3 ms·

I rent one AX101 and it has been extremely good value. The thing is so cheap and fast. However my first one did often reboot randomly and the support wasn’t ve

I rent one AX101 and it has been extremely good value. The thing is so cheap and fast. However my first one did often reboot randomly and the support wasn’t very helpful. They told me to just rent another one, which I did. The second one rebooted randomly once in about a year. I guess the first one went on auction and still happily reboots. Hetzner feels like a hard discount cloud provider. I still prefer them over AWS or Azure for non critical workloads that have a little budget.

heipei 4y ago
Hu, weird. We run 15 AX101 instances, 13 for Elasticsearch and 3 for ScyllaDB, and I haven't had one reboot yet. Though even if they did it would not impact the stability of our databases.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kureikain 4y ago
I got the same issue as well. They randomly rebooted and still not sure what to track. Everything is normal such as temperature, cpu load etc. the load is very idle. The server is indeed an auction one though. Other non auction one has been rock solid.
fps_doug 4y ago
About 10 years ago when they introduced the EX40 (I think?) those hard-froze randomly every couple hours to days on Linux. But only for some users. They couldn't track down the issue the first few weeks, I guess that's what you get for being an early adopter. They must have gotten (un)lucky during testing and only had setups that worked. It was first suspected to be certain brands of RAM, so I requested a RAM-swap which unfortunately didn't help. Then a BIOS update which also didn't help. Then someone figured out that nohz=off on the KCL fixed the problem and I had it running like this successfully for a few years. Long after at least one dist-upgrade I remembered that and removed the option again, and the server still ran stable. There's no real morale to this story I guess, but at least the support is super responsive, and as the root cause wasn't clear at that point didn't hesitate to swap random stuff if you requested so. Also had a faulty HDD last Sunday in one server and requested a swap, which they did within 20 minutes of me opening the ticket.
- repomies69 4y ago
  Because Hetzner is so cheap, if I end up with a faulty server I just order a new one. However that rarely happens, and mostly with the newer products. For me 98% of the servers have been very stable. I guess it would be good habit to report the server to hetzner though.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I was one of those users. The issue turned out to be CPU bugs. Turning off C-state in the BIOS resolved those random hard freezes.
OmarAssadi 4y ago
> Hetzner feels like a hard discount cloud provider. Not to discount your experience, but honestly, my experiences with Hetzner support have generally been unexpectedly good. They've been very quick to respond, tend to immediately start on whatever my issue is if I provide enough info in the initial ticket, etc. And unlike OVH, I haven't felt like I needed to call them on the phone to get decent service. Kind of surprising to hear that their solution was just "rent another". ‎ Overall pleasant experience for me, especially given how cheap the servers are. My only real wishes would be dedicated servers in the US or Canada, and possibly something in between their unmetered 1Gbps and metered 10Gbps offerings -- being able to burst a bit higher than gigabit occasionally without paying the €1/TB bandwidth fee would be beautiful.
- e12e 4y ago
  > being able to burst a bit higher than gigabit occasionally without paying the €1/TB bandwidth fee would be beautiful. IIRC you get 30tb/month included - so it's not "pay nothing vs pay from first tb" - but I could be wrong - I've not yet had any projects where 10gbps made sense.
repomies69 4y ago
> Hetzner feels like a hard discount cloud provider. I still prefer them over AWS or Azure for non critical workloads that have a little budget. They are a discount provider. In my experience however, this kind of problems are very rare. They pop up now and them. I would just order a new server. In one company I was involved with, hetzner was used from the start and architecture was built around it, and at some point we calculated the costs compared to using AWS or similar. The cost savings were insane. Hetzner is more hassle, but the question is how much do you are willing to pay to get the hassle removed, and in which way.
gnfargbl 4y ago
I'm currently renting around 40 x AX-line machines from them. The random reboots are a real thing, but not painfully so. I would say I see around 5-10 a year on average across all my boxes, so (very roughly) that's one random reboot per 50-100 machine-months. I asked them about one of the incidents, and they said that the breaker serving the rack had popped. I would guess that is a fairly common cause of this problem. Another issue is disk failures. They replace the disk incredibly quickly (<1hr) but unless you are willing to pay for a brand new disk they fit whatever they have in stock. Sometimes that seems to be a unit which is itself close to death, and in another couple of months, guess what happens. Mostly they give you something reasonable so it all works out in the end. Hetzner are a discount cloud provider. For the money, I'm basically delighted with them. The only other realistic option at a similar price point would be to self-host... and I'm not at all convinced that would be worth the hassle.

heipei 4y ago

Hu, weird. We run 15 AX101 instances, 13 for Elasticsearch and 3 for ScyllaDB, and I haven't had one reboot yet. Though even if they did it would not impact the stability of our databases.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kureikain 4y ago

I got the same issue as well. They randomly rebooted and still not sure what to track. Everything is normal such as temperature, cpu load etc. the load is very idle. The server is indeed an auction one though. Other non auction one has been rock solid.

fps_doug 4y ago

About 10 years ago when they introduced the EX40 (I think?) those hard-froze randomly every couple hours to days on Linux. But only for some users. They couldn't track down the issue the first few weeks, I guess that's what you get for being an early adopter. They must have gotten (un)lucky during testing and only had setups that worked. It was first suspected to be certain brands of RAM, so I requested a RAM-swap which unfortunately didn't help. Then a BIOS update which also didn't help. Then someone figured out that nohz=off on the KCL fixed the problem and I had it running like this successfully for a few years. Long after at least one dist-upgrade I remembered that and removed the option again, and the server still ran stable. There's no real morale to this story I guess, but at least the support is super responsive, and as the root cause wasn't clear at that point didn't hesitate to swap random stuff if you requested so. Also had a faulty HDD last Sunday in one server and requested a swap, which they did within 20 minutes of me opening the ticket.

repomies69 4y ago
Because Hetzner is so cheap, if I end up with a faulty server I just order a new one. However that rarely happens, and mostly with the newer products. For me 98% of the servers have been very stable. I guess it would be good habit to report the server to hetzner though.
FooBarWidget 4y ago
I was one of those users. The issue turned out to be CPU bugs. Turning off C-state in the BIOS resolved those random hard freezes.

OmarAssadi 4y ago

> Hetzner feels like a hard discount cloud provider. Not to discount your experience, but honestly, my experiences with Hetzner support have generally been unexpectedly good. They've been very quick to respond, tend to immediately start on whatever my issue is if I provide enough info in the initial ticket, etc. And unlike OVH, I haven't felt like I needed to call them on the phone to get decent service. Kind of surprising to hear that their solution was just "rent another". ‎ Overall pleasant experience for me, especially given how cheap the servers are. My only real wishes would be dedicated servers in the US or Canada, and possibly something in between their unmetered 1Gbps and metered 10Gbps offerings -- being able to burst a bit higher than gigabit occasionally without paying the €1/TB bandwidth fee would be beautiful.

e12e 4y ago
> being able to burst a bit higher than gigabit occasionally without paying the €1/TB bandwidth fee would be beautiful. IIRC you get 30tb/month included - so it's not "pay nothing vs pay from first tb" - but I could be wrong - I've not yet had any projects where 10gbps made sense.

repomies69 4y ago

> Hetzner feels like a hard discount cloud provider. I still prefer them over AWS or Azure for non critical workloads that have a little budget. They are a discount provider. In my experience however, this kind of problems are very rare. They pop up now and them. I would just order a new server. In one company I was involved with, hetzner was used from the start and architecture was built around it, and at some point we calculated the costs compared to using AWS or similar. The cost savings were insane. Hetzner is more hassle, but the question is how much do you are willing to pay to get the hassle removed, and in which way.

gnfargbl 4y ago

I'm currently renting around 40 x AX-line machines from them. The random reboots are a real thing, but not painfully so. I would say I see around 5-10 a year on average across all my boxes, so (very roughly) that's one random reboot per 50-100 machine-months. I asked them about one of the incidents, and they said that the breaker serving the rack had popped. I would guess that is a fairly common cause of this problem. Another issue is disk failures. They replace the disk incredibly quickly (<1hr) but unless you are willing to pay for a brand new disk they fit whatever they have in stock. Sometimes that seems to be a unit which is itself close to death, and in another couple of months, guess what happens. Mostly they give you something reasonable so it all works out in the end. Hetzner are a discount cloud provider. For the money, I'm basically delighted with them. The only other realistic option at a similar price point would be to self-host... and I'm not at all convinced that would be worth the hassle.