) asks, no matter how crazy that may sound now? What is implication for a client, says, in France or Poland?

As a European I'd much rather my data be visible to Germany than the US. We have ties that go beyond commercial agreements, honesty is still something I can believe in concerning Germany, and if all goes bad Germany has far less power over me.

I do agree with you though on the larger point: if caution should be exercised (and it should), then it's safe to assume every byte that goes on a server is to be considered visible to the government that hosts the content _and_ to the government under which the company operates

US plays "Big" on surveillance intelligence online. BND and other European agencies could be as invasive when they get free hands, but the difference is the level of patriotism and privacy conciseness of the people running the business. Here I rather choose that my data stays on this side of the pound.

Edit: what I mean is that I expect more willful cooperation from American companies just by the level of available evidence.

When has AWS siphoned off trade secrets from S3 or the like? Interested to hear about this because generally i've assumed that was impossible/illegal.

Well, it's not physically impossible.

But certainly illegal, certainly against contracts, and really, really bad for business.

> Beating AWS on EC2 pricing is easy. AWS EC2 pricing is insanely expensive. German providers like Hetzner Cloud entered the market at 1/10th of the EC2 price.

This has always been my problem with AWS. Cost savings might make sense for someone who actually needs 200 servers but if I just want one I'm paying 10 times as much for half as much in terms of performance.

It rubs me the wrong way when a $70/mo AWS instance is more than twice as slow than a $10/mo 'traditional' VPS instance.

> It rubs me the wrong way when a $70/mo AWS instance is more than twice as slow than a $10/mo 'traditional' VPS instance.

Elastic compute of the type provided by EC2 and similar services (Google Compute Engine, etc.) is a fundamentally different service than simple VPS. AWS has something that is, or is very close to, a simple VPS in LightSail, and the pricing is pretty competitive with other VPS providers.

LightSail doesn't have a $70/mo instance, the closest is $80/mo for a 16GB RAM, 4-core, 320GB SSD instance with 6TB of transfer quota. The least expensive is $3.50/mo, and $10/mo gets you 2GB RAM, 1 core, 60GB SSD, and 3TB transfer.

Hetzner prices are less than half of LightSail. They offer 4 cores/16GB RAM/320GB SSD for $28/month, and that comes with 20TB transfer rather than 6.

> Elastic compute of the type provided by EC2 and similar services (Google Compute Engine, etc.) is a fundamentally different service than simple VPS.

What is the fundamental difference that you speak of?

At least to me, the only major difference is that while AWS markets their VMs as EC2 because they were designed for elasticity (i.e variable compute workloads), which explains the elastic in the name EC2; VPS providers OTOH market their VMs as a cheaper alternative to dedicated servers (i.e. fixed compute workloads).

The difference in pricing largely follows from the difference in design since the cloud shines when your resource needs are elastic. VPSes shine when your resource needs are largely inelastic.

While I agree, I am not sure that most businesses need elastic scaling.

> While I agree, I am not sure that most businesses need elastic scaling.

Sure, lots don't. Which is why, even if AWS is the right vendor, EC2 isn't the right service for lots of uses. That's why LightSail is a thing. Comparing VPS pricing to EC2 pricing to say AWS is too expensive is the wrong comparison, because of AWS services, EC2 isn't the one that any application that can be acceptable served by a traditional VPS ought to use. It's not an apples to apples comparison. It's not even apples to oranges. It's something like apples to pork roast.

80$ a month for 16GB RAM, 4 cores, is a very bad price. If you could buy the machine outright for less than the cost of 6 months, you should not buy it.

Also, 6TB/month is a bit over a day of download at 400Mbps. It's barely even worth mentioning.

Also, at least German companies really don't like uploading data to US servers.

I'm American and at this point I don't really like uploading data to US servers. I can totally understand the sentiment.

> A k8s-focused cloud provider gets an enormous number of already existing k8s services without the need to compete directly with all the AWS services.

Not really. AWS is largely independent service products with a few shared core services. K8s is just the core services.

Each AWS service is effectively its own product. Regardless of what tech you have in the background, you would have to make a complete product to compete with AWS's version. You would still have to build an entire customer interface and documentation and do product support.

Or you could build one giant monolith product that isn't decomposeable into services, and at that point you're no longer an AWS competitor, you're just another weird PaaS that enterprise won't touch. Enterprise is a whale, and you need whales.

Looking at k8s like it's a business solution is like looking at a wheel+tire and thinking it's a car.

Also, for online retailers to put their eggs in Amazon's basket means they put their destiny in the hands of a competitor. Going for example with Azure is safer from this perspective. That said, Lidl is closer to Amazon than Microsoft, from that point of view.

Hetzner Cloud exists and some efforts to automate Kubernetes deployments exist as well. It is of course not as polished as similar k8s AWS solutions, but as you said yourself it is much cheaper.

>> For a cloud provider, negotiating deals now when AMD is on the rise must be perfect.

The prime factor driving negotiations is volume. It is going to be hard to beat AWS on this front.

>> Beating AWS on EC2 pricing is easy. AWS EC2 pricing is insanely expensive.

This is simply not true. Taking into account everything you get with EC2 it is in par with other providers.

Factors:

- multiple (redundant) tier1 networking routes

- DDOS protection

- firewall

- redundant power (this almost never the case)

- access management that can easily be tuned to meet with corporate security standards

- network-attached storage that is very flexible with IOPS and size configurations

- multiple different hardware offerings that can match your workload

- elastic scalability (turn on when need more, turn off when no need)

- control over resource allocation down to AZ and shared/non-shared level

I am not saying that everybody needs these, but for those companies which do you won't be able to compete with a cheaper less powerful solution. These are the guys who can calculate what they are paying for and also know what they get, in detail.

There are so many moving parts in a datacenter that you can get wrong (and companies regularly do) that hiring the best dc engineers is going to be the first challenge when building an AWS competitor unless you have a James Hamilton clone stashed somewhere.

Almost all decent datacentres and compute providers have these features, and it's far from unusual to have downtime in an EC2 reigion to the point where the standard advice is to spread across multiple reigions to avoid being caught out. EC2 does not have DDOS protection as standard its an additional cost service (AWS Shield). They will just charge you an insane ammount for the DDOS bandwidth as standard.

Linode, DO etc all have these features at a fraction of the price.

>> Almost all decent datacentres and compute providers have these features

Multiple tier1 networking routes? I seriously doubt that. Those vendors won't deal with small players. AWS used to have 160Gbps in NA 10 years ago. EC2 has DDOS protection, for one simple reason, if somebody DDOSing it it will impact many customers. And you can also use Shield. The point here is that you have options. What sort of DDOS protection Linode or DO have? How much bandwidth did they get? How many tier1 routes? There are the sort of questions you need to ask for a fair comparison, which absolutely not happing on HN. Many people think that building a data center is like creating a hello world application. I have seen this repeadetly, several times.

Multiple tier1 networking "routes" are really, really easy to do these days. It's within the reach of pretty much anyone with a semi-sizable engineering budget. This includes carriers like CenturyLink/GTT/NTT and most of the global tier ones. The carriers are hungrier than ever for business, you can do this at a fraction of what AWS egress costs per GB.

So yes, really. Nothing on your list is unattainable at much, much lower cost if you're willing to put in the work at maintaining it yourself (no cloudformation at most traditional providers of this stuff, and while you can somewhat roll your own with k8s for /some/ stuff, the offering traditionally is nowhere near as cohesive.)

The non-open source but complementary services (think Dynamo/EventBridge etc) are imo AWS' real strength. If you need to be able to just throw cash at the problem and never worry about capacity management yourself, AWS (and GCP, and Azure, and <insert PaaS provider here>) is usually an excellent fit.

What I really liked about Hetzner is that they provide VirtIO drivers so you can install Windows.

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