9 ms·

ARMv7 dedicated servers for 3.40 per month

198 points by Gedrovits 11y ago

unwind 11y ago
The submission title really should include a dollar to indicate which currency is meant. Also, for non-corporate customers in Europe, VAT should be added. The VAT-inclusive price is €3.59 (for 4 ARM cores, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSB disk, and one IP with 200 Mbps unmetered bandwidth). This is the VAT-inclusive number from the site, which is using French VAT (20%). Here in Sweden it'd be 25%, it seems. :|
- cypres 11y ago
  For european union based users without a valid EU VAT number, VAT must be added based on the VAT rate in the users own country, not always french VAT at 20%. Ie we pay 25% here in DK. This is due to the new rules that went into effect 1 January 2015: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_wo...
  - kdeldycke 11y ago
    I concur. Rules and rates are summarized here: https://github.com/kdeldycke/vat-rates https://github.com/kdeldycke/vat-rates
rbanffy 11y ago
I wonder if I could buy a couple of those servers for my own. I work on cloud and data-center automation tools and having real metal to test ideas and software would be amazing. I've been toying with the idea of hooking up a couple Edisons or Galileos (x86 makes everything easier on my side) but they have complete running hardware and that easily beats developing my own.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  BTW, the said software is open source, so there is even some good karma thrown in.
4k 11y ago
But what about bandwidth? That's still shared among all the users, right? And given that they are even advertising 'Seedboxes' and VPN servers [0] hosted in the same network, it makes me doubt the quality of network even more. [0] https://blog.scaleway.com/2015/09/02/we-are-slashing-the-c1-price-by-70-percent/ https://blog.scaleway.com/2015/09/02/we-are-slashing-the-c1-...
- asdfaoeu 11y ago
  They have another product mini dedicated for 6 euro/mo[0]. Which I've been using recently and the network performance has been pretty consistent. They are however seem marketed more for personal usage though. [0]: http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2 http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2
  - aroch 11y ago
    BW on these is shared a rack level, depending on which rack you're put in your speeds can vary a lot
HappyTypist 11y ago
RAM, SSD storage, bandwidth, IO are still shared. It's pretty much a VPS, not dedicated.
- JosephRedfern 11y ago
  How does the RAM sharing work? Are there any public details on this?
  - edouardb 11y ago
    There is no RAM sharing, it's a metal server
    - JosephRedfern 11y ago
      I thought that might be the case :-)
- teekert 11y ago
  The bandwidth is capped far below the max I assume, does that not provide a stable 200 mbit for everyone?
  - aroch 11y ago
    Unlikely...If there are 912 blades per server it would require 20Gbps of dedicated capacity per server. Having played around with Scaleway servers, they have at least a two cabinets of these servers (10-20 servers). Online.net's total network capacity is in the realm of 1Tbps. They would have to dedicated anywhere from 20-40% of their network capacity if they were to guarantee 200mbit
    - mikmak 11y ago
      of course we don't deploy a network accounting for every machine at 200mb/s flat 24/24, this would just be throwing money away. The reality is that most users won't be using these 200mb/s constantly, every customer have different traffic pattern usages. We (online.net) have a long history in dedicated servers (yes we have a >1tb/s global network footprint), we known how to scale the network the proper way. It is carefully monitored, when upgrades are needed, we do upgrade (for example you can check on status.online.net network section, you will see that we upgrade when it is needed, we have quite a few ongoing) the same applies to scaleway, we can upgrade network uplinks if needed and we do monitor that closely Note that only uplinks to the backbone are "shared", each 1gb/s port of the servers really are dedicated Hope this clarifies the design :)
Gurrewe 11y ago
Is there any way to test out Scaleway without having to give them a credit card number with a potential infinite bill?
- Asmod4n 11y ago
  You can try them for a short time for free, but you have to authorize via SMS.
- Letoc 11y ago
  There's also hard limits on the number of servers you can create (~10) until you contact support to get that value lifted so it appears there are caps on what you spend
- ajaxaddicted 11y ago
  I did test them out a while ago. My impressions are here: https://www.amon.cx/blog/scaleway-vs-digitalocean-and-deploying-webapps-on-arm/ https://www.amon.cx/blog/scaleway-vs-digitalocean-and-deploy...
- vikbez 11y ago
  You can try with http://instantcloud.io http://instantcloud.io
m_eiman 11y ago
Nitpicking the submission title ("ARM7 dedicated servers for 3.40 per month"): ARM7 is actually very old ARM cores running ARMv4; these servers are ARMv7.
- Gedrovits 11y ago
  Fixed this up, sorry, don't have a lot of knowledge about ARM architecture.
  - moe 11y ago
    Tangential rant: What is wrong with CPU manufacturers in particular? What do they gain from giving everything the most confusing names possible? Sockets LGA1155, LGA1150, LGA1151. CPUs only differentiated by a jumble of digits anymore. Something is seriously wrong with your product naming strategy when it needs to be clarified that ARM7 != ARMv7.
    - zymhan 11y ago
      Intel uses the letters to indicate the type of connection between the CPU and motherboard. So LGA = Land Grid Array [1]. The number is the number of pins/contacts connecting the CPU to the motherboard. So LGA1155 is a Land Grid Array Socket with 1,155 pins. It's definitely not random, at least not with Intel. ARM is confusing as hell though. Part of the issue is that there is the ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that has different versions, and then there are different ARM CPU architectures, but those two don't necessarily need to correspond. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array
      - moe 11y ago
        So LGA1155 is a Land Grid Array Socket with 1,155 pins. Their scheme may be somewhat internally consistent (until they change it again next year). The information it conveys remains completely useless. Nobody cares about the number of pins on a socket or which "generation" a CPU belongs to. We want to know which CPU is compatible to which socket, and how CPUs compare on their key metrics. So here's a useful naming scheme: Sockets should be called S1, S2, S3 [...] CPUs should be called: S1-8-40W-PM15000 That would be an 8 core CPU for Socket S1 that draws 40W and scores PassMark 15000. If Intel & co insist on making us sift through hostile numeric identifiers then they should at least make them useful.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JosephRedfern 11y ago
I've just signed up for one of these instances - here are some speed tests/stats/details, if anyone's interested: https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e If you'd like anything in particular running, let me know and I shall oblige when I can!
- yitchelle 11y ago
  Is it possible to physically buy these servers? All the info indicates that you can just get instances, just like the rest of the server farms.
  - JosephRedfern 11y ago
    You're right - rephrased :)
- comboy 11y ago
  > If you'd like anything in particular running, let me know and I shall oblige when I can! bonnie++ would be great
  - JosephRedfern 11y ago
    Added: https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e#file-bonnie https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e#f...
    - comboy 11y ago
      Thanks for taking time to do this.
- mrmondo 11y ago
  Hi, can you please run the following two fio tests: #Random write fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --gtod_reduce=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4k --iodepth=128 --size=4G --readwrite=randwrite #Random Read fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --gtod_reduce=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4k --iodepth=128 --size=4G --readwrite=randread
zero_iq 11y ago
An interesting clause in the terms and conditions: * Users recognise that piracy harms artistic creation.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mahouse 11y ago
  I recognise that piracy harms artistic creation, but I don't care. So can I sign up? ;P
- kdeldycke 11y ago
  Likely a side effect of French laws.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  I am glad the shipping industry is no longer affected.
phantom_oracle 11y ago
Comments on HN normally provide both sides to the story, so I am hoping someone with deep/vast server knowledge and the VPS market will provide a critique of why this is "not so good". Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. It would probably suffice as a test-box or cheap-static hosting I guess.
- BraveKenny 11y ago
  > Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. As opposed to all those famously Switzerland-based companies such as AWS, Heroku, DigitalOcean...
- valarauca1 11y ago
  If your concerned with privacy friendly VPS then you really can't purchase virtual servers in any western country. I suggest you look into eastern europe where you can purchase server time in BTC.
- antjanus 11y ago
  Probably not the best place to run a seedbox either.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Boxes like these are extremely popular as BitTorrent seedboxes. Online.net, for example, is huge, and not just in Europe; people run FTP servers on these things and copy stuff over to their home servers. I would say that $3.40/mo is pretty competitive.
- onli 11y ago
  > Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. They are explicitly advertising VPNs, but even though I live in France I'm not sure whether the situation there is secure enough. France is collecting internet logs, and a server has its own IP, is a VPN then even useful? > It would probably suffice as a test-box or cheap-static hosting I guess. More than static. I installed serendipity (a blogging engine, think wordpress) there and it worked good enough for me to assume that it would work fine with medium traffic as well. Got a pretty good impression otherwise. The thing that bothered me most was that the free test month was not a full month, but till the next accounting period – 14 days for me. Cut my time short to test it. But you can imagine that if that is my sole complain, it was fine otherwise for me. A solid site and their scripts to build images worked fine.
IgorPartola 11y ago
Is the storage attached directly to the box or is it a SAN? I'd like to use one of these for a personal email server, but don't want to bother if a fried disk or disk controller would result in significant downtime for my email.
- JosephRedfern 11y ago
  It's a SAN, mounted as a NBD.
antjanus 11y ago
This was announced directly from Scaleway and was a pretty popular thread here on HN, why is an article about it on here again and just as popular?
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  I didn't click on the original article at the time because the title was utterly meaningless without context: "We are slashing the C1 price by 70 percent". I'm not motivated enough to figure out the context for every article, so I just skip those unless they have a very high number of points or comments. I'm probably not alone in this.
CodingGuy 11y ago
Low cost hoster Hetzner also launched an ARM based dedicated server a few days ago: https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ax https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-p...
- Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
  Kimsufi has been also providing cheapish dedicated servers (non-arm) for a long time: http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/ http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/
kweks 11y ago
I like the idea of the product a lot - but the question I have is how these servers stack up in an 'apples to apples' comparison (that is to say, with a DO small / medium / large instance - or an AWS small / medium / large instance) - which would allow for me to work out if it's worthwhile investing..
puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
Interestingly even though it's 'bare metal' you are stuck using their kernel: https://community.scaleway.com/t/official-linux-kernel-new-modules-optimizations-hacks/226 https://community.scaleway.com/t/official-linux-kernel-new-m... /proc/cpuinfo hints at Armada XP so I thought mv_cesa crypto would be available but alas, no: # zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i cesa CONFIG_CRYPTO_DEV_MV_CESA=y # grep -i cesa /proc/crypto # Shame. Does anyone know what CPU is that exactly? The Soc in the picture at techcrunch seems to have a Marvell logo. edit: it's definitely marvell, dmesg references 370_xp clocksource, armada xp pincontrol and aurora L2 cache controller.
- _delirium 11y ago
  There was some discussion of that in the original announcement. Apparently the kernel requirement is because the root fs is a network drive, and the system PXE-boots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309661
cyberpanther 11y ago
US data center please and i'm all in.
elnappo 11y ago
No IPv6? This is a no-go for servers... Add it and i'm all in. ;)
wilhil 11y ago
FYI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhgSKNJP2s&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhgSKNJP2s&feature=youtu.be For my own projects, I wish I could buy this hardware!
hackerboos 11y ago
Benchmark for those interested http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2015/09/03/zCU7qHQu5fCH2q2d http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2015/09/03/zCU7qHQu5fCH2q2d
miyuru 11y ago
their imagelab is pretty cool. finally a place to host my ghost blog cheaply. https://www.scaleway.com/imagehub/ https://www.scaleway.com/imagehub/
Fiahil 11y ago
Kudos to the folks at Scaleway, and mostly their engineering teams :)
- kdeldycke 11y ago
  Thanks ! :)
altcognito 11y ago
A huge part of the monthly cost of any infrastructure is less about power and the hardware and more about the quality of the internet connection. If I can't get data in and out quickly it isn't going to be much good to me.
- kdeldycke 11y ago
  Scaleway is part of the Iliad group, the third French ISP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad_SA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad_SA No need to worry about our infrastructure. Our datacenters are well connected: http://www.iliad-datacenter.fr/infrastructure/connectivite http://www.iliad-datacenter.fr/infrastructure/connectivite
Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
Earlier discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159989
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lucb1e 11y ago
I was going to sign up for this immediately. Then I read the FAQ: - No IPv6 -- sucks, but I can live with that - No IPv4 -- WTF? NAT on a server?! - A credit card is required. I can't pay them. Asked via support, they confirm credit card is the only way. - I still haven't found where the instances are physically located. (Edit: it's in the "General FAQ", not in the "Server FAQ".) I really, really like the idea, but they have a long way to go.
- tankenmate 11y ago
  The IPv4 address is independent of any one server. Think of it kind of like L2 / L3, when a packet gets to its final network the L3 address is translated to a L2 address (ARP typically with ethernet / IP) with the L3 frame wrapped by a L2 frame. So think of this more like L2 is now a combination of classic L2 and the lower end of L3. It's sort of halfway between home router style NAT and switching; and yes, I'm sure it runs as close to full speed as switching does. This kind of set up is very common in cloud based services that support live migration (not that this service does; it's bare metal).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Tepix 11y ago
They have made a couple of customizations to the regular Linux bootup that have severe security implications (i.e. download kernel modules from them among other things). Contrary to a "classic" dedicated server, with this configuration you are very much trusting them unless you make changes. Read https://www.scaleway.com/docs/create-an-image-from-scratch/ https://www.scaleway.com/docs/create-an-image-from-scratch/ and ideally set up a server and look at what exactly is going on. Unfortunately the script on that page has some errors (it references missing files and it's missing some files that are required), they should really go over it and fix them.

198 points by Gedrovits 11y ago

The submission title really should include a dollar to indicate which currency is meant. Also, for non-corporate customers in Europe, VAT should be added. The VAT-inclusive price is €3.59 (for 4 ARM cores, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSB disk, and one IP with 200 Mbps unmetered bandwidth). This is the VAT-inclusive number from the site, which is using French VAT (20%). Here in Sweden it'd be 25%, it seems. :|

cypres 11y ago
For european union based users without a valid EU VAT number, VAT must be added based on the VAT rate in the users own country, not always french VAT at 20%. Ie we pay 25% here in DK. This is due to the new rules that went into effect 1 January 2015: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_wo...
- kdeldycke 11y ago
  I concur. Rules and rates are summarized here: https://github.com/kdeldycke/vat-rates https://github.com/kdeldycke/vat-rates

rbanffy 11y ago

I wonder if I could buy a couple of those servers for my own. I work on cloud and data-center automation tools and having real metal to test ideas and software would be amazing. I've been toying with the idea of hooking up a couple Edisons or Galileos (x86 makes everything easier on my side) but they have complete running hardware and that easily beats developing my own.

rbanffy 11y ago
BTW, the said software is open source, so there is even some good karma thrown in.

4k 11y ago

But what about bandwidth? That's still shared among all the users, right? And given that they are even advertising 'Seedboxes' and VPN servers [0] hosted in the same network, it makes me doubt the quality of network even more. [0] https://blog.scaleway.com/2015/09/02/we-are-slashing-the-c1-price-by-70-percent/ https://blog.scaleway.com/2015/09/02/we-are-slashing-the-c1-...

asdfaoeu 11y ago
They have another product mini dedicated for 6 euro/mo[0]. Which I've been using recently and the network performance has been pretty consistent. They are however seem marketed more for personal usage though. [0]: http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2 http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2
- aroch 11y ago
  BW on these is shared a rack level, depending on which rack you're put in your speeds can vary a lot

HappyTypist 11y ago

RAM, SSD storage, bandwidth, IO are still shared. It's pretty much a VPS, not dedicated.

JosephRedfern 11y ago
How does the RAM sharing work? Are there any public details on this?
- edouardb 11y ago
  There is no RAM sharing, it's a metal server
  - JosephRedfern 11y ago
    I thought that might be the case :-)
teekert 11y ago
The bandwidth is capped far below the max I assume, does that not provide a stable 200 mbit for everyone?
- aroch 11y ago
  Unlikely...If there are 912 blades per server it would require 20Gbps of dedicated capacity per server. Having played around with Scaleway servers, they have at least a two cabinets of these servers (10-20 servers). Online.net's total network capacity is in the realm of 1Tbps. They would have to dedicated anywhere from 20-40% of their network capacity if they were to guarantee 200mbit
  - mikmak 11y ago
    of course we don't deploy a network accounting for every machine at 200mb/s flat 24/24, this would just be throwing money away. The reality is that most users won't be using these 200mb/s constantly, every customer have different traffic pattern usages. We (online.net) have a long history in dedicated servers (yes we have a >1tb/s global network footprint), we known how to scale the network the proper way. It is carefully monitored, when upgrades are needed, we do upgrade (for example you can check on status.online.net network section, you will see that we upgrade when it is needed, we have quite a few ongoing) the same applies to scaleway, we can upgrade network uplinks if needed and we do monitor that closely Note that only uplinks to the backbone are "shared", each 1gb/s port of the servers really are dedicated Hope this clarifies the design :)

Gurrewe 11y ago

Is there any way to test out Scaleway without having to give them a credit card number with a potential infinite bill?

Asmod4n 11y ago
You can try them for a short time for free, but you have to authorize via SMS.
Letoc 11y ago
There's also hard limits on the number of servers you can create (~10) until you contact support to get that value lifted so it appears there are caps on what you spend
ajaxaddicted 11y ago
I did test them out a while ago. My impressions are here: https://www.amon.cx/blog/scaleway-vs-digitalocean-and-deploying-webapps-on-arm/ https://www.amon.cx/blog/scaleway-vs-digitalocean-and-deploy...
vikbez 11y ago
You can try with http://instantcloud.io http://instantcloud.io

m_eiman 11y ago

Nitpicking the submission title ("ARM7 dedicated servers for 3.40 per month"): ARM7 is actually very old ARM cores running ARMv4; these servers are ARMv7.

Gedrovits 11y ago
Fixed this up, sorry, don't have a lot of knowledge about ARM architecture.
- moe 11y ago
  Tangential rant: What is wrong with CPU manufacturers in particular? What do they gain from giving everything the most confusing names possible? Sockets LGA1155, LGA1150, LGA1151. CPUs only differentiated by a jumble of digits anymore. Something is seriously wrong with your product naming strategy when it needs to be clarified that ARM7 != ARMv7.
  - zymhan 11y ago
    Intel uses the letters to indicate the type of connection between the CPU and motherboard. So LGA = Land Grid Array [1]. The number is the number of pins/contacts connecting the CPU to the motherboard. So LGA1155 is a Land Grid Array Socket with 1,155 pins. It's definitely not random, at least not with Intel. ARM is confusing as hell though. Part of the issue is that there is the ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that has different versions, and then there are different ARM CPU architectures, but those two don't necessarily need to correspond. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array
    - moe 11y ago
      So LGA1155 is a Land Grid Array Socket with 1,155 pins. Their scheme may be somewhat internally consistent (until they change it again next year). The information it conveys remains completely useless. Nobody cares about the number of pins on a socket or which "generation" a CPU belongs to. We want to know which CPU is compatible to which socket, and how CPUs compare on their key metrics. So here's a useful naming scheme: Sockets should be called S1, S2, S3 [...] CPUs should be called: S1-8-40W-PM15000 That would be an 8 core CPU for Socket S1 that draws 40W and scores PassMark 15000. If Intel & co insist on making us sift through hostile numeric identifiers then they should at least make them useful.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JosephRedfern 11y ago

I've just signed up for one of these instances - here are some speed tests/stats/details, if anyone's interested: https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e If you'd like anything in particular running, let me know and I shall oblige when I can!

yitchelle 11y ago
Is it possible to physically buy these servers? All the info indicates that you can just get instances, just like the rest of the server farms.
- JosephRedfern 11y ago
  You're right - rephrased :)
comboy 11y ago
> If you'd like anything in particular running, let me know and I shall oblige when I can! bonnie++ would be great
- JosephRedfern 11y ago
  Added: https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e#file-bonnie https://gist.github.com/JosephRedfern/57c81ac95bf4f1175e3e#f...
  - comboy 11y ago
    Thanks for taking time to do this.
mrmondo 11y ago
Hi, can you please run the following two fio tests: #Random write fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --gtod_reduce=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4k --iodepth=128 --size=4G --readwrite=randwrite #Random Read fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --gtod_reduce=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4k --iodepth=128 --size=4G --readwrite=randread

zero_iq 11y ago

An interesting clause in the terms and conditions: * Users recognise that piracy harms artistic creation.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mahouse 11y ago
I recognise that piracy harms artistic creation, but I don't care. So can I sign up? ;P
kdeldycke 11y ago
Likely a side effect of French laws.
rbanffy 11y ago
I am glad the shipping industry is no longer affected.

phantom_oracle 11y ago

Comments on HN normally provide both sides to the story, so I am hoping someone with deep/vast server knowledge and the VPS market will provide a critique of why this is "not so good". Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. It would probably suffice as a test-box or cheap-static hosting I guess.

BraveKenny 11y ago
> Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. As opposed to all those famously Switzerland-based companies such as AWS, Heroku, DigitalOcean...
valarauca1 11y ago
If your concerned with privacy friendly VPS then you really can't purchase virtual servers in any western country. I suggest you look into eastern europe where you can purchase server time in BTC.
antjanus 11y ago
Probably not the best place to run a seedbox either.
lobster_johnson 11y ago
Boxes like these are extremely popular as BitTorrent seedboxes. Online.net, for example, is huge, and not just in Europe; people run FTP servers on these things and copy stuff over to their home servers. I would say that $3.40/mo is pretty competitive.
onli 11y ago
> Also, France? Same country that is trying to push privacy-unfriendly laws? Probably not a good idea to use this service for VPN then. They are explicitly advertising VPNs, but even though I live in France I'm not sure whether the situation there is secure enough. France is collecting internet logs, and a server has its own IP, is a VPN then even useful? > It would probably suffice as a test-box or cheap-static hosting I guess. More than static. I installed serendipity (a blogging engine, think wordpress) there and it worked good enough for me to assume that it would work fine with medium traffic as well. Got a pretty good impression otherwise. The thing that bothered me most was that the free test month was not a full month, but till the next accounting period – 14 days for me. Cut my time short to test it. But you can imagine that if that is my sole complain, it was fine otherwise for me. A solid site and their scripts to build images worked fine.

IgorPartola 11y ago

Is the storage attached directly to the box or is it a SAN? I'd like to use one of these for a personal email server, but don't want to bother if a fried disk or disk controller would result in significant downtime for my email.

JosephRedfern 11y ago
It's a SAN, mounted as a NBD.

antjanus 11y ago

This was announced directly from Scaleway and was a pretty popular thread here on HN, why is an article about it on here again and just as popular?

lorenzhs 11y ago
I didn't click on the original article at the time because the title was utterly meaningless without context: "We are slashing the C1 price by 70 percent". I'm not motivated enough to figure out the context for every article, so I just skip those unless they have a very high number of points or comments. I'm probably not alone in this.

CodingGuy 11y ago

Low cost hoster Hetzner also launched an ARM based dedicated server a few days ago: https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ax https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-p...

Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
Kimsufi has been also providing cheapish dedicated servers (non-arm) for a long time: http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/ http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/

kweks 11y ago

I like the idea of the product a lot - but the question I have is how these servers stack up in an 'apples to apples' comparison (that is to say, with a DO small / medium / large instance - or an AWS small / medium / large instance) - which would allow for me to work out if it's worthwhile investing..

puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago

Interestingly even though it's 'bare metal' you are stuck using their kernel: https://community.scaleway.com/t/official-linux-kernel-new-modules-optimizations-hacks/226 https://community.scaleway.com/t/official-linux-kernel-new-m... /proc/cpuinfo hints at Armada XP so I thought mv_cesa crypto would be available but alas, no: # zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i cesa CONFIG_CRYPTO_DEV_MV_CESA=y # grep -i cesa /proc/crypto # Shame. Does anyone know what CPU is that exactly? The Soc in the picture at techcrunch seems to have a Marvell logo. edit: it's definitely marvell, dmesg references 370_xp clocksource, armada xp pincontrol and aurora L2 cache controller.

_delirium 11y ago
There was some discussion of that in the original announcement. Apparently the kernel requirement is because the root fs is a network drive, and the system PXE-boots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309661

cyberpanther 11y ago

US data center please and i'm all in.

elnappo 11y ago

No IPv6? This is a no-go for servers... Add it and i'm all in. ;)

wilhil 11y ago

FYI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhgSKNJP2s&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhgSKNJP2s&feature=youtu.be For my own projects, I wish I could buy this hardware!

hackerboos 11y ago

Benchmark for those interested http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2015/09/03/zCU7qHQu5fCH2q2d http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2015/09/03/zCU7qHQu5fCH2q2d

miyuru 11y ago

their imagelab is pretty cool. finally a place to host my ghost blog cheaply. https://www.scaleway.com/imagehub/ https://www.scaleway.com/imagehub/

Fiahil 11y ago

Kudos to the folks at Scaleway, and mostly their engineering teams :)

kdeldycke 11y ago
Thanks ! :)

altcognito 11y ago

A huge part of the monthly cost of any infrastructure is less about power and the hardware and more about the quality of the internet connection. If I can't get data in and out quickly it isn't going to be much good to me.

kdeldycke 11y ago
Scaleway is part of the Iliad group, the third French ISP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad_SA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad_SA No need to worry about our infrastructure. Our datacenters are well connected: http://www.iliad-datacenter.fr/infrastructure/connectivite http://www.iliad-datacenter.fr/infrastructure/connectivite

Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago

Earlier discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159989

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lucb1e 11y ago

I was going to sign up for this immediately. Then I read the FAQ: - No IPv6 -- sucks, but I can live with that - No IPv4 -- WTF? NAT on a server?! - A credit card is required. I can't pay them. Asked via support, they confirm credit card is the only way. - I still haven't found where the instances are physically located. (Edit: it's in the "General FAQ", not in the "Server FAQ".) I really, really like the idea, but they have a long way to go.

tankenmate 11y ago
The IPv4 address is independent of any one server. Think of it kind of like L2 / L3, when a packet gets to its final network the L3 address is translated to a L2 address (ARP typically with ethernet / IP) with the L3 frame wrapped by a L2 frame. So think of this more like L2 is now a combination of classic L2 and the lower end of L3. It's sort of halfway between home router style NAT and switching; and yes, I'm sure it runs as close to full speed as switching does. This kind of set up is very common in cloud based services that support live migration (not that this service does; it's bare metal).
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Tepix 11y ago

They have made a couple of customizations to the regular Linux bootup that have severe security implications (i.e. download kernel modules from them among other things). Contrary to a "classic" dedicated server, with this configuration you are very much trusting them unless you make changes. Read https://www.scaleway.com/docs/create-an-image-from-scratch/ https://www.scaleway.com/docs/create-an-image-from-scratch/ and ideally set up a server and look at what exactly is going on. Unfortunately the script on that page has some errors (it references missing files and it's missing some files that are required), they should really go over it and fix them.