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I use OVH (VPS’s specifically), which offers unlimited bandwidth. In my experience they’ve been both reliable and affordable which is a rarity. I run a few appl

I use OVH (VPS’s specifically), which offers unlimited bandwidth. In my experience they’ve been both reliable and affordable which is a rarity. I run a few applications that require high amounts of bandwidth, so silly caps like the ones that Hetzner are imposing are a non-starter for me

tokinonagare 2y ago
I've only ever been on OVH and was surprised to discover a few years ago that bandwidth is not only unlimited but also costly at most other hosting companies (including cloud ones).
silisili 2y ago
OVH is the most set and forget experience I've ever had. They email me maintenance notices 3 or 4x a year, but I don't think I've ever had any downtime. It just stays happily humming along for years. I think I pay something like 60 a year for it.
markvdb 2y ago
OVH and reliable, in the same sentence? They're cheap, so suitable for projects you don't mind going poof. Personal anecdote. A few years ago, I lost a lot of sleep on a domain renewal at OVH. Their incompetence was mind-boggling. A less common tld was the only slightly challenging bit. After a week of calling and emailing, and on the verge of the domain lapsing, I gave up and sent someone to the tld registry with cash. Also, do search for OVH SBG2 should you have missed that.
- tyingq 2y ago
  They can be terrible. But it is dirt cheap. So if you use their stuff in a way that you can recover somewhere else if they have issues, you save a lot. As you mentioned I would stay away from them for things like domain hosting. Just use them for cheap compute, etc.
  - rapind 2y ago
    Would you recommend vultr for dedicated metal? I’m lazily shopping around for a decent dedicated metal setup, but I need something reasonably reliable.
    - rat9988 2y ago
      Hetzner and Ovh are very reliable unless you need to reach to support.
  - mst 2y ago
    I keep my whois and NS entries elsewhere and my nameservers sufficiently distributed that I find the risk acceptable, but both hetzner and ovh are firmly in the "I have always felt I got a very cost effective 'exactly what I paid for' - and in the case of my rare interactions with their support more than I'd hoped for" category for me. Neither has ever caused me a problem that didn't feel like "potentially having this level of problem occasionally is entirely in keeping with how little I'm paying" basically.
- tredre3 2y ago
  OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains. The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on all my current services. So for personal projects their vps/dedicated is still a fantastic value.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    > OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. Well except that time one of their datacenters burned down, likely due to insufficient fire suppression, and the data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-to-pay-250k-to-two-customers-who-lost-data-in-strasbourg-data-center-fire/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-... These reports criticize OVHcloud for having no fire prevention system and no power cut-off on the site, for using wooden floors, and for a free-cooling design that created airflows that spread the fire. The reports also say that water was detected near electrical systems before the fire broke out. It takes quite a while to regain trust after shitting the bed that badly.
    - ggeorgovassilis 2y ago
      > data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. I asked that question Hetzner support and they admitted doing the same
      - jsheard 2y ago
        Better to be honest about having weak backups so users can plan accordingly, than to lie about how safe the data is and lull users into a false sense of security... the OVH contract relating to automatic backup stipulates that a backup of the VPS server is scheduled daily, exported, and then replicated three times before being available in the customer space, and that the storage space allocated to the 'back-up option is physically isolated from the infrastructure in which the VPS server is set up.'
- fl0id 2y ago
  Yeah,just hope you never have to interact with support
- dabedee 2y ago
  From personal experience a few years back, OVH support was one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career. Technical incompetence at multiple levels of the chain (e.g lack of understanding of how DNS works). I would never recommend it to anyone, not even my worst enemy.
  - codexon 2y ago
    I can confirm this. I had packet loss on my server. They asked me several times to reboot my server into rescue mode and leave it there for 10+ hours until their senior technician could look into it at an unspecified time of day. After a month of doing this 3-4 times, they finally admitted that their switch is overprovisioned and there was no ETA. This problem happened in 2 locations. Also had a problem with the failover ip failing to move. Again they told me to reboot into rescue mode and leave it like that for hours. No fix. I've left OVH entirely after being a customer of theirs for over 10 years.
Aachen 2y ago
That's what a friend said also. If you look beyond the marketing material, hoever, the ToS says: > OVHcloud reserves the right to restrict the VPS Service bandwidth to 1 Mbps (1 Megabit per second) until the end of the current billing period in cases of excessive use by the Client but it advertises with "unmetered"... so is a meter attached by which they can tell whether your bandwidth use is excessive or not? Would they eat those costs for you? I checked out some numbers. Quoting myself from chat history: > it begs the question: what's "excessive"? I dunno but if they charge $5/month for the VPS and, while AWS may be ~1/3rd cheaper [than some other thing], that's still on the order of 70$/month. And AWS has insane economies of scale working for them, maybe their cost price is $7/month if they don't need to have a competitive price but that's still a loss then > I bet you'd win the lawsuit where [OVH] falsely advertised with unmetered 500mbps and a terms of service saying "excessive", so when you transfer 2 TB/day on a connection advertised to be capable of 500mbps×24h = 5.4TB/day... that's reasonable right? But then you're having a lawsuit over a 5$/month VPS
- derefr 2y ago
  > is a meter attached Probably not by default, but if your usage starts to saturate their network switches they’ll add one, to figure out who’s disrupting everyone else’s QoS.
  - derefr 2y ago
    Forgot to mention, OVH makes the current topology and traffic saturation of their network switches public: http://weathermap.ovh.net/ http://weathermap.ovh.net/ (I think they mostly do this so that customers can see and verify that any DC-level peering relationships, or per-customer site peering contracts [a.k.a. "OVHCloud Connect"] are being taken advantage of to flow the customer's traffic. But it's convenient for other things, too.)
- matt-p 2y ago
  > is a meter attached Yes, of course. Having flow data (or monitoring ports/interfaces) for traffic engineering and management is pretty essential, not least for determining when capacity upgrades are needed. I understand both sides of the argument here. The idea of offering "unlimited" is appealing because most users of a typical 2GB RAM virtual machine (as an example) consume less than 1TB of bandwidth per month. Offering unlimited bandwidth removes the hassle of overage charges/billing queries and eases customer concern/friction. Both sides benefit from this. However, on the other hand, is it reasonable for a $5/month virtual machine customer to use 1Gbps 24/7/365, potentially consuming $100–$200 worth of bandwidth? Should providers avoid offering unlimited bandwidth unless it's truly unlimited? From an engineer's perspective, yes, I agree. But this stance also risks degrading the experience for the 99.5% of "normal" customers—those who don’t exploit this simplification of "free bandwidth"—just to address a handful of users who take full advantage of it. It's tough, so IME most such providers leave something in their terms that allows them to intervene in extreme cases but typically exercise restraint in doing so, usually only doing it manually if they notice that 'extreme' usage is damaging other users experience e.g it's serious and prolonged usage.
BonoboIO 2y ago
As long as their their wood floor datacenter and your backup in the same location does not burn down „… data center had wooden ceilings, no extinguisher, and no power cut-out“ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-fire-report-sbg2-data-center-had-wooden-ceilings-no-extinguisher-and-no-power-cut-out/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-fire-rep...
jitbit 2y ago
I wouldn't say "affordable". Looking at their pricing page right now. A US-based 64GB RAM cloud server in OVH - $539 AWS is $220 (us-east, r6a.2xlarge instance, 1yr reserved)
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  If you reserve in AWS for a year, you might as well get a dedicated Hetzner server: 70 EUR for 64 GB with 8c/16t, 1 TB local NVMe 123 EUR for 128 GB with 16c/32t, 2 TB local NVMe
mst 2y ago
The systems *I* currently have at hetzner are, so far as I'm aware, on a "we don't charge for bandwidth but if you use a shitload you'll get throttled for the rest of the month" plan just like my ovh boxen. But I only pull dedis from hetzner; my VPSen are all ovh based. So please nobody expect my experience to generalise without triple checking the terms just like I did in the process of signing up for those systems.

tokinonagare 2y ago

I've only ever been on OVH and was surprised to discover a few years ago that bandwidth is not only unlimited but also costly at most other hosting companies (including cloud ones).

silisili 2y ago

OVH is the most set and forget experience I've ever had. They email me maintenance notices 3 or 4x a year, but I don't think I've ever had any downtime. It just stays happily humming along for years. I think I pay something like 60 a year for it.

markvdb 2y ago

OVH and reliable, in the same sentence? They're cheap, so suitable for projects you don't mind going poof. Personal anecdote. A few years ago, I lost a lot of sleep on a domain renewal at OVH. Their incompetence was mind-boggling. A less common tld was the only slightly challenging bit. After a week of calling and emailing, and on the verge of the domain lapsing, I gave up and sent someone to the tld registry with cash. Also, do search for OVH SBG2 should you have missed that.

tyingq 2y ago
They can be terrible. But it is dirt cheap. So if you use their stuff in a way that you can recover somewhere else if they have issues, you save a lot. As you mentioned I would stay away from them for things like domain hosting. Just use them for cheap compute, etc.
- rapind 2y ago
  Would you recommend vultr for dedicated metal? I’m lazily shopping around for a decent dedicated metal setup, but I need something reasonably reliable.
  - rat9988 2y ago
    Hetzner and Ovh are very reliable unless you need to reach to support.
- mst 2y ago
  I keep my whois and NS entries elsewhere and my nameservers sufficiently distributed that I find the risk acceptable, but both hetzner and ovh are firmly in the "I have always felt I got a very cost effective 'exactly what I paid for' - and in the case of my rare interactions with their support more than I'd hoped for" category for me. Neither has ever caused me a problem that didn't feel like "potentially having this level of problem occasionally is entirely in keeping with how little I'm paying" basically.
tredre3 2y ago
OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains. The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on all my current services. So for personal projects their vps/dedicated is still a fantastic value.
- jsheard 2y ago
  > OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. Well except that time one of their datacenters burned down, likely due to insufficient fire suppression, and the data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-to-pay-250k-to-two-customers-who-lost-data-in-strasbourg-data-center-fire/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-... These reports criticize OVHcloud for having no fire prevention system and no power cut-off on the site, for using wooden floors, and for a free-cooling design that created airflows that spread the fire. The reports also say that water was detected near electrical systems before the fire broke out. It takes quite a while to regain trust after shitting the bed that badly.
  - ggeorgovassilis 2y ago
    > data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. I asked that question Hetzner support and they admitted doing the same
    - jsheard 2y ago
      Better to be honest about having weak backups so users can plan accordingly, than to lie about how safe the data is and lull users into a false sense of security... the OVH contract relating to automatic backup stipulates that a backup of the VPS server is scheduled daily, exported, and then replicated three times before being available in the customer space, and that the storage space allocated to the 'back-up option is physically isolated from the infrastructure in which the VPS server is set up.'
fl0id 2y ago
Yeah,just hope you never have to interact with support
dabedee 2y ago
From personal experience a few years back, OVH support was one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career. Technical incompetence at multiple levels of the chain (e.g lack of understanding of how DNS works). I would never recommend it to anyone, not even my worst enemy.
- codexon 2y ago
  I can confirm this. I had packet loss on my server. They asked me several times to reboot my server into rescue mode and leave it there for 10+ hours until their senior technician could look into it at an unspecified time of day. After a month of doing this 3-4 times, they finally admitted that their switch is overprovisioned and there was no ETA. This problem happened in 2 locations. Also had a problem with the failover ip failing to move. Again they told me to reboot into rescue mode and leave it like that for hours. No fix. I've left OVH entirely after being a customer of theirs for over 10 years.

Aachen 2y ago

That's what a friend said also. If you look beyond the marketing material, hoever, the ToS says: > OVHcloud reserves the right to restrict the VPS Service bandwidth to 1 Mbps (1 Megabit per second) until the end of the current billing period in cases of excessive use by the Client but it advertises with "unmetered"... so is a meter attached by which they can tell whether your bandwidth use is excessive or not? Would they eat those costs for you? I checked out some numbers. Quoting myself from chat history: > it begs the question: what's "excessive"? I dunno but if they charge $5/month for the VPS and, while AWS may be ~1/3rd cheaper [than some other thing], that's still on the order of 70$/month. And AWS has insane economies of scale working for them, maybe their cost price is $7/month if they don't need to have a competitive price but that's still a loss then > I bet you'd win the lawsuit where [OVH] falsely advertised with unmetered 500mbps and a terms of service saying "excessive", so when you transfer 2 TB/day on a connection advertised to be capable of 500mbps×24h = 5.4TB/day... that's reasonable right? But then you're having a lawsuit over a 5$/month VPS

derefr 2y ago
> is a meter attached Probably not by default, but if your usage starts to saturate their network switches they’ll add one, to figure out who’s disrupting everyone else’s QoS.
- derefr 2y ago
  Forgot to mention, OVH makes the current topology and traffic saturation of their network switches public: http://weathermap.ovh.net/ http://weathermap.ovh.net/ (I think they mostly do this so that customers can see and verify that any DC-level peering relationships, or per-customer site peering contracts [a.k.a. "OVHCloud Connect"] are being taken advantage of to flow the customer's traffic. But it's convenient for other things, too.)
matt-p 2y ago
> is a meter attached Yes, of course. Having flow data (or monitoring ports/interfaces) for traffic engineering and management is pretty essential, not least for determining when capacity upgrades are needed. I understand both sides of the argument here. The idea of offering "unlimited" is appealing because most users of a typical 2GB RAM virtual machine (as an example) consume less than 1TB of bandwidth per month. Offering unlimited bandwidth removes the hassle of overage charges/billing queries and eases customer concern/friction. Both sides benefit from this. However, on the other hand, is it reasonable for a $5/month virtual machine customer to use 1Gbps 24/7/365, potentially consuming $100–$200 worth of bandwidth? Should providers avoid offering unlimited bandwidth unless it's truly unlimited? From an engineer's perspective, yes, I agree. But this stance also risks degrading the experience for the 99.5% of "normal" customers—those who don’t exploit this simplification of "free bandwidth"—just to address a handful of users who take full advantage of it. It's tough, so IME most such providers leave something in their terms that allows them to intervene in extreme cases but typically exercise restraint in doing so, usually only doing it manually if they notice that 'extreme' usage is damaging other users experience e.g it's serious and prolonged usage.

BonoboIO 2y ago

As long as their their wood floor datacenter and your backup in the same location does not burn down „… data center had wooden ceilings, no extinguisher, and no power cut-out“ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-fire-report-sbg2-data-center-had-wooden-ceilings-no-extinguisher-and-no-power-cut-out/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-fire-rep...

jitbit 2y ago

I wouldn't say "affordable". Looking at their pricing page right now. A US-based 64GB RAM cloud server in OVH - $539 AWS is $220 (us-east, r6a.2xlarge instance, 1yr reserved)

dist-epoch 2y ago
If you reserve in AWS for a year, you might as well get a dedicated Hetzner server: 70 EUR for 64 GB with 8c/16t, 1 TB local NVMe 123 EUR for 128 GB with 16c/32t, 2 TB local NVMe

mst 2y ago

The systems *I* currently have at hetzner are, so far as I'm aware, on a "we don't charge for bandwidth but if you use a shitload you'll get throttled for the rest of the month" plan just like my ovh boxen. But I only pull dedis from hetzner; my VPSen are all ovh based. So please nobody expect my experience to generalise without triple checking the terms just like I did in the process of signing up for those systems.