Hetzner introduces new server product with insane parameters for 59 EUR/mth | Hacker News Reader

Hetzner introduces new server product with insane parameters for 59 EUR/mth

hetzner.de

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I'm using Hetzner for 10years, with very very few major problems (I only remember 1).

I compared them some time ago to EC2 pricewise:

http://codemonkeyism.com/dark-side-virtualized-servers-cloud...

And setup of a new server is quite fast too.

I agree, in every calculation I make, cloud seems to be too expensive for me.

The awesome article "The Five Stages of Hosting" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526767 from yesterday should be mentioned. I brought some price-point discussions in the comments. Some good rebuttals lower down regarding EC2's committed cost options.

I agree. Been using Hetzner for over 2 years & loving it. Great value for money IF you know what you are doing.

My issue with Hetzner is that by the time you add in management options necessary for a remote dedicated server, your monthly cost isn't that much better than other options.

Example: To have remote KVM/IP you'd need to first pay 15EUR for their flexipack for the privilege of adding additional features. then 19EUR mo and 149 EUR setup for KVM/IP Now you're up to $122USD/mo + almost $400USD for setup.

Compare to Incero's WebHostingTalk offer: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1121998 which is $99/mo paid in quarterly batches. Which is server grade, better CPU, ECC RAM, with KVM/IP and is in the US (Texas).

Hetzner is still cheaper overall with the 32GB -- because they're not dealing with much more expensive server class ECC RAM, but I just feel its important to bring the initial low number you see: 59 to a realistic place...

What would you need remote KVM/IP for? If your ssh ever dies, you can reboot the thing into rescue mode, log in over remote console, fix whatever's broken, and reboot the system.

I have been using an older server offer of theirs for years now, and never had to pay for anything other than the said fee.

KVM/IP is common for remote windows server admins. Sounds crazy, I know, but they are out there.

What if you upgrade to a kernel which doesn't boot ? Trust me, KVM/IP gives you peace of mind, for 10-15EUR/month it's worth it. On some server configs it's even included in the price (EX8).

then you boot from recovery image - GRUB broke for me completly after routine debian update (imagine that!), and i fixed it using recovery images - you can also request LARA for up to 2h for free.

It is realistic if you don't order additional packages ;-)

Don't forget it is incl. VAT, that means it really costs 19% less for foreign and business customers.

Edit: 59.00/1.19 = 49.58 (it really is minus 16%, my old accounting teacher would kill me ;-)

I wouldn't have called KVM/IP a requirement for a remote dedicated server. Nice to have, but by no means a requirement. What do you use it for?

You're comparing a promo $99 WHT Promo (Regular Price $299)... not really fair. Take a look at EX8 if you need ECC, better CPU, and KVM/IP, for 90 EUR/month (not incl. price for storage, which is configurable for EX8). We got one of these servers this week, with 2 x 3TB enterprise hdds and 2 x 120GB SSD (ocz vertex 3). We've setup this server to use ZFS with the ZIL and the L2ARC on the SSDs, and it seems screamingly fast (haven't done any benchmarks yet).

I've been using Hetzner for about a year after migrating off Slicehost to Linode and then to Hetzner.

I'd recommend Linode if you need really good service (they once tracked down and patched a kernel bug for me), but if you don't want amazing support and just want some really good specs at a good price Hetzner is great, especially if you're in Europe.

Is this host trustworthy ? Feature wise it seems too good to be true:

Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quadcore incl. Hyper-Threading Technology

    RAM 32 GB DDR3 RAM
    Hard disks 2 x 3 TB SATA 6 Gb/s HDD
    7200 rpm (Software-RAID 1)
    NIC 1 GBit OnBoard
    connected at 100 MBit
    Backup Space 100 GB
    Traffic Unlimited*

I know many people who recommend it

Yep, it's a well known german datacenter.

They've been around for a while, and are fairly well known.

They are one of the largest hosts in Europe (~50k dedicated servers if I remember correctly). Large doesn't always mean best, though. Similar to OVH, they provide good hardware, reliability and a decent enough network, but if anything goes wrong you best know how to fix it yourself. I also believe their network isn't /as/ good as somewhere like Rackspace however with CDN's etc. that's probably not as much of an issue.

TL;DR; Yes they're trustworthy, generally speaking

How do CDN's solve bad connectivity of your app server?

They have no issues with connectivity, they might have higher latency and lower bandwidth than some of the higher end providers. But since +90% of the data transfer on most sites is static assets, using a CDN to distribute those will reduce the bandwidth requirements on the server.

Of course, if you're working on a larger project with enough budget, services like Akamai provide methods of routing your static content via their network, further reducing the problem.

OVH definitely does not provide good hardware; we have more broken disks and NICs there than all our other hosters combined.

Edit: I see we might be exceptions. We have been using OVH since 2005, running up to 40 servers about 2 years ago. We are also running at iWeb, Softlayer, Amazon and Leaseweb. Hardware wise the only one we have issues with is OVH, and i'm talking every 2 weeks since 2005 (in 2006 they managed to lose all our data on 2 clustered RAID machines; one died, all corrupted, then when we were busy setting up the replacement, the other one died...). But they are so cheap and easy (like the easy OS installation which is cloud-like, already for many years) we stick with them for some projects which need high spec hardware in clusters. Note: the SSD drives are great, no problems with those so far (knock on wood).

Really? I guess you're experience differs from mine. Currently we have 5 servers with OVH (Ranging from high to low end) and have never had a single hardware issue. We've had 4 of these servers for +18 months and 1 for +2 years with no issues at all. That being said, they're not exactly known for their fast response times to support calls although I believe they have a 2hr SLA for critical hardware failures. I guess it's just down to experiences though, I have all our high-profile servers/apps with UK2 or LiquidWeb.

OVH put brand new disks in every server sold.

They also do remarkably well: out of the thousands I've had from Leaseweb and OVH, OVH wins hands down.

Strange to hear that about OVH. I use them since 2010 and never had a hardware issue yet.

Somebody always has a bad experience with any given company. What I keep wondering about is how to effectively get the collective knowledge out there to figure out whether you're the exception or the rule.

I sort of wish hosting companies would publish the hardware failure rates -as seen by them- too - though I don't know how much of a competitive advantage that would be, if any.

Well yes, but this is not getting some bad support a few times; this is consistently bad hardware on our part.

I'm kind of wondering now if we are running different workloads; we are running very high IO and network stuff. Maybe we just hammer a lot harder on the disk than others are? With HP DL360s @ leaseweb we are running the same loads without any problem (since 2006...); 1 broken disk that ended up not actually being broken.

It's where we host all of our staging servers for client apps now, pretty good value if you ask me.

I've used them for the past year with zero issues, but I then I haven't done anything too hardcore. Network is excellent although I've noticed one site (oron.com) cannot be routed to - haven't bothered figuring out if maybe this is because it's Germany and there's a block, or if there's something else going on. I've also been impressed with their server management tools (web-based VKVM access, you can boot into a rescue system if required, etc.).

Traffic is limited ie. they cap you too 10mbit after you exceed 10TB, (you can buy more uncapped traffic ofc.)

And yes the "host" is a very big datacenter, I have one server with them for 3 years, with pretty good uptime. 2-3 outages on their end over last 3 years. You need to remember that you need to buy additional packages for hardware raid or failover that will cost you about 20-30 EUR - if you need them, still it's one of best offers out there and def. best in Europe price wise.

Interestingly, the 10TB only applies to outgoing traffic. For most people this probably isn't that important but for my current project it's great because the bulk of my bandwidth will be users uploading data and/or me fetching that data on their behalf.

AFAIK it's pretty normal, at least outside of cloud computing, that incoming traffic is cheap or free.

Incoming traffic to AWS is also free.

On a sidenote: AWS is way more expensive than dedis in every calculation I make for my business.

I used to live 3 km from their datacenters here: http://www.datacenterpark.de/ Basically in the former East Germany. They are doing things the right way. I am not hosting with them at the moment, but I have been for a couple of years without issues.

You must also know that the EU paid some good money to get the datacenters there as part of economical development initiatives. Hetzner is operating since 1997.

In general, I've had nothing but good experiences with them. They're reasonably bare-bones, though; don't expect miracles in terms of support.

We host all of buddycloud's servers on them and they really do rock. Support is good. No outages in over three years. Very solid.

I love Hetzner. I got the more cheaper one a week ago http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/eq4

Anyone knows a good cheap dedicated server company like this in Hong Kong? I use Hetzner and love it but I need another dedicated server in Hong Kong or Singapore.

Do people outside EU get 19% off from VAT?

I did yes... and even without asking them... it was like SOP

A German company would get 19% back from the Government, but AFAIK a foreign company doesn't have to pay it in the first place, so you can calculate it out.

Incredible, maybe they made a mistake on their site. Hetzner has a very good reputation here in Germany, otherwise i would expect something fishy.

Within the EU you need to pay the VAT.

Not if you are a business... we don't pay VAT on anything we buy outside Belgium.

You need to be VAT registered in your own country to be able to buy things with 0 VAT.

I looked it up, for export you don't have to charge VAT. But i don't know if internet services count as export.

I'm French, but live in the US. I am an Hetzner customer and do NOT pay VAT.

I started hosting with the South African branch of Hetzner (http://hetzner.co.za) for several years starting in 1999, back when the owner was manning the support line himself. In that time they were always service-oriented.

I don't see an explanation about VAT, but outside Germany you shouldn't need to pay it, which makes the actual price about 50 euro/month + the one-time 125 euro setup fee.

Sadly I just reserved an instance for one year with Amazon the other month but this looks quite a good offer.

Yep, we're out of EU zone and got one server with them. We don't pay VAT.

Is there a US version of this ?

The closest match would be http://leaseweb.com/, which is more expensive but they do have US based boxes too.

See my other threads for my touting of Incero.com's WHT deals which get close IMHO.

Have been using them for just over 6 months with 3 machines currently. Highly recommended, no problems at all.

And you can run VMware esxi on these offerings.

For those wondering, at current exchange rates and with the VAT removed, the price for non-EU customers is US$65.29/m

We use EX4 from Hetzner along with Amazon's Cloudfront for static files and we're REALLY REALLY satisfied.

can anyone explain how is this even possible considering how expensive that piece of hardware is?

I'm gona take a wild stab in the dark and say megaupload has freed a lot of servers lol.

I wouldn't host illegal content from within German borders.

I belive I saw some posts on webhostingtalk or some other forums that stated, that their method of operations is to buy tons of hardware - single platform (mobo) that they build their offering on - with greatly discounted prices from manufacturer. They will provide it for a year or so, and then they will create new platform again after a while after they are out of stock, this happens once every year I think. Also keep in mind those are not "server grade" components so don't count on expansions to the servers/ECC RAM - this kind of stuff - you want to scale - just buy more boxes, there are upgrade possibilities, but they are limited to my understanding.

As long as the price > operating cost, they'll eventually make money on it. You could say that they take a different approach to say Rackspace or Softlayer which try to recoup the initial investment during the first month.

But you have to subtract the operating costs, and still make your money back quickly before you have to pay to upgrade the hardware again.

In 3 years time, they'll still be selling these machines. A lot of companies still offer the Xeon's 3220, which, if I'm reading wiki correctly, first shipped in Jan 2007.

I have been using them for 8 years, they upgrade the hardware every 6-12 months to the most recent spec

It's a promo offer, they will only offer a limited number of them, and in few months introduce a better one.

Also I've been given faulty hardware at Hetzner and the support was quite ass-hatty. I said fuck it, replace the drive and reflash the OS, but they no, the RAID must rebuild. At the end of day, MySQL was still crashing under a heavy load, but that could have been software problem, not sure if I can blame Hetzner. What I didn't like, if you open the contract eg on 15th, then cancel a month ahead, eg on 10th, they will still bill you till the end of the month, 15 more days. They're still one of the best non cloud hosts though.

edit: now I remember - they actually insisted on the faulty drive (that I reported based on mdstat logs) to be hardware-checked in the machine while the machine is offline. Mind you, this drive was faulty from the get go.

I had two failing drives in my Softlayer box (was about three years after they were put in service ... so not bad), and Softlayer insisted on running the HD diagnostics on our machine taking it down for an hour.

We just ended up purchasing a new box, migrating over and letting them take the old one offline. We ended up paying less per month for twice the specs...

I have an EQ4 wit them (8GB RAM), anybody has experience in moving from one server to another within Hetzner? I don' think they have anything to facilitate such a move.

Pity one can't pay using paypal.

Deleted comment

Been planning to set up a cluster with Hertzner using the EX 4, so the 4S is like getting 16GB more RAM for 10 Euros more a month. This is great news.

One thing I have wondered about is whether hosting in Germany is a good idea.

First is the latency issues. Will serving web pages to customers on the west coast of the US really suffer? (this is in the minimum viable product stage-- we're not google yet)

Secondly, I'm not all that familiar with all the laws of the EU. I don't want to run afoul of them, but I haven't found a good summary of best practices for services hosted in the EU.

Off the top of my head, one thing you might need to worry about is privacy/data protection - the EU laws on this seem to be a bit more stringent than in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

Thank you. This presents some implications I'm going to have to consider in developing our application. Fortunately, in the early days we'll be collecting no personally identifiable data.

I have some applications logging to my server in hetzner from US (softlayer datacenters), and some from china. So far we didn't had any single issue with latency.

The data protection directive might be an issue for you; protection of personal information is much stronger in the EU than in the US.

Less likely, but because it's Germany, if you're hosting bigoted content, particularly Nazi-associated content, that will be a problem.

That is a myth. You are not allowed to show symbols of an organization who is against our constitution, but only if it is not in the matter of science or history. The second law is, you are not allowed to call out for violence against a group/minority.

Censoring is illegal from our constitution, so you can only get sued by a court, but when you take it down it usually would be dismissed. It is not even an important public topic here.

I made an edit to my original post, though for some reason it didn't take.

Anyway, I'm not doing anything controversial, and I won't even be hosting user generated content (at least not in the early days, though we might later).

I just want to explain how a non issue this is here.

Twitter took this as an example to justify their new censoring features, that annoyed me a little. There is a difference between censoring and enforcement trough court. For the second one you just need a system for takedown requests.

Check out http://heise.de (one of the faster german sites), to get a feeling of the latency.

For ten more € a month, get error-corrected memory: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6

Half the memory, with ECC. Since 16GB is pretty sufficient for my needs, I think I'd use the extra 16GB for pure caching. (Riak has an in memory mode so you can run two backends- one backed by disk and one not backed. Using the in RAM one gives you a distributed cache over a bunch of machines. If you keep 2 copies and you have 4 machines, that each have 16GB dedicated to this in memory backend, that gives you a 32GB of distributed cache where any item in the cache is at most one hop away.)

I recently tried to research what ECC means operationally (I'm not really an operations guy.) Is ECC good for correcting bits flipped by cosmic rays? Or is it going to tell you that memory is failing? I've never, in the past 20 years, had memory fail on me over time.

Also, I'm not going to be running a single server such that if a server goes down my service goes offline.

I'm running a Riak cluster, of at least 3 nodes, maybe 4 to start. If any server goes down, the service stays online.

My software architecture is, near as I understand it, well suited to commodity hardware.

The 10 euros extra per month, on 4 servers is 40 euros, which is nearly enough for an extra server.

So, wouldn't it be better to have 5 commodity servers than 4 servers with ECC?

I wouldn't know what to do if I started getting ECC errors anyway (I know, I'm stupid, but we're a startup, no budget to hire an ops person.) I'd probably just ask them to give me a new machine.

Cosmic rays, and it's more common than you think: http://www.quora.com/Is-ECC-error-correcting-code-RAM-worth-...

ECC corrects single bit errors and detects multi-bit errors.

Why should you care? Well, if you are lucky, the machine crashes. If you are unlucky, it keeps running, and that bad data gets written to disk, or causes a cumulative error in some calculation, and you never know about it.

With the size of memories these days, chances of a corrupted memory are not exactly a rare occurrence.

I don't know enough about Riak, but a cluster is only going to help if key data structures are themselves checked for consistency across the cluster.

The question is: how does the size of memory affect the probability of a bit that matters to get corrupted? Who cares if one character somewhere among millions of product reviews or comments gets corrupted?

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