14 ms·

European server provider Hetzner now offers a 64GB RAM box for 109€/mon

222 points by rmoriz 15y ago

supo 15y ago
How is this possible? With the HW and operational costs they have to be in deep minus.. Eg linode.com is considered good and they seem to be more expensive by an order of magnitude. Can somebody tell me what the catch is?
- latch 15y ago
  As long as they are charging more than their operational costs, they'll eventually turn a profit on any hardware investment. Get a discount for buying in bulk, calculate your operational cost and failure rate, and go for volume. They have years to make their money back on this..every month their investment in new hardware gets closer and closer to being profitable.
- rmoriz 15y ago
  Hetzner AG is highly profitable. They have to publish a balance sheet at http://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ http://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ (German only) Annual net profits: 2008: 4.077.791,31 € 2009: 4.448.824,49 € 2010: 8.925.128,81 € Accumulated profits: 2008: 9.030.980,10 € 2009: 13.479.804,59 € 2010: 22.404.933,40 € key facts: - cheap energy + human resources by building custom colocation facilities in regions where cheap cooling+power is available - cheap self-made servers, no 19" form factor for decicated servers (they have 19" racks for colocation customers) - hardware has to be refinanced in a couple of months. That's why the charge 149€ setup upfront. - growing out of cash flow - CEO and founder still CEO. Sometimes still interacts with customers regarding new ideas in their forum (German only). see http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/presse/center http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/presse/center for corporate press releases.
  - nolok 15y ago
    Similar to French OVH in a lot of way
    - aes256 15y ago
      Except OVH is a haven for nefarious use (seedboxes, etc.) and Hetzner most certainly is not!
      - dspillett 15y ago
        > Except OVH is a haven for nefarious use (seedboxes, etc.) Particularly through certain resellers, including the own "budget line" (http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/). Not that I'd know anything about nefariousness, 'onest guv.
        acous 15y ago
        Their french site has slightly better prices for some reason: http://www.kimsufi.com/fr/ http://www.kimsufi.com/fr/
        nolok 15y ago
        Kimsufi was launched to fight against french Dedibox (now online.net), which at the time had lower price than the lowest OVH server. They stayed at the same level as them since then.
        dspillett 15y ago
        Could that be due to differences in VAT? If not it might just be that they like to quote nice round figures (£14.99 and €14.99 perhaps) - this happens sometimes when the pound and the euro are (or recently have been) near parity.
      - cake 15y ago
        What makes you say that Hetzner isn't "a haven for nefarious use" ?
        aes256 15y ago
        Hetzner specifically prohibit the use of file sharing services (see the service agreement for root servers: (http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/legal/system-policies-rs http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/legal/system-policies-rs). Not sure if it's still the case, but they also used to have a policy of blocking port 6667.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- rplnt 15y ago
  Is it hardware or a virtual server?
  - rmoriz 15y ago
    bare metal hardware of course: http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/405734_294418537271681_267761909937344_845328_552104232_n.jpg http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/405734_294418...
    - hencq 15y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong but that picture doesn't really say anything. Each one of those machines could still be running 16 VMs
    - oellegaard 15y ago
      is this from an actual hetzner datacenter?
      - rmoriz 15y ago
        yes. it's linked on: http://www.facebook.com/HetznerOnline http://www.facebook.com/HetznerOnline and probably shows: http://www.datacenterpark.de/index_en.html http://www.datacenterpark.de/index_en.html Here's a list of all data centers: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Rechenzentren_und_Anbindung/en http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Rechenzentren_und_Anbindung...
    - yread 15y ago
      This picture was posted from official account: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=267761909937344 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=267761909937344 (third number) so it looks legit
knotty66 15y ago
Question: If I host the domain for my UK business on one of these (and say it is a generic .com - not a .co.uk domain), will it influence my google.co.uk SERP ranking massively ? How would Google know my .com site is UK based?
- DanEdge 15y ago
  Webmaster tools? Related: I host a org.uk site in the States which ranks well for relevant searches. It's a tourist site in the UK so I'm only really interested in UK traffic.
- polshaw 15y ago
  I am not an expert, but my understanding is that it would have some effect (worse than UK hosting, presumably better than outside EU), but I doubt very much. Faster hosting should have a positive effect, too.
tzaman 15y ago
I already lease a couple of servers with them, and I must say they are #1 in EU when it comes to... well, everything.
- lis 15y ago
  That is true, but you have to keep in mind that you have to get the flexipack if you want to run more than 3 virtual machines with their own ip on it. And honestly - if my server had 64gb ram I would want to do that. "back in the days" I got my own subnet for free, now they are charging for it pretty heftily.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    Welcome to the last days of ipv4.
    - lis 15y ago
      Absolutely true. Though it would be very nice of them to let me upgrade my server while keeping my old subnet for free (which they don't). I can understand their rational.
  - calloc 15y ago
    You get an entire /64 for IPv6. Time to make the switch.
    - lis 15y ago
      I would love too do that, but most of my customers wouldn't be able to access the server afterwards. That's the only thing that's holding me back.
- Kudos 15y ago
  The 100mb connectivity says otherwise.
tdr 15y ago
Great hosters! - cheap prices for lots of power - everything "just works" (only contacted for questions) - quick, friendly & to the point support service - great uptime - they are eco - 14 days money back (for root servers) Drawbacks - bigger latency for US/Asia/... - you do your own backups - they bill only after the end of month. had problems when card expired
- jerguismi 15y ago
  I have been using hetzner for all my servers for about 2-3 years, and have been very happy with them. I can remember only one, brief downtime.
- thibaut_barrere 15y ago
  Did you measure the latency difference by any chance? I am really considering buying one host there, would love to get an idea on this.
  - tdr 15y ago
    NY: ~100ms CA: just under 200ms Asia: even +300ms didn't check Southern hemisphere
    - thibaut_barrere 15y ago
      Great, thanks!
    - matt4711 15y ago
      Australia ~350ms
    - ot 15y ago
      "Speed of light sucks" (John Carmack)
    - Sapient 15y ago
      South Africa, ~210ms
nolok 15y ago
Can somebody tell me why the EX 4S costs the same as EX 5 ? I feel like the 4S is actually superior, but I'm no expert.
- thibaut_barrere 15y ago
  Maybe the difference in CPU? (no expert either :-) See http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ex http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-pr...
- rmoriz 15y ago
  EX 5 has a lower setup fee. Some people want to save once and pay more... (I don't understand those folks) The EX5 is the last one with the old-gen CPU and was kept because in the early days of the i7-2600 it was too expensive to offer high-ram servers like the 4S (which was introduced months later)
  - runako 15y ago
    >> EX 5 has a lower setup fee. Some people want to save once and pay more... (I don't understand those folks) This seems prudent when going with a new vendor. Reduce financial risk until you gain trust.
    - rmoriz 15y ago
      ok :) In this case I would buy the cheapest server from https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market or a VPS/vserver to gain trust in the company+network.
rmoriz 15y ago
their API: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Robot_Webservice/en http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Robot_Webservice/en ruby: https://github.com/rmoriz/hetzner-api gem install hetzner-api
tomx 15y ago
Is "hoster" a valid word? I do not see it listed in dictionary.com. If you hosted a party, would you be a "party host" or a "party hoster"?
- rmoriz 15y ago
  better?
- hej 15y ago
  It is in Germany (but you are right, it’s incorrect if used in English).
  - OzzyB 15y ago
    It's incorrect, until enough folks start using it, then the Oxford Dictionary gets an update :)
fpp 15y ago
Anybody having experience with running ESXi on these dedicated machines. Their online documentation says that it supports ESXi 5 and they put in a CD when you tell them with your order.
- oellegaard 15y ago
  I have an ESXi 4 server on one of their servers, the setup was rather tricky - but it ran since ESXi was made free and had absolutely no problems.
Erwin 15y ago
Compare with SoftLayer which has decided to charge through the nose for their RAM upgrades: going from 16 to 64GB RAM on their E5 servers is an additional $1200/month. They're far more expensive than e.g. Rackspace there for some reason.
- Smerity 15y ago
  I haven't looked at SoftLayer's offerings re: RAM but the most important thing to note with Hetzner is that only some of their dedicated machines have error-correcting code (ECC) memory. Hetzner's 16GB machine[1] (89 Euros/month) has ECC memory for example. Whilst this might not sound like an enormous issue, DRAM errors are surprisingly common in real deployments[2] and can result in scary things happening to your data. If you're using a machine without ECC memory make sure you're prepared to deal with any possible issues that might arise, especially if it will impact your core business. [1]: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex8 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex8 [2] DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf
  - jules 15y ago
    How common DRAM errors are is very unclear. The numbers in that paper are astronomically high, but other sources have published numbers that are 30x or 100,000x or literally 10,000,000x lower. See this Stanford ee380 talk: http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/100922-ee380-300.asx http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/100922-ee3... The part about DRAM errors is about 57 minutes in. Abstract here: http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100922.html http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100922.html Also, AFAIK most hosting providers don't even have ECC ram as an option for servers, e.g. Amazon.
    - justincormack 15y ago
      Do you have a source on Amazon not using ECC?
themichael 15y ago
Hello, we have several servers at hetzner since 2009. The performance has been stunning. Biggest upside is probably the ability to buy 1 TB of bandwith for 6.90 €. What amazes me is the fact that they can provide such great service and still be highly profitable. Turnover in the fiscal year 2010 was 29.68 Million € with post tax profit being 8.925 Million €.
error 15y ago
The company rocks :) I have two dedicated servers (EX 6 with ECC) they are awesome. Until now I had no issue with them. I hope they continue this way.
- rmoriz 15y ago
  Once I had a performance issue with my 100Mbit/s VDSL and asked on the forum. CEO himself checked the peering capacity and wrote me an email. While I still have to pay for my dedicated servers, I really love the way they're doing business. :-)
ashleyw 15y ago
Their VPS service looks fantastic also: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserver-produktmatrix http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserv... Their 2GB plan is 3x cheaper than Linode…and you get over 4x the data transfer! Does anyone know how the performance compares?
- Smerity 15y ago
  I did a light benchmark of their 512MB VPS[1] which is insanely cheap. The only things that change when moving to the 2GB VPS is RAM, hard drive space and total data transfer. The CPU remains a single core and the same speed according to [2]. It's possible there's less contention but you'd need to find a benchmark for the 2GB VPS to know for sure. If you're after any specific benchmarks give me a yell and I'll see if I can provide one for you. [1]: http://smerity.com/articles/2012/hetzner.html http://smerity.com/articles/2012/hetzner.html [2]: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/VServer/en#Which_clock_speed_do_the_VQ_server_CPUs_have.3F http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/VServer/en#Which_clock_spee... Edit: Came across a review of VQ19 (2GB VPS) vs EQ4 @ http://code.google.com/p/catz/wiki/DedicatedOrVPS http://code.google.com/p/catz/wiki/DedicatedOrVPS
  - st3fan 15y ago
    "Sent passport scan to Hetzner" - Really?
    - meskyanichi 15y ago
      It actually says "Sent"?
    - dchest 15y ago
      I had to to the same for Linode (although I'm from an untrustworthy country :).
      - swatkat 15y ago
        http://xkcd.com/541/ http://xkcd.com/541/
macca321 15y ago
any ideas why it has a 32GB limit for windows?
- tiernano 15y ago
  Windows Standard edition is capped at 32Gb... if you want to use more, you need to use Enterprise...
- ericd 15y ago
  MS might be doing RAM-based license pricing.
ksajadi 15y ago
If it is possible to run a hosting service as cheap as this, why is there none like it in the US? I thought the labour, tax and VAT costs in Germany should make it less competitive but this is just way cheaper than anything you can find in the US. Does anyone know of any similar offerings in the States?
- rmoriz 15y ago
  There are some other companies in Germany and France that operate for over a decade at very affordable prices. OVH, Strato, 1&1 to name some. If you're from outside the EU you'll probably even get the servers without having to pay the 19% VAT.
  - conradfr 15y ago
    Online.net as well. Companies never pay VAT anyway, usually professional services display mainly prices without it.
    - james33 15y ago
      All of the price listings on Hetzner says that VAT is included in the price.
- tonfa 15y ago
  FYI, OVH is building a data center in Montreal: http://www.vincentabry.com/en/ovh-web-hosting-will-install-its-360000-servers-datacenter-in-beauharnois-quebec-1642 http://www.vincentabry.com/en/ovh-web-hosting-will-install-i...
- kami8845 15y ago
  From what I know the cost of cooling and power in Germany are much lower than in the US, Hetzner is also very long-term oriented, the equipment they buy only becomes profitable after running for a couple of years.
- ihsw 15y ago
  RAM allocation is the baseline for determining monthly pricing and their product page specifically mentions DDR3 RAM, which generally costs 50% the price of DDR2 RAM.
Uchikoma 15y ago
10 years satisfied customer.
rmoriz 15y ago
If you're outside the EU, you probably don't have to pay 19% VAT. So it's even less than 109€...
- bond 15y ago
  The same if you have a company outside Germany and based in Europe
  - ashconnor 15y ago
    But only if you are VAT registered, at least in the UK.
meskyanichi 15y ago
Purchased an EX 4S (32gb ram non-ecc) the other day from Hetzner, been running extremely smooth. They got it rigged up in about 2-4 hours. Installed Xen to run my own little VPS farm and it's dirt cheap compared to all the VPS providers out there, and more performant as well since you actually own the underlying hardware. Just noticed they also added "1 Gigabit-Port" under "Additional Options" at only 39 EUR, along with an additional 15TB bandwidth increase (You get 100Mbit by default), and only 6.90 EUR for additional TB's of traffic. Pretty sweet if you're doing some kind of video/stream hosting. Of course it has it's downsides compared to S3 but when you compare pricing in "TB" to S3, you'll see how redonk the S3 pricing is. Now, if only Hetzner was also located in the US and Asia that would complete me.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  > Of course it has it's downsides compared to S3 but when you compare pricing in "TB" to S3, you'll see how redonk the S3 pricing is. Remember, comparing "x TB of storage" to S3 is silly. S3 is designed to replicate your file to multiple datacenters (their site promises ELEVEN nines of durability!), provides things like a BitTorrent tracker for your files, etc.
  - nolok 15y ago
    Unless I'm mistaken he is not comparing TB of storage, but TB of bandwith used.
    - meskyanichi 15y ago
      Yes, I was referring to bandwidth.
hamidpalo 15y ago
Does anyone know how they can provide bandwidth for so cheap? 7 EUR for a TB of traffic is insanely cheap.
- rmoriz 15y ago
  nearly-free peering at http://de-cix.net/ http://de-cix.net/ and http://www.n-ix.net/ http://www.n-ix.net/ to offload a big load of traffic + bandwidth and fibres are not that expensive here in Germany (unless you go with Deutsche Telekom).
  - ezequiel-garzon 15y ago
    That's great information. Why hasn't this happened in the US as well?
healthyahoo 15y ago
http://healthyahoo.net/healthy_diet/7-nutrients-pack-antioxidants.html http://healthyahoo.net/healthy_diet/7-nutrients-pack-antioxi...
mrspandex 15y ago
Are there legal issues to think about when storing data on German servers?
- jakeonthemove 15y ago
  They have strict laws for copyright infringement from what I hear... on the other hand, the FBI can't just pull out your servers :-)...
- hopeless 15y ago
  Yes. For us Europeans, it's much safer since there's no export of data outside the EU :)
- antninja 15y ago
  The German government is a good defensor of Internet freedoms, along with the Netherlands and Scandinavian contries.
  - rmoriz 15y ago
    well, at least the Pirate Party is very strong in Germany. >10% in country-wide surveys http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
- toenail 15y ago
  You can't distribute Nazi materials or ideology. Free speech is also limited, you can't just defame people. Also as a german business owner you are required to have an imprint with some specific info, no idea how this is for foreigners.
jakeonthemove 15y ago
Interesting... the only hosting company with comparable prices and features in the US is 1and1 (which is actually owned by a German company), but their tech support has been pretty bad (takes them freaking days to replace hardware - on the other hand, EVERYTHING can be done remotely)... I wonder if hosting in Germany would affect a site's response time and ranking on Google in the US?
irahul 15y ago
I have a question. Do they always ask for passport scan and credit card photograph, or I fall under some special category which makes me suspicious? Going by the rave reviews, I ordered the 512 MB vps to evaluate, and was greeted by an email asking for my passport and credit card photograph. I don't feel like doing business with them anymore. I am a bit uncomfortable about sharing my credit card info. But since I already have shared my card number, I figure I can attach the card photo. And even if I comply with the ridiculous request of providing a photograph of my credit card, most of the times I use a virtual credit card. My bank lets me creates virtual credit cards and link with my card/account. The card doesn't exist physically and it lets me reset the transaction limit. I reset the transaction limit before making a transaction ensuring I can't be overcharged. They would turn me down because I am concerned about my financial transactions?
- Flam 15y ago
  It's normal. Myself and another person I know had to do it too.
- vladd 15y ago
  > The would turn me down because I am concerned about my financial transactions? No, they would turn you down because you cannot present to them their risk guarantee criteria that enable their low prices.
  - irahul 15y ago
    > No, they would turn you down because you cannot present to them their risk guarantee criteria that enable their low prices. What kind of risks are they putting up with without a photograph of my credit card? Stolen cards? People deactivate their cards when the cards are lost. And if people don't, then the thief has an active credit card and can very well send the copy. I won't make my payments? How does the photo of my credit card help? It makes sure I have a credit card - it doesn't make sure you can make transactions on my card(limit reached, card blocked, payment disputed) etc.
    - vladd 15y ago
kayoone 15y ago
After over a year of hosting in the cloud (amazon aws) and spending alot of money in the process we also made the switch to hetzner recently... The cloud and its benefits is nice and good, but the computing power you get for 100 bucks from companies like hetzner is just incredible.. Of course there are higher costs of setting everything up, but on AWS we had todo most of the complicated stuff on our own anyway..
pja 15y ago
I've never seen anyone running a reverse auction to rent their old hardware out before: https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market I guess if they're not short of space for hardware & cooling then this is a profitable way to put old hardware to use until the demand falls below the running costs. I wonder what the reliability is like?
- dotBen 15y ago
  Thinking about scraping this data and calculating performance-to-€ ratio to identify good deals/unclaimed bargains etc. Perhaps even calculate the mean average price a given server spec sells for etc. If they have an affiliate scheme that would make s nice side project
swombat 15y ago
Totally random off the cuff... I've been fighting with an EX 4S server for the last week, trying to set up Xen under Debian Squeeze... anyone got some rock-solid instructions which they know work? I've tried both my own recipes and various tutorials on the web, but so far no luck. I managed to get Xen sort of working at one point, but then the networking wasn't working. I'm about ready to start throwing things out the window...
- rmoriz 15y ago
  depends if you bought extra IPs (up to 4) or a whole subnet? There are some tutorials by customers on how to setup routing at http://wiki.hetzner.de/ http://wiki.hetzner.de/
- givanfp 15y ago
  Do you need debian? If not, 1 - Ask for a LARA install of Xen Server (20€ IIRC). 2 - Request an additional IP with MAC address 3 - Change the MAC address of your VM on XenCenter
- kenmazy 15y ago
  Last I checked Squeeze had a fairly straightforward Xen 4.0 package. I did have trouble with dropped packets, but I was doing some pretty complex stuff and it was already fixed upstream. How exactly are you trying to setup networking? Bridged, routed, NAT on dom0 vs domU? These two pages might help you, though both are slightly out of date: http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-configure-and-enable-xen-linux-dedicated-server-with-virtual-machiness-internet-to-work-with-multipe-ips-and-one-mac-only-solusvm-through-nat-route-and-iptables/ http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-configure-and-enable-xen... http://wiki.kartbuilding.net/index.php/Xen_Networking#Two-way_Routed_Network http://wiki.kartbuilding.net/index.php/Xen_Networking#Two-wa... (more out of date, but ideas are correct) EDIT: ZFSonlinux is worth looking into as it's becoming fairly mature and provides the perfect storage for xen instances.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- calloc 15y ago
  Does it have to be Xen? I've had a lot of good luck using KVM and so far it seems to be more stable... and it can run OS's unmodified.
runako 15y ago
Would anyone care to comment on the quality and English skills of their support? We considered Hetzner, but were concerned about the potential pitfalls of doing low-level support with a language barrier.
- nirvana 15y ago
  I haven't used their service yet so I can't comment from experience with them, but I will say this: In germany, you are taught english when you are growing up. We lived in Berlin for awhile and my german is very poor, but almost everyone we met knew enough english to get by. Hetzner is an international company, with a website in english, and I think the odds that they will have a real problem handling customer support requests due to language is very low. Much lower than support being overworked, or other potential issues. In america, finding someone who knows a foreign language is rare. In germany, finding someone who knows at least some english is not uncommon- and in a company like this, I'm sure (but don't know for a fact) they hire english speaking support people.
- tdr 15y ago
  Tested and it's very good. They also answer quickly and document pretty well the problem/reason.
- Egregore 15y ago
  If they don't outsource their support then most people in Germany I talked with know English very well.
nirvana 15y ago
Hetzner is nirvana for pre-ramen profitable big data startups. You can build a cluster for a whole lot less than Amazon-- in many cases 1/10th the cost (depending on which resources are higher priority, for us.) The question is-- can you host in germany and serve a customer base that is primarily in the USA? Our application isn't too latency intensive... but this is my primary concern. Would it be stupid for an american startup to locate there? I'd love to hear from anyone who has direct experience.
- Roritharr 15y ago
  Don't forget that "hosted in Germany" is a quality mark with which you can advertise. Especially International Customers don't like the idea of their data being stored in a country where the Patriot Act is a present reality.
  - OzzyB 15y ago
    I'm not sure how far "Vorsprung durch Technik"[1] would go as a competitive advantage with regards to your particular choosen hosting provider -- it will always just be hosting to your end users -- but I like the sentiment :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorsprung_durch_Technik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorsprung_durch_Technik
  - dirtyaura 15y ago
    It's not even about a choice, as companies from EU countries can't store store user identification data of EU citizens in US servers. So you are more or less legally forced to have (some) servers in EU.
    - jahewson 15y ago
      Actually any US company can self-certify under the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and be eligible to store data from the EU.
  - drone 15y ago
    Don't forget that "Hosted in Germany" is also a red flag for a lot of companies that they may be arbitrarily assessed massive fees to prop up other businesses[1]. As is the same with many EU countries[2][3]. You're taking a risk wherever your data is stored. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17785613 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17785613 [2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGOuwazIIAGA http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a... [3] http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/02/french-court-fines-google-france-500-000-euros-for-gratis-maps/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/02/french-court-fines-google... So, you can either have to implement good data protection so that your users don't have to worry about the FBI snooping in the U.S., or you can run the risk that some country in the EU decides to prop up some failing industry by extracting unreasonable tolls out of your company. Personally, I'd go with the former, but that's just my opinion.
ra3don92 15y ago
Does anyone use http://burst.net/ http://burst.net/ ? I've found them to be one of the cheapest VPS providers. May want to check them out if hosting in Germany is not an option.
- yatendra 15y ago
  I use it to host http://livepost.in http://livepost.in since last month. Pingdom reported some small downtimes but other than that it was ok. You get what you pay for, but I think burst.net is value for money.
LinaLauneBaer 15y ago
Germany has very strict information privacy laws when compared to the US. As far I know many German companies cannot use cloud based solutions from companies hosting in the US because of these laws. For example you are forbidden by law to save user data at all. There are exceptions (eg. If the service won't be able to function otherwise) but the discrepancy is still huge. I wonder if you have to comply to these rules per se when you host in Germany or not. I am no lawer. But maybe you want to consider the strict information laws ingermany before renting big servers...
vanessar 15y ago
We migrated our infrastructure to Hetzner at the beginning of the year and we are very happy with the change. Also, the support is great (and fast).
Egregore 15y ago
Network availability 99% is very bad, it's about 3 days/year of downtime. (If you have clients - they will kill you)
- corin_ 15y ago
  Personally I pay little attention to network availability promises - all they mean is that you get pro-rated refunds if downtime exceeds them. 3 days downtime is possible wherever you go, and if it happens I don't care a huge amount if I get a refund of 10% of a month's costs or not - the damage is in the downtime, not the wasted money. What's important is the company's track record, and the likelyhood of that record changing, and from what I've heard Hetzner look pretty good in this area.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dow 15y ago
Can anyone provide an IP of a box hosted with Hetzner? I want to measure the latency when connecting from Middle East. That's one of things I worry about. Linode seems to have the best peering with the region from all the providers I've checked. Thanks!
- iSnow 15y ago
  78.46.92.242 This is an oldish dual-core AMD box with 2GB RAM and low load.
  - dow 14y ago
    Thanks, iSnow. It looks good, lower latency than US East or Singapore, little bit higher than London or Ireland. The only thing that worries me are the fluctuations between pings: 164.622 ms 164.725 ms 166.828 ms 228.693 ms 234.214 ms .. and it goes like this forever - bouncing between 164 and 230. Linode and AWS are very constant between pings. Is this something to be worried about? Thank you
ashconnor 15y ago
6.2 The client undertakes not to publish content that may violate the rights of third parties or otherwise violate the law. The placement of erotic, pornographic, extremist material or material not deemed in good taste is not permitted. We are entitled to block access to the account of any customer who violates this. The same applies in the event that the customer publishes content which is capable of violating the rights of individuals or groups of people, or that insults or denigrates these people. This applies even without an actual legal claim. We are not obligated to review our customers' content. That basically rules out many user driven content sites.
mufumbo 15y ago
Right now I have three servers in hetzner. I have been using them for 5 years, but only last year my startup "boomed", so I had to cancel my old server and move it in the same rack as the other servers. If your startup has already "boomed" just make it sure to rent all your servers in the same rack or pay the reservation fee ($10 per server). Hetzner prices are great for any software engineer. Having that powerful server waiting for my projects is one of the reasons that I had the chance of succeeding. I used to say that this is our profession and having a dedicated server is a mandatory thing. Even with one server from hetzner I was able to virtualize it into 8 machines and create a real production environment that made it easier to scale. After you learn XEN it's faster than going through amazon interface. From my past experience I always worked with people who wanted to use amazon or google appengine. I was always against it and said that the prices were ridiculously expensive. My colleges said that they didn't wanted to manage servers and the cost of appengine was only $2 per day, etc. This is a real story and when the time of high traffic came the $2 became $50 and now we pay $1500 in something that could be handled with ONE $100 hetzner server. After using hetzner I would NEVER advise appengine and I would only advise amazon if you must have the servers in the US. For those who say that the site would have too much latency if it's in hetzner: just use a cdn for static content, http://www.maxcdn.com http://www.maxcdn.com is very cheap and probably much better than just hosting in the US.
gaillard 15y ago
For all those who care about taking responsibility for the environment, this is what their site says: "Hetzner Online exclusively uses energy from renewable sources to power the servers in its data centers. Our environmental partner is TÜV-certified NaturEnergie AG, a company that generates green energy from 100 percent carbon dioxide-free and environmentally-friendly hydropower. The energy generated by flowing water is, from an ecological viewpoint, considered to be the best form of power generation for the environment."
kragen 15y ago
Hetzner's lowest-end server offering is €39/month, or US$51/month: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/x3 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/x3. I priced it out on PortaTech, and it looks like the physical hardware costs about US$300: http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26840&O=65103 http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26840&O... I assume the six-month ratio is about the same for this larger server. That seems like a pretty awesome deal, if you're doing something where you might need the machine for a few months, but aren't sure you'll still need it six months or a year from now. It sounds like a particularly no-hassle version of leasing a workstation. Except that the workstation comes with a hundred-megabit internet connection, and no monitor. Unfortunately, it's also 250ms away from me here in Buenos Aires. Neither elserver.com nor servilink.com.ar seems to have anything comparable (and ServiLink's web page seems to be full of broken links and encoding errors, which doesn't inspire confidence; if their web team are such pelotudos de mierda, how likely are they to be able to quickly replace faulty hardware?) so I don't know where to turn.

222 points by rmoriz 15y ago

supo 15y ago

How is this possible? With the HW and operational costs they have to be in deep minus.. Eg linode.com is considered good and they seem to be more expensive by an order of magnitude. Can somebody tell me what the catch is?

latch 15y ago
As long as they are charging more than their operational costs, they'll eventually turn a profit on any hardware investment. Get a discount for buying in bulk, calculate your operational cost and failure rate, and go for volume. They have years to make their money back on this..every month their investment in new hardware gets closer and closer to being profitable.
rmoriz 15y ago
Hetzner AG is highly profitable. They have to publish a balance sheet at http://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ http://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ (German only) Annual net profits: 2008: 4.077.791,31 € 2009: 4.448.824,49 € 2010: 8.925.128,81 € Accumulated profits: 2008: 9.030.980,10 € 2009: 13.479.804,59 € 2010: 22.404.933,40 € key facts: - cheap energy + human resources by building custom colocation facilities in regions where cheap cooling+power is available - cheap self-made servers, no 19" form factor for decicated servers (they have 19" racks for colocation customers) - hardware has to be refinanced in a couple of months. That's why the charge 149€ setup upfront. - growing out of cash flow - CEO and founder still CEO. Sometimes still interacts with customers regarding new ideas in their forum (German only). see http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/presse/center http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/presse/center for corporate press releases.
- nolok 15y ago
  Similar to French OVH in a lot of way
  - aes256 15y ago
    Except OVH is a haven for nefarious use (seedboxes, etc.) and Hetzner most certainly is not!
    - dspillett 15y ago
      > Except OVH is a haven for nefarious use (seedboxes, etc.) Particularly through certain resellers, including the own "budget line" (http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/). Not that I'd know anything about nefariousness, 'onest guv.
      - acous 15y ago
        Their french site has slightly better prices for some reason: http://www.kimsufi.com/fr/ http://www.kimsufi.com/fr/
        nolok 15y ago
        Kimsufi was launched to fight against french Dedibox (now online.net), which at the time had lower price than the lowest OVH server. They stayed at the same level as them since then.
        dspillett 15y ago
        Could that be due to differences in VAT? If not it might just be that they like to quote nice round figures (£14.99 and €14.99 perhaps) - this happens sometimes when the pound and the euro are (or recently have been) near parity.
    - cake 15y ago
      What makes you say that Hetzner isn't "a haven for nefarious use" ?
      - aes256 15y ago
        Hetzner specifically prohibit the use of file sharing services (see the service agreement for root servers: (http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/legal/system-policies-rs http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/legal/system-policies-rs). Not sure if it's still the case, but they also used to have a policy of blocking port 6667.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
rplnt 15y ago
Is it hardware or a virtual server?
- rmoriz 15y ago
  bare metal hardware of course: http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/405734_294418537271681_267761909937344_845328_552104232_n.jpg http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/405734_294418...
  - hencq 15y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong but that picture doesn't really say anything. Each one of those machines could still be running 16 VMs
  - oellegaard 15y ago
    is this from an actual hetzner datacenter?
    - rmoriz 15y ago
      yes. it's linked on: http://www.facebook.com/HetznerOnline http://www.facebook.com/HetznerOnline and probably shows: http://www.datacenterpark.de/index_en.html http://www.datacenterpark.de/index_en.html Here's a list of all data centers: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Rechenzentren_und_Anbindung/en http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Rechenzentren_und_Anbindung...
  - yread 15y ago
    This picture was posted from official account: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=267761909937344 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=267761909937344 (third number) so it looks legit

knotty66 15y ago

Question: If I host the domain for my UK business on one of these (and say it is a generic .com - not a .co.uk domain), will it influence my google.co.uk SERP ranking massively ? How would Google know my .com site is UK based?

DanEdge 15y ago
Webmaster tools? Related: I host a org.uk site in the States which ranks well for relevant searches. It's a tourist site in the UK so I'm only really interested in UK traffic.
polshaw 15y ago
I am not an expert, but my understanding is that it would have some effect (worse than UK hosting, presumably better than outside EU), but I doubt very much. Faster hosting should have a positive effect, too.

tzaman 15y ago

I already lease a couple of servers with them, and I must say they are #1 in EU when it comes to... well, everything.

lis 15y ago
That is true, but you have to keep in mind that you have to get the flexipack if you want to run more than 3 virtual machines with their own ip on it. And honestly - if my server had 64gb ram I would want to do that. "back in the days" I got my own subnet for free, now they are charging for it pretty heftily.
- justincormack 15y ago
  Welcome to the last days of ipv4.
  - lis 15y ago
    Absolutely true. Though it would be very nice of them to let me upgrade my server while keeping my old subnet for free (which they don't). I can understand their rational.
- calloc 15y ago
  You get an entire /64 for IPv6. Time to make the switch.
  - lis 15y ago
    I would love too do that, but most of my customers wouldn't be able to access the server afterwards. That's the only thing that's holding me back.
Kudos 15y ago
The 100mb connectivity says otherwise.

tdr 15y ago

Great hosters! - cheap prices for lots of power - everything "just works" (only contacted for questions) - quick, friendly & to the point support service - great uptime - they are eco - 14 days money back (for root servers) Drawbacks - bigger latency for US/Asia/... - you do your own backups - they bill only after the end of month. had problems when card expired

jerguismi 15y ago
I have been using hetzner for all my servers for about 2-3 years, and have been very happy with them. I can remember only one, brief downtime.
thibaut_barrere 15y ago
Did you measure the latency difference by any chance? I am really considering buying one host there, would love to get an idea on this.
- tdr 15y ago
  NY: ~100ms CA: just under 200ms Asia: even +300ms didn't check Southern hemisphere
  - thibaut_barrere 15y ago
    Great, thanks!
  - matt4711 15y ago
    Australia ~350ms
  - ot 15y ago
    "Speed of light sucks" (John Carmack)
  - Sapient 15y ago
    South Africa, ~210ms

nolok 15y ago

Can somebody tell me why the EX 4S costs the same as EX 5 ? I feel like the 4S is actually superior, but I'm no expert.

thibaut_barrere 15y ago
Maybe the difference in CPU? (no expert either :-) See http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ex http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-pr...
rmoriz 15y ago
EX 5 has a lower setup fee. Some people want to save once and pay more... (I don't understand those folks) The EX5 is the last one with the old-gen CPU and was kept because in the early days of the i7-2600 it was too expensive to offer high-ram servers like the 4S (which was introduced months later)
- runako 15y ago
  >> EX 5 has a lower setup fee. Some people want to save once and pay more... (I don't understand those folks) This seems prudent when going with a new vendor. Reduce financial risk until you gain trust.
  - rmoriz 15y ago
    ok :) In this case I would buy the cheapest server from https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market or a VPS/vserver to gain trust in the company+network.

rmoriz 15y ago

their API: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Robot_Webservice/en http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Robot_Webservice/en ruby: https://github.com/rmoriz/hetzner-api gem install hetzner-api

tomx 15y ago

Is "hoster" a valid word? I do not see it listed in dictionary.com. If you hosted a party, would you be a "party host" or a "party hoster"?

rmoriz 15y ago
better?
hej 15y ago
It is in Germany (but you are right, it’s incorrect if used in English).
- OzzyB 15y ago
  It's incorrect, until enough folks start using it, then the Oxford Dictionary gets an update :)

fpp 15y ago

Anybody having experience with running ESXi on these dedicated machines. Their online documentation says that it supports ESXi 5 and they put in a CD when you tell them with your order.

oellegaard 15y ago
I have an ESXi 4 server on one of their servers, the setup was rather tricky - but it ran since ESXi was made free and had absolutely no problems.

Erwin 15y ago

Compare with SoftLayer which has decided to charge through the nose for their RAM upgrades: going from 16 to 64GB RAM on their E5 servers is an additional $1200/month. They're far more expensive than e.g. Rackspace there for some reason.

Smerity 15y ago
I haven't looked at SoftLayer's offerings re: RAM but the most important thing to note with Hetzner is that only some of their dedicated machines have error-correcting code (ECC) memory. Hetzner's 16GB machine[1] (89 Euros/month) has ECC memory for example. Whilst this might not sound like an enormous issue, DRAM errors are surprisingly common in real deployments[2] and can result in scary things happening to your data. If you're using a machine without ECC memory make sure you're prepared to deal with any possible issues that might arise, especially if it will impact your core business. [1]: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex8 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex8 [2] DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf
- jules 15y ago
  How common DRAM errors are is very unclear. The numbers in that paper are astronomically high, but other sources have published numbers that are 30x or 100,000x or literally 10,000,000x lower. See this Stanford ee380 talk: http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/100922-ee380-300.asx http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/100922-ee3... The part about DRAM errors is about 57 minutes in. Abstract here: http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100922.html http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100922.html Also, AFAIK most hosting providers don't even have ECC ram as an option for servers, e.g. Amazon.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    Do you have a source on Amazon not using ECC?

themichael 15y ago

Hello, we have several servers at hetzner since 2009. The performance has been stunning. Biggest upside is probably the ability to buy 1 TB of bandwith for 6.90 €. What amazes me is the fact that they can provide such great service and still be highly profitable. Turnover in the fiscal year 2010 was 29.68 Million € with post tax profit being 8.925 Million €.

error 15y ago

The company rocks :) I have two dedicated servers (EX 6 with ECC) they are awesome. Until now I had no issue with them. I hope they continue this way.

rmoriz 15y ago
Once I had a performance issue with my 100Mbit/s VDSL and asked on the forum. CEO himself checked the peering capacity and wrote me an email. While I still have to pay for my dedicated servers, I really love the way they're doing business. :-)

ashleyw 15y ago

Their VPS service looks fantastic also: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserver-produktmatrix http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserv... Their 2GB plan is 3x cheaper than Linode…and you get over 4x the data transfer! Does anyone know how the performance compares?

Smerity 15y ago
I did a light benchmark of their 512MB VPS[1] which is insanely cheap. The only things that change when moving to the 2GB VPS is RAM, hard drive space and total data transfer. The CPU remains a single core and the same speed according to [2]. It's possible there's less contention but you'd need to find a benchmark for the 2GB VPS to know for sure. If you're after any specific benchmarks give me a yell and I'll see if I can provide one for you. [1]: http://smerity.com/articles/2012/hetzner.html http://smerity.com/articles/2012/hetzner.html [2]: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/VServer/en#Which_clock_speed_do_the_VQ_server_CPUs_have.3F http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/VServer/en#Which_clock_spee... Edit: Came across a review of VQ19 (2GB VPS) vs EQ4 @ http://code.google.com/p/catz/wiki/DedicatedOrVPS http://code.google.com/p/catz/wiki/DedicatedOrVPS
- st3fan 15y ago
  "Sent passport scan to Hetzner" - Really?
  - meskyanichi 15y ago
    It actually says "Sent"?
  - dchest 15y ago
    I had to to the same for Linode (although I'm from an untrustworthy country :).
    - swatkat 15y ago
      http://xkcd.com/541/ http://xkcd.com/541/

macca321 15y ago

any ideas why it has a 32GB limit for windows?

tiernano 15y ago
Windows Standard edition is capped at 32Gb... if you want to use more, you need to use Enterprise...
ericd 15y ago
MS might be doing RAM-based license pricing.

ksajadi 15y ago

If it is possible to run a hosting service as cheap as this, why is there none like it in the US? I thought the labour, tax and VAT costs in Germany should make it less competitive but this is just way cheaper than anything you can find in the US. Does anyone know of any similar offerings in the States?

rmoriz 15y ago
There are some other companies in Germany and France that operate for over a decade at very affordable prices. OVH, Strato, 1&1 to name some. If you're from outside the EU you'll probably even get the servers without having to pay the 19% VAT.
- conradfr 15y ago
  Online.net as well. Companies never pay VAT anyway, usually professional services display mainly prices without it.
  - james33 15y ago
    All of the price listings on Hetzner says that VAT is included in the price.
tonfa 15y ago
FYI, OVH is building a data center in Montreal: http://www.vincentabry.com/en/ovh-web-hosting-will-install-its-360000-servers-datacenter-in-beauharnois-quebec-1642 http://www.vincentabry.com/en/ovh-web-hosting-will-install-i...
kami8845 15y ago
From what I know the cost of cooling and power in Germany are much lower than in the US, Hetzner is also very long-term oriented, the equipment they buy only becomes profitable after running for a couple of years.
ihsw 15y ago
RAM allocation is the baseline for determining monthly pricing and their product page specifically mentions DDR3 RAM, which generally costs 50% the price of DDR2 RAM.

Uchikoma 15y ago

10 years satisfied customer.

rmoriz 15y ago

If you're outside the EU, you probably don't have to pay 19% VAT. So it's even less than 109€...

bond 15y ago
The same if you have a company outside Germany and based in Europe
- ashconnor 15y ago
  But only if you are VAT registered, at least in the UK.

meskyanichi 15y ago

Purchased an EX 4S (32gb ram non-ecc) the other day from Hetzner, been running extremely smooth. They got it rigged up in about 2-4 hours. Installed Xen to run my own little VPS farm and it's dirt cheap compared to all the VPS providers out there, and more performant as well since you actually own the underlying hardware. Just noticed they also added "1 Gigabit-Port" under "Additional Options" at only 39 EUR, along with an additional 15TB bandwidth increase (You get 100Mbit by default), and only 6.90 EUR for additional TB's of traffic. Pretty sweet if you're doing some kind of video/stream hosting. Of course it has it's downsides compared to S3 but when you compare pricing in "TB" to S3, you'll see how redonk the S3 pricing is. Now, if only Hetzner was also located in the US and Asia that would complete me.

ceejayoz 15y ago
> Of course it has it's downsides compared to S3 but when you compare pricing in "TB" to S3, you'll see how redonk the S3 pricing is. Remember, comparing "x TB of storage" to S3 is silly. S3 is designed to replicate your file to multiple datacenters (their site promises ELEVEN nines of durability!), provides things like a BitTorrent tracker for your files, etc.
- nolok 15y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken he is not comparing TB of storage, but TB of bandwith used.
  - meskyanichi 15y ago
    Yes, I was referring to bandwidth.

hamidpalo 15y ago

Does anyone know how they can provide bandwidth for so cheap? 7 EUR for a TB of traffic is insanely cheap.

rmoriz 15y ago
nearly-free peering at http://de-cix.net/ http://de-cix.net/ and http://www.n-ix.net/ http://www.n-ix.net/ to offload a big load of traffic + bandwidth and fibres are not that expensive here in Germany (unless you go with Deutsche Telekom).
- ezequiel-garzon 15y ago
  That's great information. Why hasn't this happened in the US as well?

healthyahoo 15y ago

http://healthyahoo.net/healthy_diet/7-nutrients-pack-antioxidants.html http://healthyahoo.net/healthy_diet/7-nutrients-pack-antioxi...

mrspandex 15y ago

Are there legal issues to think about when storing data on German servers?

jakeonthemove 15y ago
They have strict laws for copyright infringement from what I hear... on the other hand, the FBI can't just pull out your servers :-)...
hopeless 15y ago
Yes. For us Europeans, it's much safer since there's no export of data outside the EU :)
antninja 15y ago
The German government is a good defensor of Internet freedoms, along with the Netherlands and Scandinavian contries.
- rmoriz 15y ago
  well, at least the Pirate Party is very strong in Germany. >10% in country-wide surveys http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
toenail 15y ago
You can't distribute Nazi materials or ideology. Free speech is also limited, you can't just defame people. Also as a german business owner you are required to have an imprint with some specific info, no idea how this is for foreigners.

jakeonthemove 15y ago

Interesting... the only hosting company with comparable prices and features in the US is 1and1 (which is actually owned by a German company), but their tech support has been pretty bad (takes them freaking days to replace hardware - on the other hand, EVERYTHING can be done remotely)... I wonder if hosting in Germany would affect a site's response time and ranking on Google in the US?

irahul 15y ago

I have a question. Do they always ask for passport scan and credit card photograph, or I fall under some special category which makes me suspicious? Going by the rave reviews, I ordered the 512 MB vps to evaluate, and was greeted by an email asking for my passport and credit card photograph. I don't feel like doing business with them anymore. I am a bit uncomfortable about sharing my credit card info. But since I already have shared my card number, I figure I can attach the card photo. And even if I comply with the ridiculous request of providing a photograph of my credit card, most of the times I use a virtual credit card. My bank lets me creates virtual credit cards and link with my card/account. The card doesn't exist physically and it lets me reset the transaction limit. I reset the transaction limit before making a transaction ensuring I can't be overcharged. They would turn me down because I am concerned about my financial transactions?

Flam 15y ago
It's normal. Myself and another person I know had to do it too.
vladd 15y ago
> The would turn me down because I am concerned about my financial transactions? No, they would turn you down because you cannot present to them their risk guarantee criteria that enable their low prices.
- irahul 15y ago
  > No, they would turn you down because you cannot present to them their risk guarantee criteria that enable their low prices. What kind of risks are they putting up with without a photograph of my credit card? Stolen cards? People deactivate their cards when the cards are lost. And if people don't, then the thief has an active credit card and can very well send the copy. I won't make my payments? How does the photo of my credit card help? It makes sure I have a credit card - it doesn't make sure you can make transactions on my card(limit reached, card blocked, payment disputed) etc.
  - vladd 15y ago

kayoone 15y ago

After over a year of hosting in the cloud (amazon aws) and spending alot of money in the process we also made the switch to hetzner recently... The cloud and its benefits is nice and good, but the computing power you get for 100 bucks from companies like hetzner is just incredible.. Of course there are higher costs of setting everything up, but on AWS we had todo most of the complicated stuff on our own anyway..

pja 15y ago

I've never seen anyone running a reverse auction to rent their old hardware out before: https://robot.your-server.de/order/market https://robot.your-server.de/order/market I guess if they're not short of space for hardware & cooling then this is a profitable way to put old hardware to use until the demand falls below the running costs. I wonder what the reliability is like?

dotBen 15y ago
Thinking about scraping this data and calculating performance-to-€ ratio to identify good deals/unclaimed bargains etc. Perhaps even calculate the mean average price a given server spec sells for etc. If they have an affiliate scheme that would make s nice side project

swombat 15y ago

Totally random off the cuff... I've been fighting with an EX 4S server for the last week, trying to set up Xen under Debian Squeeze... anyone got some rock-solid instructions which they know work? I've tried both my own recipes and various tutorials on the web, but so far no luck. I managed to get Xen sort of working at one point, but then the networking wasn't working. I'm about ready to start throwing things out the window...

rmoriz 15y ago
depends if you bought extra IPs (up to 4) or a whole subnet? There are some tutorials by customers on how to setup routing at http://wiki.hetzner.de/ http://wiki.hetzner.de/
givanfp 15y ago
Do you need debian? If not, 1 - Ask for a LARA install of Xen Server (20€ IIRC). 2 - Request an additional IP with MAC address 3 - Change the MAC address of your VM on XenCenter
kenmazy 15y ago
Last I checked Squeeze had a fairly straightforward Xen 4.0 package. I did have trouble with dropped packets, but I was doing some pretty complex stuff and it was already fixed upstream. How exactly are you trying to setup networking? Bridged, routed, NAT on dom0 vs domU? These two pages might help you, though both are slightly out of date: http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-configure-and-enable-xen-linux-dedicated-server-with-virtual-machiness-internet-to-work-with-multipe-ips-and-one-mac-only-solusvm-through-nat-route-and-iptables/ http://www.pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-configure-and-enable-xen... http://wiki.kartbuilding.net/index.php/Xen_Networking#Two-way_Routed_Network http://wiki.kartbuilding.net/index.php/Xen_Networking#Two-wa... (more out of date, but ideas are correct) EDIT: ZFSonlinux is worth looking into as it's becoming fairly mature and provides the perfect storage for xen instances.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
calloc 15y ago
Does it have to be Xen? I've had a lot of good luck using KVM and so far it seems to be more stable... and it can run OS's unmodified.

runako 15y ago

Would anyone care to comment on the quality and English skills of their support? We considered Hetzner, but were concerned about the potential pitfalls of doing low-level support with a language barrier.

nirvana 15y ago
I haven't used their service yet so I can't comment from experience with them, but I will say this: In germany, you are taught english when you are growing up. We lived in Berlin for awhile and my german is very poor, but almost everyone we met knew enough english to get by. Hetzner is an international company, with a website in english, and I think the odds that they will have a real problem handling customer support requests due to language is very low. Much lower than support being overworked, or other potential issues. In america, finding someone who knows a foreign language is rare. In germany, finding someone who knows at least some english is not uncommon- and in a company like this, I'm sure (but don't know for a fact) they hire english speaking support people.
tdr 15y ago
Tested and it's very good. They also answer quickly and document pretty well the problem/reason.
Egregore 15y ago
If they don't outsource their support then most people in Germany I talked with know English very well.

nirvana 15y ago

Hetzner is nirvana for pre-ramen profitable big data startups. You can build a cluster for a whole lot less than Amazon-- in many cases 1/10th the cost (depending on which resources are higher priority, for us.) The question is-- can you host in germany and serve a customer base that is primarily in the USA? Our application isn't too latency intensive... but this is my primary concern. Would it be stupid for an american startup to locate there? I'd love to hear from anyone who has direct experience.

Roritharr 15y ago
Don't forget that "hosted in Germany" is a quality mark with which you can advertise. Especially International Customers don't like the idea of their data being stored in a country where the Patriot Act is a present reality.
- OzzyB 15y ago
  I'm not sure how far "Vorsprung durch Technik"[1] would go as a competitive advantage with regards to your particular choosen hosting provider -- it will always just be hosting to your end users -- but I like the sentiment :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorsprung_durch_Technik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorsprung_durch_Technik
- dirtyaura 15y ago
  It's not even about a choice, as companies from EU countries can't store store user identification data of EU citizens in US servers. So you are more or less legally forced to have (some) servers in EU.
  - jahewson 15y ago
    Actually any US company can self-certify under the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework and be eligible to store data from the EU.
- drone 15y ago
  Don't forget that "Hosted in Germany" is also a red flag for a lot of companies that they may be arbitrarily assessed massive fees to prop up other businesses[1]. As is the same with many EU countries[2][3]. You're taking a risk wherever your data is stored. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17785613 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17785613 [2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGOuwazIIAGA http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a... [3] http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/02/french-court-fines-google-france-500-000-euros-for-gratis-maps/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/02/french-court-fines-google... So, you can either have to implement good data protection so that your users don't have to worry about the FBI snooping in the U.S., or you can run the risk that some country in the EU decides to prop up some failing industry by extracting unreasonable tolls out of your company. Personally, I'd go with the former, but that's just my opinion.

ra3don92 15y ago

Does anyone use http://burst.net/ http://burst.net/ ? I've found them to be one of the cheapest VPS providers. May want to check them out if hosting in Germany is not an option.

yatendra 15y ago
I use it to host http://livepost.in http://livepost.in since last month. Pingdom reported some small downtimes but other than that it was ok. You get what you pay for, but I think burst.net is value for money.

LinaLauneBaer 15y ago

Germany has very strict information privacy laws when compared to the US. As far I know many German companies cannot use cloud based solutions from companies hosting in the US because of these laws. For example you are forbidden by law to save user data at all. There are exceptions (eg. If the service won't be able to function otherwise) but the discrepancy is still huge. I wonder if you have to comply to these rules per se when you host in Germany or not. I am no lawer. But maybe you want to consider the strict information laws ingermany before renting big servers...

vanessar 15y ago

We migrated our infrastructure to Hetzner at the beginning of the year and we are very happy with the change. Also, the support is great (and fast).

Egregore 15y ago

Network availability 99% is very bad, it's about 3 days/year of downtime. (If you have clients - they will kill you)

corin_ 15y ago
Personally I pay little attention to network availability promises - all they mean is that you get pro-rated refunds if downtime exceeds them. 3 days downtime is possible wherever you go, and if it happens I don't care a huge amount if I get a refund of 10% of a month's costs or not - the damage is in the downtime, not the wasted money. What's important is the company's track record, and the likelyhood of that record changing, and from what I've heard Hetzner look pretty good in this area.

deleted 15y ago

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dow 15y ago

Can anyone provide an IP of a box hosted with Hetzner? I want to measure the latency when connecting from Middle East. That's one of things I worry about. Linode seems to have the best peering with the region from all the providers I've checked. Thanks!

iSnow 15y ago
78.46.92.242 This is an oldish dual-core AMD box with 2GB RAM and low load.
- dow 14y ago
  Thanks, iSnow. It looks good, lower latency than US East or Singapore, little bit higher than London or Ireland. The only thing that worries me are the fluctuations between pings: 164.622 ms 164.725 ms 166.828 ms 228.693 ms 234.214 ms .. and it goes like this forever - bouncing between 164 and 230. Linode and AWS are very constant between pings. Is this something to be worried about? Thank you

ashconnor 15y ago

6.2 The client undertakes not to publish content that may violate the rights of third parties or otherwise violate the law. The placement of erotic, pornographic, extremist material or material not deemed in good taste is not permitted. We are entitled to block access to the account of any customer who violates this. The same applies in the event that the customer publishes content which is capable of violating the rights of individuals or groups of people, or that insults or denigrates these people. This applies even without an actual legal claim. We are not obligated to review our customers' content. That basically rules out many user driven content sites.

mufumbo 15y ago

Right now I have three servers in hetzner. I have been using them for 5 years, but only last year my startup "boomed", so I had to cancel my old server and move it in the same rack as the other servers. If your startup has already "boomed" just make it sure to rent all your servers in the same rack or pay the reservation fee ($10 per server). Hetzner prices are great for any software engineer. Having that powerful server waiting for my projects is one of the reasons that I had the chance of succeeding. I used to say that this is our profession and having a dedicated server is a mandatory thing. Even with one server from hetzner I was able to virtualize it into 8 machines and create a real production environment that made it easier to scale. After you learn XEN it's faster than going through amazon interface. From my past experience I always worked with people who wanted to use amazon or google appengine. I was always against it and said that the prices were ridiculously expensive. My colleges said that they didn't wanted to manage servers and the cost of appengine was only $2 per day, etc. This is a real story and when the time of high traffic came the $2 became $50 and now we pay $1500 in something that could be handled with ONE $100 hetzner server. After using hetzner I would NEVER advise appengine and I would only advise amazon if you must have the servers in the US. For those who say that the site would have too much latency if it's in hetzner: just use a cdn for static content, http://www.maxcdn.com http://www.maxcdn.com is very cheap and probably much better than just hosting in the US.

gaillard 15y ago

For all those who care about taking responsibility for the environment, this is what their site says: "Hetzner Online exclusively uses energy from renewable sources to power the servers in its data centers. Our environmental partner is TÜV-certified NaturEnergie AG, a company that generates green energy from 100 percent carbon dioxide-free and environmentally-friendly hydropower. The energy generated by flowing water is, from an ecological viewpoint, considered to be the best form of power generation for the environment."

kragen 15y ago

Hetzner's lowest-end server offering is €39/month, or US$51/month: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/x3 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/x3. I priced it out on PortaTech, and it looks like the physical hardware costs about US$300: http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26840&O=65103 http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26840&O... I assume the six-month ratio is about the same for this larger server. That seems like a pretty awesome deal, if you're doing something where you might need the machine for a few months, but aren't sure you'll still need it six months or a year from now. It sounds like a particularly no-hassle version of leasing a workstation. Except that the workstation comes with a hundred-megabit internet connection, and no monitor. Unfortunately, it's also 250ms away from me here in Buenos Aires. Neither elserver.com nor servilink.com.ar seems to have anything comparable (and ServiLink's web page seems to be full of broken links and encoding errors, which doesn't inspire confidence; if their web team are such pelotudos de mierda, how likely are they to be able to quickly replace faulty hardware?) so I don't know where to turn.