3 ms·

Apples / Oranges. Quite apart from the ability to buy by the hour, the Hetzner offering really isn't suitable for processing any data you care about - it's not

Apples / Oranges. Quite apart from the ability to buy by the hour, the Hetzner offering really isn't suitable for processing any data you care about - it's not using ECC RAM, and the processor used doesn't support it.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
qaywsx 15y ago
you could use the ex6: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 a little more expensive (69 EUR) and less RAM (16 GB) but using ECC.
- sandGorgon 15y ago
  or someone like providerservice.com who have almost the same specs but with no setup fee.
jules 15y ago
If you're using an AWS m2.4xlarge (score: 1511) then you pay $2.00 per hour. If you're using this Hetzner (score: 1729) you pay less than $0.09 per hour. You'd have to use very few hours indeed for AWS to be cheaper. That's not even factoring in traffic. You get 10TB per month with Hetzner which would cost you an additional $1200/month (!) with Amazon. AFAICT Amazon doesn't use ECC ram either; at least I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Hetzner does have competitively priced servers with ECC ram.
mjb 15y ago
Why is this being downvoted? The processor used (i-7 2600) does not support ECC RAM, and this platform does not include it. A server platform without ECC RAM is a pretty big disadvantage for several reasons, to most compelling being the high real-world rate of memory errors in real systems. Memory errors in non-ECC systems can be extremely difficult and expensive to track down, and can cause data corruption or loss if the machine is used in the data pipeline. In one study (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf), strong correlations were found between age, usage and error rate. Before using a server without ECC RAM, it's worth doing a quick estimate of the amount of data you intend to move around, and whether it's worth it to you (and, more importantly, your customers) to save a little money going with a non-ECC platform.
- Travis 15y ago
  What would be the downside to using non ECC RAM in a heavily loaded server? Would it cause processes to crash?
  - Diederich 15y ago
    If you are lucky, processes would crash. More likely there would be silent bits of data corruption.
    - Travis 15y ago
      Gotcha, so it would just depend on what bits in RAM were corrupted (data versus process instructions)? I am curious about a couple of specific use cases that I can think of where this might affect me (and, most likely, would be common points of failure for others): 1. data in the MySQL tables (stored in memory) is corrupted. Would mysql crash? Indicate table corruption, and I could just reload it from disk? Write corrupted data to disk, and permanently trash my data collection? 2. large process that's running data analysis (say a big python process with tons of data in RAM). Would one of my variables (say an int with value 4) turn into another number? Would it become unreadable? I appreciate the effort to explain this. I know, in theory, why ECC RAM is useful, but I have difficulty visualizing real world scenarios.
      - mjb 15y ago
        The answer to most of your questions is 'maybe', unfortunately. Reasoning about the things that could happen when memory errors occur is very difficult, because they occur outside the mental model of computation that most programmers (and systems administrators) use. Let's use MySQL as an example. A bit flip in the memory which holds the code may cause it to crash. A bit flip in the 'metadata' could cause the table to become corrupted, potentially recoverably. A bit flip in the data itself could turn 'Travis' into 'Trbvis', which might go undetected depending on where it happened and which storage engine you are using. The use of memory for OS page caching (less so in databases, which often use O_DIRECT and more so in other programs) means that arbitrary corruption could happen to pieces of disk data your program didn't even touch, if you touch data near them.
klaruz 15y ago
Do you have a link to where Amazon says EC2 uses ECC RAM? I can't seem to find one.
- simon_kun 15y ago
  I can't find one either. In fact, AWS doesn't seem to be running with ECC RAM except for some of the GPU instances. Happy to be corrected here.
onfocusin 15y ago
You can get the one with ECC (EX 6) it's just 10euro extra / per month... which is still away cheeper than AWS.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

qaywsx 15y ago

you could use the ex6: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 a little more expensive (69 EUR) and less RAM (16 GB) but using ECC.

sandGorgon 15y ago
or someone like providerservice.com who have almost the same specs but with no setup fee.

jules 15y ago

If you're using an AWS m2.4xlarge (score: 1511) then you pay $2.00 per hour. If you're using this Hetzner (score: 1729) you pay less than $0.09 per hour. You'd have to use very few hours indeed for AWS to be cheaper. That's not even factoring in traffic. You get 10TB per month with Hetzner which would cost you an additional $1200/month (!) with Amazon. AFAICT Amazon doesn't use ECC ram either; at least I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Hetzner does have competitively priced servers with ECC ram.

mjb 15y ago

Why is this being downvoted? The processor used (i-7 2600) does not support ECC RAM, and this platform does not include it. A server platform without ECC RAM is a pretty big disadvantage for several reasons, to most compelling being the high real-world rate of memory errors in real systems. Memory errors in non-ECC systems can be extremely difficult and expensive to track down, and can cause data corruption or loss if the machine is used in the data pipeline. In one study (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf), strong correlations were found between age, usage and error rate. Before using a server without ECC RAM, it's worth doing a quick estimate of the amount of data you intend to move around, and whether it's worth it to you (and, more importantly, your customers) to save a little money going with a non-ECC platform.

Travis 15y ago
What would be the downside to using non ECC RAM in a heavily loaded server? Would it cause processes to crash?
- Diederich 15y ago
  If you are lucky, processes would crash. More likely there would be silent bits of data corruption.
  - Travis 15y ago
    Gotcha, so it would just depend on what bits in RAM were corrupted (data versus process instructions)? I am curious about a couple of specific use cases that I can think of where this might affect me (and, most likely, would be common points of failure for others): 1. data in the MySQL tables (stored in memory) is corrupted. Would mysql crash? Indicate table corruption, and I could just reload it from disk? Write corrupted data to disk, and permanently trash my data collection? 2. large process that's running data analysis (say a big python process with tons of data in RAM). Would one of my variables (say an int with value 4) turn into another number? Would it become unreadable? I appreciate the effort to explain this. I know, in theory, why ECC RAM is useful, but I have difficulty visualizing real world scenarios.
    - mjb 15y ago
      The answer to most of your questions is 'maybe', unfortunately. Reasoning about the things that could happen when memory errors occur is very difficult, because they occur outside the mental model of computation that most programmers (and systems administrators) use. Let's use MySQL as an example. A bit flip in the memory which holds the code may cause it to crash. A bit flip in the 'metadata' could cause the table to become corrupted, potentially recoverably. A bit flip in the data itself could turn 'Travis' into 'Trbvis', which might go undetected depending on where it happened and which storage engine you are using. The use of memory for OS page caching (less so in databases, which often use O_DIRECT and more so in other programs) means that arbitrary corruption could happen to pieces of disk data your program didn't even touch, if you touch data near them.

klaruz 15y ago

Do you have a link to where Amazon says EC2 uses ECC RAM? I can't seem to find one.

simon_kun 15y ago
I can't find one either. In fact, AWS doesn't seem to be running with ECC RAM except for some of the GPU instances. Happy to be corrected here.

onfocusin 15y ago

You can get the one with ECC (EX 6) it's just 10euro extra / per month... which is still away cheeper than AWS.