Hetzner now throttling shared CPUs if you use >20% | Hacker News Reader

Hetzner now throttling shared CPUs if you use >20%

docs.hetzner.com

28 pointsmicw20 comments

Hetzner has changed their FAQ for shared CPU cloud servers. Similar to AWS they define a CPU baseline (20-33%, depending on server type). If that baseline is permanently exceeded, the CPUs are throttled.

It doesn't say that anywhere, where did you see that?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41519905 - they removed it 2 days after they added it

I would think if you have something that needs >20% CPU constantly, you really shouldn't be relying on a shared resource for it in the first place.

To put it in relation we are talking here about less than 15€ per month for 2 dedicated vCPUs/8GB/80GB vs. 5€ per month with half the RAM and HDD. It really doesn't matter.

Where does it say that? Here is exactly the page I see: https://web.archive.org/web/20240912104240/https://docs.hetz...

> Plans (CCX) with dedicated vCPUs have their CPU resources exclusively. Here one vCPU equals one thread of a physical CPU core. Instances with dedicated vCPUs offer continuous and predictable high CPU performance. We recommend them for systems with high production loads and CPU intensive applications. They run on high-performance hardware and come with a generous allocation of I/O and network power.

Of course that implies there is some throttling. But I see nothing about a hard 20% cap.

They added it on Tuesday and removed it today. Fortunately I made a screenshot (from the german version of the page). The support told me exact the same things that has been on the page and the our servers are throttled since >30 days. So it's now hidden but still a fact.

Edit: I uploaded my screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/dQrwPWdq/signal-2024-09-11-155709-002.p...

Have you been using 20% sustained for those 30 days?

The surprising thing to me was that you seemed to be saying there was a hard cap of 20% you couldn't ever exceed. I'm not surprised you aren't allowed to use all the shared resources all the time.

A kubernetes master for 9 Nodes on CX21 (old tariff) is using ~25% of memory. So that one was throttled. Also some of the workers uses >20% on average. Makes no sense to me to book a vServer and not to use it's resources.

If Google translate is correct your link says CPU, not memory. I would be surprised by a memory trottle because I can't think of a sensible way to implement it and for example AWS limits CPU but not memory.

Yes, that was a typo. I meant it was using >20% of cpu.

What if you needed to use your hetzner or Amazon computers to do………. computing?

Using 20% is not really "computing". I have some kubernetes masters affected which are "almost idle" but have only 1-2 cores, so the baseline is above 20%...

I stopped using AWS cause the cloud made no sense any more.

I did have hetzner as an alternative to escape the big vendor craziness but I guess they’re the same in some ways.

I use IONOS. As far as I know they don’t do this but I haven’t read the terms that closely.

Clouds are working hard to push people off the clouds back to their own self hosted systems where it costs less and you can, you know…… compute stuff.

Why do they do this? Is it to share all the CPUs across manyVMs and squeeze more profit out rather than dedicate cores to VMs?

Yes, oversubscription is the name of the game, for airlines, Internet access, gym memberships, and also cloud-based compute. People don't use things 24/7 so the idea is you can sell more subscriptions than you actually have the resources to support if they actually used it 24/7.

You can buy all of those things in uncontested form (private aircraft, private gym, internet with CIR etc), but you can and should expect to pay more to not have other customers subsidise the cost.

> Why do they do this? Is it to share all the CPUs across manyVMs and squeeze more profit out rather than dedicate cores to VMs?

It's a choice you made, though. You can pay a little bit more of an dedicated CPU.

A little bit more = 3 times the normal price.

Assume that you're timesharing with at least two others, then. Shared is shared.

I don't say this in defense of the pricing, just against surprise.

Then get a specific AWS or Hetzner plan for it

Buy the dedicated processing core package if you need to command a shared resource, of course

This is a fundamental to the market, welcome to the cloud. Or VPS before that.

I still rent dedicated servers, hosting my own VMs. Cloud pricing is predatory but not forced.

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