11 ms·

Scaleway ARMv8 Cloud Servers

171 points by edouardb 9y ago

zimbatm 9y ago
That's perfect to run Tor relay services on the cheap
FnuGk 9y ago
These arm servers, do they use ECC ram?
- rwmj 9y ago
  As with x86-based servers, it depends on the chipset (or SoC for ARM). For the two APM X-gene1 based servers that I have, the answer is yes. The Cavium ThunderX also takes ECC RAM.
glebm 9y ago
I've played around with it. These CPUs are fast enough (certainly faster than Heroku and the like). However, ScaleWay still does not provide automated disk backups, and manual snapshot requires you to shut down the instance first, so I went back to Linode.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > However, ScaleWay still does not provide automated disk backups Does anyone offer that at this price point? Scaleway is ridiculously cheap. Lack of backups is par for the course for these low cost providers. > and manual snapshot requires you to shut down the instance first Yup, that does suck, and I wish they would fix it.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    I believe Digital Ocean offers this type of backup. I know I'm paying for something backup related to that effect.
  - cubano 9y ago
    Is running a simple rsync cron backup really that tough? Sure I understand it's suboptimal but I've always had pretty good luck with it.
    - naasking 9y ago
      > Sure I understand it's suboptimal but I've always had pretty good luck with it. "Luck" is not a feature of a backup system.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  is ZFS available for Linux on ARM? You can take snapshots and use zfs send/receive for zero downtime , consistent backups.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    I'm not sure about ZFS (and it could be complicated - there is a problem with Scaleway servers that they use their own kernels so you have to mess with kexec if you want to run your own), but one can certainly do the same with LVM or even "bare" device-mapper. It's non-trivial, though. At least if one haven't dealt with that stuff before.
    - cyberpunk 9y ago
      It's apparently supported (so says zfsonlinux.org) but I wouldn't use it for anything you care about without ECC ram -- I'm willing to bet these have cheapo controllers which don't support that though..
      - taneliv 9y ago
        Well, I would be more hesitant to use some other file system without ECC RAM than ZFS. However, "these cloud servers are backed by Cavium ThunderX SoCs, high end processors designed for the cloud, and DDR4 ECC memory," says the article. Nevertheless, I would not consider ZFS on these to be "production ready" except for very small values of "ready."
unit91 9y ago
Full-stack dev here with almost no real hardware knowledge. Why would you want to use ARM instead of X86 on a server like this? The architecture switch comes with dependency headaches -- what counterbalances those to make it worth it?
- nimish 9y ago
  Cost.
- pkhagah 9y ago
  Performance/TDP/Cost
- alexandros 9y ago
  At resin.io we keep looking for a solid arm host, as we are currently emulating a ton of arm builds on x86. I guess our use case is somewhat unique, but we still haven't found something that works for us.
  - cyberpunk 9y ago
    Totally offtopic (sorry) but when I saw you mention "resin.io" I immediately thought about the java appserver from caucho which was a pretty okay product back in the day; I assume you're not related?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- alberth 9y ago
  It all comes down to performance per dollar. Currently, ARM can't touch the performance of a mid to highend x86. But ARM is extremely cheap and a solid low to mid x86. If top end performance isn't needed. And you have the ability to recompile your software to run on ARM, you can't beat ARM pricing. Just look at the OP link. $12/mo for 8 cores. For x86, you'd easily pay 10x that per month.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
nik736 9y ago
Scaleway can "disrupt" the industry as much as they want. As long as they don't have a solid product it's useless for production usage (backups, weird storage system, unpredictable network, etc.) They should just offer cheap Xeon D VMs and not this ARM stuff. The CPU is way too slow and the ratio is completely off, 2 of these ARM cores for 2 GB RAM? Even a shared Xeon or Xeon D core offers better performance than those ARM CPUs.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Scaleway customer here. I read a review on HN a while back that got me to buy into their service. While on the surface, it seems like a great value, there are inconsistencies I cannot reconcile that have kept me on DigitalOcean and GCP since. For example, there's quite a bit of funny business going on in all of their stock kernels, so much so that you can't even run things like Docker or Minikube. If you try and install your own kernel mods, you'll find that an uphill battle as well.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    I run a C1 instance with Docker, and there weren't any immediate issues with stock kernels for me (I think I've switched between at least 4-5 during the year). Except when a systemd upgrade broke things and I had to reconnect the drive, but that wasn't Docker-related. However, I haven't had anything fancy there. (Docker multiarch support - or better say lack of one - is still a complete mess though. But that's also not a Scaleway issue.) There are tricks to running your own kernel there (via kexec), for Arch it's neatly packaged here: https://github.com/stuffo/scaleway-archkernel https://github.com/stuffo/scaleway-archkernel (but new servers don't have Arch as an option) Still, it's all terribly inconvenient. Possibly fun to mess with once, DIY/learning-style... but if you just want a server that works (and works in a way you want things to be, not how vendor had set it up) it could be sort of unpleasant.
    - jameskegel 9y ago
      It's very unpleasant considering half of their github scripts, including the one you listed, in my experience just flat out don't run how they were intended anymore.
kogepathic 9y ago
I am super excited for this. I've been running an ARMv7 server on Scaleway almost since they were released. However, I don't see any news that the new ARMv8 servers will support native IPv6. This is a big limitation, if you want to be IPv6 accessible now, you have to run a 6in4 tunnel. The x86 servers (physical and VM) from Scaleway all support native IPv6. The explanation so far was that the ARM back plane doesn't support IPv6. So will these new ARMv8 servers support native IPv6? Or are they build on the same back plane as the ARMv7 servers? Edit: It's supported, I can't read.
- nik736 9y ago
  What advantages are you hoping to get from IPv6? It's in a broken state right now and will be for years to come.
  - xena 9y ago
    Each container having its own public ipv6 address or each customer's requests coming off of a different bindhost
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    Most providers will give you a /64 IPv6 subnet, so you can assign services distinct IPv6 addresses. Apart from that, I'd like people on IPv6 connections to be able to access my server directly? There are a lot of providers who are using cgNAT today for IPv4 connections in Asia and Europe due to address exhaustion, and I've had bad experiences with people behind cgNAT. Plus it's 20-freaking-17. Why aren't they offering IPv6?
  - thraway2016 9y ago
    Can you elaborate on what constitutes "broken" ?
    - nik736 9y ago
      Sure, how about routes are not working or are very very slow via IPv6? Just an example I had a problem with recently: DTAG (largest german carrier) had no route at all to a DC in the Netherlands via IPv6. I had no option to reach DTAG from this specific DC, which is basically most germans. It took days (!) to get sorted. Next example is Cogent, they had huge packet loss via IPv6 for days (we are speaking 50%+). After a ticket was opened it was fixed very fast, but it seems no one cares about IPv6 as long as they can put a stamp on it which says "We support IPv6". Most people who shout for IPv6 are not even using it so I am always a bit sceptical.
anilshanbhag 9y ago
8GB RAM, 200GB SSD for $11.99 is significantly cheaper than linode's 8GB RAM 96GB SSD for $40. Then again all of linode's plans are cheaper than Digital Ocean's. I am curious if this price gap is due to the cheaper ARM SoC ?
- nik736 9y ago
  They just have higher margins. Look at OVH [0] for example, they offer not only ARM SoCs but X64's for the same price and performance. [0]: https://www.ovh.de/virtual_server/vps-ssd.xml https://www.ovh.de/virtual_server/vps-ssd.xml
- kamac 9y ago
  The hardware is cheaper, but most importantly it consumes much less power.
SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
I have a $3 ARMv7 Scaleway server, and I can vouch for the unlimited bandwidth. I've run tens of terabytes (in a single month) through it as a torrent mirror for various Linux ISO images. The disk speed is a bit slow, and 200mbits is a bit low, but I still wish they had a US data center so I can use them as a fail-over host.
076ae80a-3c97-4 9y ago
These seem very inexpensive for the memory and storage, irrelevant of how powerful the processor is. Looks like they'd make great little VPN servers.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Why do you need memory or storage for VPN server? I would say, processor is more of a concern, supporting multiple clients with high speed might hit a botttleneck.
pawadu 9y ago
Can anyone explain to an outsider why this is disruptive? Are these significantly faster than the old x64 offerings? A lot cheaper? For that matter, has anyone done a real-world armv8 vs. x64 benchmark? -- edit: would like to test them myself, unfortunately they only allow payment through a "physical" credit card: https://www.scaleway.com/faq/billing/#-What-forms-of-payment-do-you-accept https://www.scaleway.com/faq/billing/#-What-forms-of-payment...
- discordianfish 9y ago
  All I can say right now is that it's dirt cheap for bare metal. Scaleway was already the cheapest option for bare metal and this looks like a significant performance bump.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I was fooled as well. Apparently these are not bare metal. "Cloud server" is a misleading way of saying "VPS".
    - progval 9y ago
      “Cloud server” means both bare metal and VPS at Scaleway.
    - amorphid 9y ago
      They offer cloud server and bare metal.
    - discordianfish 9y ago
      It says "C1 - A true metal ARM server running in the cloud." on their product page.
- tyingq 9y ago
  [deleted] Edit: Appears to be a cloud server, aka VPS, so not much to see here. Removed the now erroneous comment. I had mentioned OVH's kimsufi, which does have cheap (though not as cheap as these "cloud servers"), actual dedicated boxes: http://kimsufi.com/ http://kimsufi.com/
rb808 9y ago
Slightly OT but can anyone recommend ARM servers for home use? I have x86 server but is too noisy and overpowered, and a raspberry pi which is too weak. Can someone recommend some hardware in-between?
- turblety 9y ago
  Depending on your requirements you could have a look at the ODROID (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php).
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Marvell Espressobin or ODroid. Also check what upstream kernel support you have, as the community size will be a fraction of that of the Pi
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I have two Odroids in different houses, one is three years old, the other four. They required some fiddling to get Apache not to exhaust the RAM available. I use one for backups, and the other for a web site / image gallery + UPnP media server + storage + Bittorrent seed. They're OK, but the initial setup took a while due to the lack of clear documentation which x86 or a Pi has.
- rjsw 9y ago
  Maybe a CubieTruck (CubieBoard 3), it is one of the few boards that has both SATA and Gb Ethernet built in to the SoC. My actual home server is an HP MicroServer though, totally silent and uses ECC RAM.
- floatboth 9y ago
  RPi 3 with an overclock isn't as weak as the previous ones… and you can boot it over network or USB. Still, the lack of SATA and Gigabit Ethernet is disappointing. So I currently use a Mac mini '06 as my home server. Used to be my main desktop back in the day… I upgraded the CPU (Core Duo → Core 2 Duo), flashed the firmware from the '07 model (allows running OS X Lion, but idk if that did anything else), installed an SSD (yeah, SATA 1 limits the bandwidth, but latency is sooo much better & I was slightly concerned about the old drive failing) and installed HardenedBSD (because this machine has 32-bit firmware, that was more complicated than usual — I compiled GRUB 2 for 32-bit EFI! And that happily boots the 64-bit FreeBSD kernel. From ZFS, even.) One downside of that machine is called "Marvell Yukon 88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet". It just… stops working after a while: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567 So my home server is currently on Wi-Fi :D Another thing is that you have to shove a resistor into the DVI connector to let the machine boot w/o a display https://soledadpenades.com/2009/02/10/mac-mini-as-a-headless-server/ https://soledadpenades.com/2009/02/10/mac-mini-as-a-headless...
onli 9y ago
Little bit confusing in the admin interface. It seems like these new processors replace the old C1 offer. This is the cpuinfo of the new one: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 BogoMIPS : 200.00 Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics CPU implementer : 0x43 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x1 CPU part : 0x0a1 CPU revision : 1 processor : 1 BogoMIPS : 200.00 Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics CPU implementer : 0x43 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x1 CPU part : 0x0a1 For comparison, this was the old C1, their prior ARM offering they mention in the blog post: Processor : Marvell PJ4Bv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l) processor : 0 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 1 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 2 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 3 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp vfpv3 tls CPU implementer : 0x56 CPU architecture: 7 CPU variant : 0x2 CPU part : 0x584 CPU revision : 2 Hardware : Online Labs C1 Revision : 0000 Serial : 0000000000000000 I take it the BogoMips are just a false info in the kernel interface. For performance, I ran `sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=1000 run` on both (first I tried that with max-prime=20000, but that did not finish in a reasonable time span on the old server). New: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.6541s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.6507 per-request statistics: min: 0.06ms avg: 0.07ms max: 0.14ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.06ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.6507/0.00 Old: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 10.1997s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 10.1909 per-request statistics: min: 1.02ms avg: 1.02ms max: 1.22ms approx. 95 percentile: 1.02ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 10.1909/0.00 When using the additional cores (2 for the new, 4 for the old): New: Number of threads: 2 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.3282s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.6523 per-request statistics: min: 0.06ms avg: 0.07ms max: 0.28ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.06ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 5000.0000/2.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.3261/0.00 Old: Number of threads: 4 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 2.5527s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 10.1983 per-request statistics: min: 1.02ms avg: 1.02ms max: 5.49ms approx. 95 percentile: 1.02ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 2500.0000/1.87 execution time (avg/stddev): 2.5496/0.00 The new processors seem to be a lot more powerful. I run my blog on that old C1 (that might have skewed results somewhat if they were close, but they are not). I think I'll move it over asap. Edit: I have another Scaleway instance that runs https://www.pc-kombo.de https://www.pc-kombo.de, and is a C2S instance, which is the also mentioned X64 offering of theirs. It is more expensive, as it has more cores, but if matching those the ARMv8 seems to actually be faster. That's the performance of the C2S: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.8497s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.8480 per-request statistics: min: 0.08ms avg: 0.08ms max: 0.13ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.08ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.8480/0.00 With 2 threads: Number of threads: 2 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.4489s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.8752 per-request statistics: min: 0.08ms avg: 0.09ms max: 20.09ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.08ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 5000.0000/23.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.4376/0.01 Seems like I should move that as well.
no_gravity 9y ago
We currently offer Ubuntu 16.04 as base Operating System I see a lot of providers offering Ubuntu these days. Is Ubuntu meanwhile more popular with providers then Debian? And why did it become so popular? Does it have any technical advantages over Debian or is it because many developers have it on their local machine and therefore want the same OS on the server?
- icebraining 9y ago
  One factor that I've seen impacting the decision were the LTS periods. Ubuntu guarantees five years, whereas Debian's Security Team only supports three (assuming the current release cycle of 2 years). There's now an LTS team in Debian to extend that to five years, so that may help.
- educar 9y ago
  Just guessing here. Ubuntu has more recent packages since Debian is very conservative by design. Also, Ubuntu has a company backing it which can be of great use strategically as you might collaborate/cross market etc.
  - c3833174 9y ago
    >Ubuntu has more recent packages since Debian is very conservative by design Not really, it depends on Debian's freeze date
- dboreham 9y ago
  Just one data sample : every client I've worked for (we do contract development and consulting for [mostly] startups) over the past few years has deployed on Ubuntu. I can't remember encountering a debian box since the late 90's. As to why? I don't know. Mind share probably, and a load of "to make $X work, go get an Ubuntu machine...". For our own in-house deployments we have been migrating from CentOS to Ubuntu, again "because everyone uses it" and because it seemed to offer the best chance of working on new hardware at a time when hardware was changing rapidly a few years ago (the introduction of USB3; Atom SOCs, etc).
vanwalj 9y ago
Great pricing, but literally no customer support. Week's ago I wanted to change my billing address, I was surprised not to find the option within my account settings, so I asked customer support to do so, whom replied that they simply can't do it. I can just close my current account, then recreate it with my new address and of course, there is no migration tools.
- dest 9y ago
  In my case, customer support has been very good a few months ago to change the billing address
NicoJuicy 9y ago
I have a bunch of Windows Server key's through Bizspark, Scaleway was the cheapest option to do hosted Windows Servers ( 5 $ / month). It takes some effort though ( adding scaleway drivers to a windows server ISO) Awesome
- iagovar 9y ago
  ??¿? Where does scaleway offer windows? I don't see in the their panel.
  - milankragujevic 9y ago
    They don't, I personally ran it in a VM but that took me a whole day to setup and would break every time you upgraded the host Ubuntu system.
    - NicoJuicy 9y ago
      I was mistaken with Vultr. Sorry ( see my parent post)
  - weitzj 9y ago
    They don't. What you could do: install Proxmox (via Debian 8). And then inside Proxmox (KVM) install Windows. Prior installing Windows you could create a snapshot of your machine to keep around in case of reinstalls. This is what I have tested
- Nexxxeh 9y ago
  Any info on which drivers are required? Edit: anything to add to https://community.online.net/t/installing-windows-server-2012r2-on-vc-vps/3421/4 https://community.online.net/t/installing-windows-server-201...
- NicoJuicy 9y ago
  Omg. I'm embarrassed. I was using Vultr for various Windows Servers... Not Scaleway ( sorry for the mistake)
nagvx 9y ago
Note that Scaleway bills in euros, not dollars, pounds, etc. They also have no pre-paid policy, so you cannot pay a lump sum upfront to get many months usage. This means that you could be hit by significant monthly fees if you are paying via another currency. But of course, different banks have different policies, and YMMV. My €3/mo was (IIRC) more like €5/mo once conversion fees were taken into account. This €2 flat fee would not have been a problem had I been paying for 12 months at a time, but Scaleway do not offer this, in contrast to many other hosting providers on the market. After inquiring, I was told there was no current plan to change this policy.
- q3k 9y ago
  ...so it's the exact same problem as when the rest of the world has to pay for US services in USD.
  - nagvx 9y ago
    The issue isn't with the currency, but the lack of pre-paid plans and how that interacts with flat conversion fees. It's also easy to overlook the euro issue when the majority of popular hosting providers charge in dollars - and I can already see people making this mistake in the thread.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      US Dollars and Euros are the national currency for roughly the same number of people. 340 million people live in a Eurozone country. 320 million people live in the USA, plus there's Ecuador and El Salvador. (516 million people live within the Single Euro Payments Area, where international bank transfers in Euros must cost no more than a national bank transfer. My employer in Denmark has a Euro-denominated bank account; this is presumably typical for businesses in the non-Euro countries in Europe.)
- aries1980 9y ago
  As in the UK, I use a Monzo card. One for business transactions and one for personal overseas purchase.
jameskegel 9y ago
Let's challenge ourselves to not "disrupt", or "make the world a better place" in 2017. I'm trying to stem the flow of ribbing we will get 20 years down the line from our peers for using these types of marketing tropes.
- yoodenvranx 9y ago
  You can add 'beautiful' to your list.
  - amorphid 9y ago
    And "modern". And "blazing fast". "X is modern, blazing fast..." How about we bar marketers from using adjectives all together?!
rhodrid 9y ago
Reminded me of this article "Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. Period." [1] from 2013. And also of SeaMicro [2]. Looks like the wimpy core lost this particular battle. Or maybe they only make sense at a particular scale. [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/01/facebook-arm-chips/ https://www.wired.com/2013/01/facebook-arm-chips/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro
Veratyr 9y ago
There are a lot of comments in here about the CPU/RAM but I think the important thing (at least to me) is that you can obtain 200Mbit/s for 3EUR/mo. Saturated, that's 65TB/mo, which works out to 0.00005 $/GB. Most of the big clouds and CDNs charge on the order of 0.08 $/GB. Sure you can get unlimited bandwidth on some of the bigger dedicated server packages but not for 3EUR/mo. And yes, all networks are not equal. 65TB on a shitty network isn't worth as much if it has 800ms latency or something like that but at least there's an option.
- eximius 9y ago
  There is a pretty great comparison of major VPS providers that looks at the networks. Scaleways network wasn't great but very tolerable. https://www.webstack.de/blog/e/cloud-hosting-provider-comparison-2017/ https://www.webstack.de/blog/e/cloud-hosting-provider-compar...
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    The comparison overall is very good but ultimately not very useful to me since the test only covers Germany (which makes sense since it's a German company serving German customers doing the comparison). The providers vary a lot when it comes to transatlantic networking and their performance within Europe is usually very very different. I've been testing VPNs with various combinations of source -> VPN/novpn -> destination, where source, VPN and destination are any combination of US, Europe and Asia and I've found that this is really variable. So much so that there are cases where you can actually improve bandwidth/latency by using a VPN because of the network on the other side.
Zekio 9y ago
they still lack two factor auth...
helge5 9y ago
There is no ImageHub for the new ARM servers - the only images offered are Ubuntu and Jessie, i.e. no readymade Docker setup. Maybe that is obvious, but the new servers can't run Raspberry Pi3 Ubuntu binaries. The old ARM servers also have issues with that because the Scaleway ARM7 CPUs lacks features provided by the Raspi3 ARM CPUs (e.g. they lack Neon). Summary: This is not a hosted Raspi replacement :-) But still quite nice.

171 points by edouardb 9y ago

zimbatm 9y ago

That's perfect to run Tor relay services on the cheap

FnuGk 9y ago

These arm servers, do they use ECC ram?

rwmj 9y ago
As with x86-based servers, it depends on the chipset (or SoC for ARM). For the two APM X-gene1 based servers that I have, the answer is yes. The Cavium ThunderX also takes ECC RAM.

glebm 9y ago

I've played around with it. These CPUs are fast enough (certainly faster than Heroku and the like). However, ScaleWay still does not provide automated disk backups, and manual snapshot requires you to shut down the instance first, so I went back to Linode.

kogepathic 9y ago
> However, ScaleWay still does not provide automated disk backups Does anyone offer that at this price point? Scaleway is ridiculously cheap. Lack of backups is par for the course for these low cost providers. > and manual snapshot requires you to shut down the instance first Yup, that does suck, and I wish they would fix it.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  I believe Digital Ocean offers this type of backup. I know I'm paying for something backup related to that effect.
- cubano 9y ago
  Is running a simple rsync cron backup really that tough? Sure I understand it's suboptimal but I've always had pretty good luck with it.
  - naasking 9y ago
    > Sure I understand it's suboptimal but I've always had pretty good luck with it. "Luck" is not a feature of a backup system.
patrickg_zill 9y ago
is ZFS available for Linux on ARM? You can take snapshots and use zfs send/receive for zero downtime , consistent backups.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  I'm not sure about ZFS (and it could be complicated - there is a problem with Scaleway servers that they use their own kernels so you have to mess with kexec if you want to run your own), but one can certainly do the same with LVM or even "bare" device-mapper. It's non-trivial, though. At least if one haven't dealt with that stuff before.
  - cyberpunk 9y ago
    It's apparently supported (so says zfsonlinux.org) but I wouldn't use it for anything you care about without ECC ram -- I'm willing to bet these have cheapo controllers which don't support that though..
    - taneliv 9y ago
      Well, I would be more hesitant to use some other file system without ECC RAM than ZFS. However, "these cloud servers are backed by Cavium ThunderX SoCs, high end processors designed for the cloud, and DDR4 ECC memory," says the article. Nevertheless, I would not consider ZFS on these to be "production ready" except for very small values of "ready."

unit91 9y ago

Full-stack dev here with almost no real hardware knowledge. Why would you want to use ARM instead of X86 on a server like this? The architecture switch comes with dependency headaches -- what counterbalances those to make it worth it?

nimish 9y ago
Cost.
pkhagah 9y ago
Performance/TDP/Cost
alexandros 9y ago
At resin.io we keep looking for a solid arm host, as we are currently emulating a ton of arm builds on x86. I guess our use case is somewhat unique, but we still haven't found something that works for us.
- cyberpunk 9y ago
  Totally offtopic (sorry) but when I saw you mention "resin.io" I immediately thought about the java appserver from caucho which was a pretty okay product back in the day; I assume you're not related?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
alberth 9y ago
It all comes down to performance per dollar. Currently, ARM can't touch the performance of a mid to highend x86. But ARM is extremely cheap and a solid low to mid x86. If top end performance isn't needed. And you have the ability to recompile your software to run on ARM, you can't beat ARM pricing. Just look at the OP link. $12/mo for 8 cores. For x86, you'd easily pay 10x that per month.
- kogepathic 9y ago

nik736 9y ago

Scaleway can "disrupt" the industry as much as they want. As long as they don't have a solid product it's useless for production usage (backups, weird storage system, unpredictable network, etc.) They should just offer cheap Xeon D VMs and not this ARM stuff. The CPU is way too slow and the ratio is completely off, 2 of these ARM cores for 2 GB RAM? Even a shared Xeon or Xeon D core offers better performance than those ARM CPUs.

jameskegel 9y ago
Scaleway customer here. I read a review on HN a while back that got me to buy into their service. While on the surface, it seems like a great value, there are inconsistencies I cannot reconcile that have kept me on DigitalOcean and GCP since. For example, there's quite a bit of funny business going on in all of their stock kernels, so much so that you can't even run things like Docker or Minikube. If you try and install your own kernel mods, you'll find that an uphill battle as well.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  I run a C1 instance with Docker, and there weren't any immediate issues with stock kernels for me (I think I've switched between at least 4-5 during the year). Except when a systemd upgrade broke things and I had to reconnect the drive, but that wasn't Docker-related. However, I haven't had anything fancy there. (Docker multiarch support - or better say lack of one - is still a complete mess though. But that's also not a Scaleway issue.) There are tricks to running your own kernel there (via kexec), for Arch it's neatly packaged here: https://github.com/stuffo/scaleway-archkernel https://github.com/stuffo/scaleway-archkernel (but new servers don't have Arch as an option) Still, it's all terribly inconvenient. Possibly fun to mess with once, DIY/learning-style... but if you just want a server that works (and works in a way you want things to be, not how vendor had set it up) it could be sort of unpleasant.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    It's very unpleasant considering half of their github scripts, including the one you listed, in my experience just flat out don't run how they were intended anymore.

kogepathic 9y ago

I am super excited for this. I've been running an ARMv7 server on Scaleway almost since they were released. However, I don't see any news that the new ARMv8 servers will support native IPv6. This is a big limitation, if you want to be IPv6 accessible now, you have to run a 6in4 tunnel. The x86 servers (physical and VM) from Scaleway all support native IPv6. The explanation so far was that the ARM back plane doesn't support IPv6. So will these new ARMv8 servers support native IPv6? Or are they build on the same back plane as the ARMv7 servers? Edit: It's supported, I can't read.

nik736 9y ago
What advantages are you hoping to get from IPv6? It's in a broken state right now and will be for years to come.
- xena 9y ago
  Each container having its own public ipv6 address or each customer's requests coming off of a different bindhost
- kogepathic 9y ago
  Most providers will give you a /64 IPv6 subnet, so you can assign services distinct IPv6 addresses. Apart from that, I'd like people on IPv6 connections to be able to access my server directly? There are a lot of providers who are using cgNAT today for IPv4 connections in Asia and Europe due to address exhaustion, and I've had bad experiences with people behind cgNAT. Plus it's 20-freaking-17. Why aren't they offering IPv6?
- thraway2016 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on what constitutes "broken" ?
  - nik736 9y ago
    Sure, how about routes are not working or are very very slow via IPv6? Just an example I had a problem with recently: DTAG (largest german carrier) had no route at all to a DC in the Netherlands via IPv6. I had no option to reach DTAG from this specific DC, which is basically most germans. It took days (!) to get sorted. Next example is Cogent, they had huge packet loss via IPv6 for days (we are speaking 50%+). After a ticket was opened it was fixed very fast, but it seems no one cares about IPv6 as long as they can put a stamp on it which says "We support IPv6". Most people who shout for IPv6 are not even using it so I am always a bit sceptical.

anilshanbhag 9y ago

8GB RAM, 200GB SSD for $11.99 is significantly cheaper than linode's 8GB RAM 96GB SSD for $40. Then again all of linode's plans are cheaper than Digital Ocean's. I am curious if this price gap is due to the cheaper ARM SoC ?

nik736 9y ago
They just have higher margins. Look at OVH [0] for example, they offer not only ARM SoCs but X64's for the same price and performance. [0]: https://www.ovh.de/virtual_server/vps-ssd.xml https://www.ovh.de/virtual_server/vps-ssd.xml
kamac 9y ago
The hardware is cheaper, but most importantly it consumes much less power.

SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago

I have a $3 ARMv7 Scaleway server, and I can vouch for the unlimited bandwidth. I've run tens of terabytes (in a single month) through it as a torrent mirror for various Linux ISO images. The disk speed is a bit slow, and 200mbits is a bit low, but I still wish they had a US data center so I can use them as a fail-over host.

076ae80a-3c97-4 9y ago

These seem very inexpensive for the memory and storage, irrelevant of how powerful the processor is. Looks like they'd make great little VPN servers.

vbezhenar 9y ago
Why do you need memory or storage for VPN server? I would say, processor is more of a concern, supporting multiple clients with high speed might hit a botttleneck.

pawadu 9y ago

Can anyone explain to an outsider why this is disruptive? Are these significantly faster than the old x64 offerings? A lot cheaper? For that matter, has anyone done a real-world armv8 vs. x64 benchmark? -- edit: would like to test them myself, unfortunately they only allow payment through a "physical" credit card: https://www.scaleway.com/faq/billing/#-What-forms-of-payment-do-you-accept https://www.scaleway.com/faq/billing/#-What-forms-of-payment...

discordianfish 9y ago
All I can say right now is that it's dirt cheap for bare metal. Scaleway was already the cheapest option for bare metal and this looks like a significant performance bump.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I was fooled as well. Apparently these are not bare metal. "Cloud server" is a misleading way of saying "VPS".
  - progval 9y ago
    “Cloud server” means both bare metal and VPS at Scaleway.
  - amorphid 9y ago
    They offer cloud server and bare metal.
  - discordianfish 9y ago
    It says "C1 - A true metal ARM server running in the cloud." on their product page.
tyingq 9y ago
[deleted] Edit: Appears to be a cloud server, aka VPS, so not much to see here. Removed the now erroneous comment. I had mentioned OVH's kimsufi, which does have cheap (though not as cheap as these "cloud servers"), actual dedicated boxes: http://kimsufi.com/ http://kimsufi.com/

rb808 9y ago

Slightly OT but can anyone recommend ARM servers for home use? I have x86 server but is too noisy and overpowered, and a raspberry pi which is too weak. Can someone recommend some hardware in-between?

turblety 9y ago
Depending on your requirements you could have a look at the ODROID (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php).
voltagex_ 9y ago
Marvell Espressobin or ODroid. Also check what upstream kernel support you have, as the community size will be a fraction of that of the Pi
Symbiote 9y ago
I have two Odroids in different houses, one is three years old, the other four. They required some fiddling to get Apache not to exhaust the RAM available. I use one for backups, and the other for a web site / image gallery + UPnP media server + storage + Bittorrent seed. They're OK, but the initial setup took a while due to the lack of clear documentation which x86 or a Pi has.
rjsw 9y ago
Maybe a CubieTruck (CubieBoard 3), it is one of the few boards that has both SATA and Gb Ethernet built in to the SoC. My actual home server is an HP MicroServer though, totally silent and uses ECC RAM.
floatboth 9y ago
RPi 3 with an overclock isn't as weak as the previous ones… and you can boot it over network or USB. Still, the lack of SATA and Gigabit Ethernet is disappointing. So I currently use a Mac mini '06 as my home server. Used to be my main desktop back in the day… I upgraded the CPU (Core Duo → Core 2 Duo), flashed the firmware from the '07 model (allows running OS X Lion, but idk if that did anything else), installed an SSD (yeah, SATA 1 limits the bandwidth, but latency is sooo much better & I was slightly concerned about the old drive failing) and installed HardenedBSD (because this machine has 32-bit firmware, that was more complicated than usual — I compiled GRUB 2 for 32-bit EFI! And that happily boots the 64-bit FreeBSD kernel. From ZFS, even.) One downside of that machine is called "Marvell Yukon 88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet". It just… stops working after a while: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567 https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567 So my home server is currently on Wi-Fi :D Another thing is that you have to shove a resistor into the DVI connector to let the machine boot w/o a display https://soledadpenades.com/2009/02/10/mac-mini-as-a-headless-server/ https://soledadpenades.com/2009/02/10/mac-mini-as-a-headless...

onli 9y ago

Little bit confusing in the admin interface. It seems like these new processors replace the old C1 offer. This is the cpuinfo of the new one: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 BogoMIPS : 200.00 Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics CPU implementer : 0x43 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x1 CPU part : 0x0a1 CPU revision : 1 processor : 1 BogoMIPS : 200.00 Features : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics CPU implementer : 0x43 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x1 CPU part : 0x0a1 For comparison, this was the old C1, their prior ARM offering they mention in the blog post: Processor : Marvell PJ4Bv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l) processor : 0 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 1 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 2 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 processor : 3 BogoMIPS : 1332.01 Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp vfpv3 tls CPU implementer : 0x56 CPU architecture: 7 CPU variant : 0x2 CPU part : 0x584 CPU revision : 2 Hardware : Online Labs C1 Revision : 0000 Serial : 0000000000000000 I take it the BogoMips are just a false info in the kernel interface. For performance, I ran `sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=1000 run` on both (first I tried that with max-prime=20000, but that did not finish in a reasonable time span on the old server). New: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.6541s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.6507 per-request statistics: min: 0.06ms avg: 0.07ms max: 0.14ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.06ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.6507/0.00 Old: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 10.1997s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 10.1909 per-request statistics: min: 1.02ms avg: 1.02ms max: 1.22ms approx. 95 percentile: 1.02ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 10.1909/0.00 When using the additional cores (2 for the new, 4 for the old): New: Number of threads: 2 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.3282s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.6523 per-request statistics: min: 0.06ms avg: 0.07ms max: 0.28ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.06ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 5000.0000/2.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.3261/0.00 Old: Number of threads: 4 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 2.5527s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 10.1983 per-request statistics: min: 1.02ms avg: 1.02ms max: 5.49ms approx. 95 percentile: 1.02ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 2500.0000/1.87 execution time (avg/stddev): 2.5496/0.00 The new processors seem to be a lot more powerful. I run my blog on that old C1 (that might have skewed results somewhat if they were close, but they are not). I think I'll move it over asap. Edit: I have another Scaleway instance that runs https://www.pc-kombo.de https://www.pc-kombo.de, and is a C2S instance, which is the also mentioned X64 offering of theirs. It is more expensive, as it has more cores, but if matching those the ARMv8 seems to actually be faster. That's the performance of the C2S: Number of threads: 1 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.8497s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.8480 per-request statistics: min: 0.08ms avg: 0.08ms max: 0.13ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.08ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.8480/0.00 With 2 threads: Number of threads: 2 Doing CPU performance benchmark Threads started! Done. Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 1000 Test execution summary: total time: 0.4489s total number of events: 10000 total time taken by event execution: 0.8752 per-request statistics: min: 0.08ms avg: 0.09ms max: 20.09ms approx. 95 percentile: 0.08ms Threads fairness: events (avg/stddev): 5000.0000/23.00 execution time (avg/stddev): 0.4376/0.01 Seems like I should move that as well.

no_gravity 9y ago

We currently offer Ubuntu 16.04 as base Operating System I see a lot of providers offering Ubuntu these days. Is Ubuntu meanwhile more popular with providers then Debian? And why did it become so popular? Does it have any technical advantages over Debian or is it because many developers have it on their local machine and therefore want the same OS on the server?

icebraining 9y ago
One factor that I've seen impacting the decision were the LTS periods. Ubuntu guarantees five years, whereas Debian's Security Team only supports three (assuming the current release cycle of 2 years). There's now an LTS team in Debian to extend that to five years, so that may help.
educar 9y ago
Just guessing here. Ubuntu has more recent packages since Debian is very conservative by design. Also, Ubuntu has a company backing it which can be of great use strategically as you might collaborate/cross market etc.
- c3833174 9y ago
  >Ubuntu has more recent packages since Debian is very conservative by design Not really, it depends on Debian's freeze date
dboreham 9y ago
Just one data sample : every client I've worked for (we do contract development and consulting for [mostly] startups) over the past few years has deployed on Ubuntu. I can't remember encountering a debian box since the late 90's. As to why? I don't know. Mind share probably, and a load of "to make $X work, go get an Ubuntu machine...". For our own in-house deployments we have been migrating from CentOS to Ubuntu, again "because everyone uses it" and because it seemed to offer the best chance of working on new hardware at a time when hardware was changing rapidly a few years ago (the introduction of USB3; Atom SOCs, etc).

vanwalj 9y ago

Great pricing, but literally no customer support. Week's ago I wanted to change my billing address, I was surprised not to find the option within my account settings, so I asked customer support to do so, whom replied that they simply can't do it. I can just close my current account, then recreate it with my new address and of course, there is no migration tools.

dest 9y ago
In my case, customer support has been very good a few months ago to change the billing address

NicoJuicy 9y ago

I have a bunch of Windows Server key's through Bizspark, Scaleway was the cheapest option to do hosted Windows Servers ( 5 $ / month). It takes some effort though ( adding scaleway drivers to a windows server ISO) Awesome

iagovar 9y ago
??¿? Where does scaleway offer windows? I don't see in the their panel.
- milankragujevic 9y ago
  They don't, I personally ran it in a VM but that took me a whole day to setup and would break every time you upgraded the host Ubuntu system.
  - NicoJuicy 9y ago
    I was mistaken with Vultr. Sorry ( see my parent post)
- weitzj 9y ago
  They don't. What you could do: install Proxmox (via Debian 8). And then inside Proxmox (KVM) install Windows. Prior installing Windows you could create a snapshot of your machine to keep around in case of reinstalls. This is what I have tested
Nexxxeh 9y ago
Any info on which drivers are required? Edit: anything to add to https://community.online.net/t/installing-windows-server-2012r2-on-vc-vps/3421/4 https://community.online.net/t/installing-windows-server-201...
NicoJuicy 9y ago
Omg. I'm embarrassed. I was using Vultr for various Windows Servers... Not Scaleway ( sorry for the mistake)

nagvx 9y ago

Note that Scaleway bills in euros, not dollars, pounds, etc. They also have no pre-paid policy, so you cannot pay a lump sum upfront to get many months usage. This means that you could be hit by significant monthly fees if you are paying via another currency. But of course, different banks have different policies, and YMMV. My €3/mo was (IIRC) more like €5/mo once conversion fees were taken into account. This €2 flat fee would not have been a problem had I been paying for 12 months at a time, but Scaleway do not offer this, in contrast to many other hosting providers on the market. After inquiring, I was told there was no current plan to change this policy.

q3k 9y ago
...so it's the exact same problem as when the rest of the world has to pay for US services in USD.
- nagvx 9y ago
  The issue isn't with the currency, but the lack of pre-paid plans and how that interacts with flat conversion fees. It's also easy to overlook the euro issue when the majority of popular hosting providers charge in dollars - and I can already see people making this mistake in the thread.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    US Dollars and Euros are the national currency for roughly the same number of people. 340 million people live in a Eurozone country. 320 million people live in the USA, plus there's Ecuador and El Salvador. (516 million people live within the Single Euro Payments Area, where international bank transfers in Euros must cost no more than a national bank transfer. My employer in Denmark has a Euro-denominated bank account; this is presumably typical for businesses in the non-Euro countries in Europe.)
aries1980 9y ago
As in the UK, I use a Monzo card. One for business transactions and one for personal overseas purchase.

jameskegel 9y ago

Let's challenge ourselves to not "disrupt", or "make the world a better place" in 2017. I'm trying to stem the flow of ribbing we will get 20 years down the line from our peers for using these types of marketing tropes.

yoodenvranx 9y ago
You can add 'beautiful' to your list.
- amorphid 9y ago
  And "modern". And "blazing fast". "X is modern, blazing fast..." How about we bar marketers from using adjectives all together?!

rhodrid 9y ago

Reminded me of this article "Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. Period." [1] from 2013. And also of SeaMicro [2]. Looks like the wimpy core lost this particular battle. Or maybe they only make sense at a particular scale. [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/01/facebook-arm-chips/ https://www.wired.com/2013/01/facebook-arm-chips/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMicro

Veratyr 9y ago

There are a lot of comments in here about the CPU/RAM but I think the important thing (at least to me) is that you can obtain 200Mbit/s for 3EUR/mo. Saturated, that's 65TB/mo, which works out to 0.00005 $/GB. Most of the big clouds and CDNs charge on the order of 0.08 $/GB. Sure you can get unlimited bandwidth on some of the bigger dedicated server packages but not for 3EUR/mo. And yes, all networks are not equal. 65TB on a shitty network isn't worth as much if it has 800ms latency or something like that but at least there's an option.

eximius 9y ago
There is a pretty great comparison of major VPS providers that looks at the networks. Scaleways network wasn't great but very tolerable. https://www.webstack.de/blog/e/cloud-hosting-provider-comparison-2017/ https://www.webstack.de/blog/e/cloud-hosting-provider-compar...
- Veratyr 9y ago
  The comparison overall is very good but ultimately not very useful to me since the test only covers Germany (which makes sense since it's a German company serving German customers doing the comparison). The providers vary a lot when it comes to transatlantic networking and their performance within Europe is usually very very different. I've been testing VPNs with various combinations of source -> VPN/novpn -> destination, where source, VPN and destination are any combination of US, Europe and Asia and I've found that this is really variable. So much so that there are cases where you can actually improve bandwidth/latency by using a VPN because of the network on the other side.

Zekio 9y ago

they still lack two factor auth...

helge5 9y ago

There is no ImageHub for the new ARM servers - the only images offered are Ubuntu and Jessie, i.e. no readymade Docker setup. Maybe that is obvious, but the new servers can't run Raspberry Pi3 Ubuntu binaries. The old ARM servers also have issues with that because the Scaleway ARM7 CPUs lacks features provided by the Raspi3 ARM CPUs (e.g. they lack Neon). Summary: This is not a hosted Raspi replacement :-) But still quite nice.