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Ask HN: Why is European/German Dedicated Hosting So Much Cheaper Than US?
From another Ask HN thread about where people were hosting their sites I found the Hetzner Root Hosting packages:
http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-eq/
You can get a quad core i7-920 with 8G ram and dual 750GB disks for 49EUR per month, which works out to about $65/month.
By comparison, RackSpace's "Basic Series" dedicated server solution with a dual core Opteron, 3.G ram and 2x250GB disks goes for $419/month.
http://www.rackspace.com/managed_hosting/configurations.php
Am I comparing apples to oranges or is there really that much of a price difference between dedicated hosting in Germany and the US? What's the story?
- noonespecial 16y agoRackspace is kind of pricey in general. Look over at http://interserver.net/ http://interserver.net/ for some more reasonable US rates on a decent backbone.
- tworats 16y agoThat looks better, but it's still $150/month for a quad core with only 1GB of memory. In fact even their $270/month offering only has 1GB of ram. The specs vs. price is not close between the German and US offering.
- tworats 16y agoHere's the origin thread, btw: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1564897 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1564897
- sandGorgon 16y agoThat's because the hetzner systems are built using desktop components, not server Opterons, Xeons, etc. are server class components, which need more expensive motherboards (typically those that can accomodate upto 64-GB RAM, 5X HDD, hardware RAID, iSCSI cards, etc.) Secondly, it's the routers/network equipment that they use - they are much more prone to downtime. webhostingtalk has a couple of interesting discussions about this. What I suggest is you take a look at the deals/offers sections of such websites and figure it out. I currently have a 2 X quad-core Nehalem with 12GB RAM, 5TB B/W and 4X500GB HDD in Raid 1+0 for $399
- lsc 16y agothe price differential between server and desktop systems isn't that great, especially if you use AMD systems. were I to go head to head with hetzner, I'd be getting killed on power costs. Does Germany have cheaper power than I have? (and is that right? 8GiB ram with mirrored disk for $65/month? because that is /really cheap/ - even with free power they have less margin than I do) Hm. It's possible that the core i7 stuff is way cheaper than I thought it was... but last time I looked, the core i7 stuff burnt a lot of power. Yup, the i7-920 is approx $230, and has a 130w tdp. Yeah. just the power for that goddamn thing would eat something like thirty bucks a month if it were in my co-lo. Unless I am badly misunderstanding something, they are paying vastly less for power than I am. so if the cpu is $230, and say $200 for the ram, and, say, $300 for the chassis/motherboard, and say $100 for the two drives... $830 capital expense for the server... uh, they charge you around a $200 setup fee. so uh, at $65/month, if power is free, it'd take them more than nine and a half months to pay off their server... this on a server that only lasts three years. And power isn't free, so yeah, damn, those are some small margins. Also, network equipment is a pretty tiny portion of your hosting costs, even if you pay for nice switches. you can get a really nice 48 port gigabit switch for two grand, and you can get something that is used but serviceable for 1/4 that. Ooh, they use 100M network, which is cheaper. even good 100M switches these days are essentially free. but even so, the switching infrastructure is not a huge portion of your costs. Now that said, as far as I can tell, my margins are lower than most American hosting companies, and I plan to pay for my hardware in four months, which seems like silly high margins to me. It's possible that they are just willing to accept margins that are much lower. I wonder if there is some foreign exchange weirdness making them cheaper? the euro was stronger when they bought the hardware, and now it's weaker? also, how much bandwidth is that? I couldn't see from the website. San Jose (my location) has poor prices for power, but rather good prices for bandwidth.
- trin_ 16y ago>>Does Germany have cheaper power than I have? i highly doubt that. they proud themselves that they only use power from hydro [1] .. so lets see. if i were to buy this kind of electricity for my home i would pay 0,2049 €/kwh without taxes. thats the ceiling for what they possibly pay. [1] http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/unternehmen/umweltschutz/ http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/unternehmen/umweltschutz/
- lsc 16y agoyou say European... are there other providers in Europe that are priced competitively with hetzner.de?