[HN Gopher] OpenBSD/ARM64 on Hetzner Cloud
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       OpenBSD/ARM64 on Hetzner Cloud
        
       Author : peter_hansteen
       Score  : 220 points
       Date   : 2023-09-21 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.undeadly.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.undeadly.org)
        
       | Lucasoato wrote:
       | During the last KubeCon in Amsterdam, Hetzner employees hinted at
       | the possibility of a Kubernetes-as-a-Service entirely managed by
       | them... that's one of my hidden dreams :)
        
         | fnomnom wrote:
         | if you need managed k8s on german or other european servers
         | without us companies involved there is OVH.
        
           | mkreis wrote:
           | also there is IONOS
        
           | king_phil wrote:
           | Might go up in flames, though, and literally
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | Context: OVHcloud's data center fire: One year on, what do
             | we know? -
             | https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/ovhclouds-
             | dat...
        
           | omnibrain wrote:
           | And Scaleway. (I have no experience using Kubernetes on
           | Scaleway, I use their Elastic Metal, Managed DNS and some
           | other smaller offerings)
        
             | neoromantique wrote:
             | We've been running Scaleway for years (Both VMs and managed
             | k8s).
             | 
             | There are quirks from time to time, their disk system has
             | been nightmarish for a while, but they've recently had a
             | major overhaul there and we didn't really have any major
             | complaints since. It is very decent for the price, I would
             | say.
        
           | tecleandor wrote:
           | Haven't tested their offer, but also Vultr and Scaleway have
           | managed Kubernetes service.
        
             | fnomnom wrote:
             | isnt vultr a US company?
        
               | tecleandor wrote:
               | Ah true! I was using some of their European locations and
               | I forgot :P
        
           | xmodem wrote:
           | We looked at OVH's managed kubernetes offering but it is
           | hideously expensive compared to, say, DigitalOcean/Vultr,
        
             | fnomnom wrote:
             | its not the cheapest but its EU only which makes selling
             | your stuff to european mid size companies much easier ;)
        
           | e12e wrote:
           | Also https://upcloud.com
        
       | petecooper wrote:
       | Blog post:
       | 
       | https://www.cambus.net/openbsd-arm64-on-hetzner-cloud/
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20230921084743/https://www.cambu...
        
       | Citizen_Lame wrote:
       | But if your server or website gets targeted by DDOS or anything
       | similar, they will just shut down the network/server and you have
       | very little recourse as their customer service is very
       | unfriendly.
        
         | berkle4455 wrote:
         | They also do it when their system incorrectly flags traffic.
         | They're the Paypal of web hosting. Stay far, far away.
        
       | MrThoughtful wrote:
       | For a LAMP system (Debian, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) what is the best
       | choice on Hetzner Cloud these days, Intel, AMD or ARM?
       | 
       | More generally speaking, ist there any difference (except maybe
       | performance) when running Debian on Intel vs AMD vs ARM?
        
         | Neil44 wrote:
         | If you don't want to get super techie you will get less
         | headaches with Intel or AMD today. Deciding between those two
         | is not a big deal compared to other things, like the code
         | you're running and the server setup, unless you have decent
         | scale.
        
       | petecooper wrote:
       | I'm a big fan of the CAX* series on Hetzner. The price vs
       | performance is really good.
       | 
       | I'm patiently waiting for Percona to add Debian `bookworm`
       | packages for their database servers on arm64/aarch64 and then I
       | can migrate from amd64 on other cloud providers.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Hetzner has some insane offerings.
       | 
       | For ~$100/mo:
       | 
       | - AMD 7950X3D
       | 
       | - 16 cores (Zen5)
       | 
       | - 128 GB ECC DDR5
       | 
       | - 2x2TB NVMe
       | 
       | At any other provider this would cost 5-10x the cost.
       | 
       | https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax102
        
         | gumballindie wrote:
         | You get what you pay for though.
        
           | isolli wrote:
           | How so?
        
           | TechTechTech wrote:
           | As someone who runs 10+ hetzner servers for 3+ years now in
           | both Finland and Germany region, I indeed get what I pay for.
           | 
           | Stellar performance, stable servers with specs as advertised
           | and very good pricing and connectivity.
        
         | omnibrain wrote:
         | Have you looked at Scaleway Elastic Metal? It's a little but
         | more expensive (~ x1,5) but part of their "cloud environment",
         | so "scriptable" via API, CLI, etc.
        
           | bluepuma77 wrote:
           | Hetzner has APIs, too.
        
         | nisa wrote:
         | yes. especially their storage servers are great -
         | https://www.hetzner.com/de/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-sx - i'm
         | at a small startup and we don't need 100% uptime or
         | georeplication and other cloud features but we have ton's of 3d
         | data to store - price per TB is pretty good with these machines
         | and you can upgrade to a 10Gbit port for additional 50EUR/month
         | - or order multiple of these in the same rack with internal
         | 10GbE with a switch to have a ceph cluster there. Their
         | enterprise phone sales support is also top-notch in my
         | experience.
        
           | dataangel wrote:
           | I wish they had the storage servers in the US :(
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | A feature for some is a missing requirement for others :)
        
         | berkle4455 wrote:
         | Do not host anything of importance on Hetzner. They'll gladly
         | blackhole your server with zero recourse.
        
         | preya2k wrote:
         | Small correction: 7950X3D is Zen 4, not Zen 5
        
         | mkagenius wrote:
         | Sure, but mostly they won't accept you if you are from a
         | developing country trying to break in to the tech world. Its a
         | catch 22 situation - they offer cheaper prices only to those
         | who can afford expensive servers.
         | 
         | I know it's because of spam - but it is what it is.
        
           | supriyo-biswas wrote:
           | I'm from India and have workloads at Hetzner.
           | 
           | Also, you can always pay the PS20 fee; especially so if
           | you're running a company.
        
             | mkagenius wrote:
             | > Also, you can always pay the PS20 fee;
             | 
             | Can you elaborate more on this, does the fee help you get
             | accepted?
        
               | supriyo-biswas wrote:
               | When I signed up for Hetzner they asked for a national
               | ID/passport OR pay a non-refundable EUR20 fee which gets
               | you accepted immediately. I'm not sure what their risk
               | assessment process looks like now.
        
               | 1una wrote:
               | During registration you may get the opportunity to pay
               | 20EUR instead of uploading your ID card. The 20EUR counts
               | as account balance BTW.
        
           | moooo99 wrote:
           | Unfortunately, hetzner really seems to have trouble with
           | piracy and spam. Given Plex is going as far as blocking
           | hetzner servers completely, it seems like abuse is pretty
           | widespread.
           | 
           | It's really annoying that this kind of behavior is ruining
           | the reputation of an otherwise great Hoster and making their
           | products inaccessible for large parts of the worlds
           | population.
           | 
           | Really wish the could implement measure to make their
           | products accessible to users from these countries that are
           | heavily restricted
        
           | gumballindie wrote:
           | [flagged]
        
             | puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
             | There are better ways than blanket bans, but they are more
             | expensive to implement and continuously maintain. The
             | cheaper price comes from somewhere.
        
               | gumballindie wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | tallanvor wrote:
               | Not at all. It's far easier for criminals to use stolen
               | credit card information to spin up servers for a month at
               | a time than to compromise other servers.
               | 
               | I'm sorry you seem to be from a country that Hetzner has
               | identified as being responsible for too much fraud, but
               | Hetzner refusing to provide services to people in certain
               | countries isn't criminal.
        
               | gumballindie wrote:
               | > I'm sorry you seem to be from a country that Hetzner
               | has identified as being responsible for too much fraud
               | 
               | Funny how y'all assume one has to be the victim because
               | is standing up for that victim. Must be a cultural thing.
               | Well, shocking news, I am not from a country that this
               | dodgy company has decided to discriminate against.
        
               | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
               | I am, and you're truly an exception.
        
               | gumballindie wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
             | lionkor wrote:
             | > ethnicity
             | 
             | You got a source / proof of that? Because that's a pretty
             | big statement. Nationality makes no sense either, but I
             | assume you mean country of residence. Yes, companies like
             | Hetzner may not let you rent servers if you're in a country
             | they don't like or have bad experience with - I feel like,
             | while that sucks, that could be understandable.
             | 
             | Banning based on ethnicity or nationality would mean that,
             | if you're in Germany on a work visa and try to become a
             | customer, they'd boot you based on your ethnicity. I don't
             | think that's accurate at all.
             | 
             | > I guess old habits die hard
             | 
             | Not sure what you're implying here.
        
               | NegativeK wrote:
               | It's incredibly clear what they're implying here, and the
               | comment is wildly inappropriate.
        
           | kiririn wrote:
           | Whereas you have Oracle Cloud (and its highly generous free
           | tier) which seems to apply the inverse policy
        
             | Citizen_Lame wrote:
             | They are terrible company though. And those free tier
             | options all get their servers deleted unless you switch to
             | paid.
        
               | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
               | I've been using the same x86 server for 3 or 4 years at
               | this point, plus another arm64 one since they introduced
               | them (so two years?). Never had them deleting anything,
               | haven't paid a dime.
        
               | daneel_w wrote:
               | Paid tenancy is just a matter of providing a working
               | debit/credit card. You don't need to actually _spend_
               | anything to keep using the free tiers with resource
               | protection.
        
               | mardifoufs wrote:
               | No they only turn them off if they detect 0 load for a
               | few months
        
           | quickthrower2 wrote:
           | Is there an arb opportunity? Something as simple as someone
           | in the US runs Kubernetes on Hetzner, then rents out the pods
           | for anyone in the world to run their workloads on. They could
           | restrict the workloads, e.g. firewall the outbound requests
           | to a pre agreed list.
        
             | IntelMiner wrote:
             | That...just sounds like a VPS? Or Amazon EC2, but a lot
             | more clunky
             | 
             | Or I guess if it's just random servers running random
             | workloads, AWS Fargate
        
             | dangerface wrote:
             | Yes I used to do this for US customers when Hetzner and OVH
             | would only take EU customers.
             | 
             | The problem is that the customers interested in that price
             | point are trash customers that only wan't to do all the
             | dodgey stuff hetzner doesn't want them to do. Hetzner will
             | detected it and will firewall the whole server all sites
             | will go down the bad and the good and all of your customers
             | will want refunds even if they where the cause of the
             | problems.
             | 
             | Bad business not worth it.
        
             | wongarsu wrote:
             | There are hosting providers offering webhosting and virtual
             | servers that just run their operations on Hetzner dedicated
             | servers. The virtual servers are just KVM to split the
             | dedicated server into multiple, with a bit of management
             | interface and some firewall rules.
        
         | k8sToGo wrote:
         | Because other providers use server hardware and better
         | networking.
        
           | king_phil wrote:
           | Hetzner's hardware is custom built by the manufacturers, for
           | example motherboards by asrock, they even get their own
           | mainboard microcode from asrock. SSDs come from Micron, they
           | have their own chassis etc.
           | 
           | They have a _huge_ testing lab with insane amounts of testing
           | equipment. I never had any problems with their hardware at
           | all. Networking was not that good years ago but is stellar
           | now.
        
             | withinboredom wrote:
             | I've had two SSDs fail within a hundred hours of booting a
             | new server, but they fixed it within minutes after I told
             | them about it.
             | 
             | New hardware is always a bit risky, so it didn't bother me.
        
             | daneel_w wrote:
             | Some is custom built, some (in their server auction) are
             | just bare consumer-grade ATX motherboards in compact
             | shelves.
             | 
             | We ran two dedicated servers at Hetzner for about three
             | years and had two disk failures. These, too, were consumer-
             | grade Seagate disks, and both of them had been in use by
             | prior customers. All in all it was not a bother and we
             | definitely got our money's worth.
        
       | bobwaycott wrote:
       | This is a stub article. The original source is
       | https://www.cambus.net/openbsd-arm64-on-hetzner-cloud/
        
         | amatecha wrote:
         | Yeah agreed, should change the link to the actual original
         | source rather than an aggregation/summary.
        
       | matrix12 wrote:
       | Anyone have any benchmarks?
        
       | maurice2k wrote:
       | Honest question: Why choose BSD over Linux?
       | 
       | I've worked/played around with BSD back in the 90s and actually
       | never looked back. Tried it here and there within the last 20
       | years but never found it as versatile as Linux.
       | 
       | Working on macOS (how much BSD is still in that system?) since 6
       | month now and finally getting used to it. Still feels a bit
       | crippled compared to the tools I used under Windows/Linux.
        
         | johnklos wrote:
         | Go ahead and find a guide showing you how to do a thing that
         | Just Works regardless of the flavor of Linux distro. You can't,
         | because they're gratuitously different for the sake of
         | differentiating themselves. You can't even use one guide to
         | cover multiple versions of Ubuntu.
         | 
         | Now find a guide showing you how to do a thing for any of the
         | BSDs. That guide is more usable on one of the other BSDs than
         | any Linux guide is usable on a different distro.
         | 
         | That's one reason. Others include the ability to keep track of
         | what's on a system, since the BSDs don't include the kitchen
         | sink and have good package management, the fact that they're
         | lighter weight than most Linux distros (in some cases
         | significantly), that they're more consistent and more
         | deterministic, the fact that you can literally rebuild the
         | whole kernel and OS trivially, and so on.
         | 
         | There are many reasons, but for me, the one thing that really
         | stands out is cleanliness.
        
           | IntelMiner wrote:
           | If I might make some counter-arguments to some of these
           | 
           | A lot of the points of differentiation in terms of plumbing
           | layers are slowly eroding away, systemd helped a lot by
           | standardizing things around service files as opposed to the
           | patchwork of init scripts (and OpenRC and everyone else
           | scripts)
           | 
           | I don't know about BSD's being lighter weight than a Linux
           | system, but I don't really know what your baesline of light
           | weight is (Ubuntu? Debian? Arch? Gentoo?)
           | 
           | For more consistent and deterministic systems there's
           | offerings such as Nix and others
           | 
           | As for rebuilding the whole OS and kernel trivially? Gentoo
           | stands out as probably _the_ easiest one in that regard, your
           | entire system can be rebuilt with  "emerge -e world"
        
             | johnklos wrote:
             | > If I might make some counter-arguments to some of these
             | 
             | Of course :)
             | 
             | > A lot of the points of differentiation in terms of
             | plumbing layers are slowly eroding away, systemd helped a
             | lot by standardizing things around service files as opposed
             | to the patchwork of init scripts (and OpenRC and everyone
             | else scripts)
             | 
             | It has been my experience that systemd has been
             | inconsistent from one version of systemd to the next. I've
             | given systemd a fair shake, and even those people who swear
             | that it's the bees' knees haven't been able to help me
             | figure out how to work around somewhat silly issues (in
             | other words, they shouldn't have been telling me how easy
             | it is if they can't even illustrate its ease themselves).
             | 
             | > I don't know about BSD's being lighter weight than a
             | Linux system, but I don't really know what your baesline of
             | light weight is (Ubuntu? Debian? Arch? Gentoo?)
             | 
             | You can't really compare a BSD, or all of the three major
             | direct BSDs, with the best of each Linux distro. Sure, Nix
             | is better at being deterministic, and Debian is much better
             | than the others about not changing gratuitously, and Gentoo
             | can easily rebuild everything, but what happens when you
             | need all of those things in once place?
             | 
             | By lightweight, I mean that I can literally run NetBSD on a
             | VAXstation with 24 megs of RAM, or a Mac LC III+ with 36
             | megs (http://elsie.zia.io/), where I literally compile
             | everything besides the OS from source, on those machines.
             | Sure, perl takes more than a week, but they work.
             | 
             | This has other benefits: I can easily, without much fuss,
             | run everything I need for a tinc tunnel in 128 megs with
             | tmpfs for logs and no swap on an appliance-like device.
             | It's surprisingly easy to do this starting with the default
             | OS, whereas small Linux systems are often unrecognizable
             | compared with their "normal" distro counterparts.
             | 
             | > Gentoo stands out as probably the easiest one in that
             | regard, your entire system can be rebuilt with "emerge -e
             | world"
             | 
             | Exactly. I love that. It's great, and it'd be wonderful if
             | that were more widespread in other Linux distros.
             | 
             | OTOH, NetBSD takes it further: you can build NetBSD for any
             | architecture on any other so long as you're running a
             | reasonably Unix-like OS with a reasonably relevant
             | compiler.
             | 
             | So, again, Linux in general has so many nice things, but if
             | you want them all in the same place, in the same distro,
             | you're kinda out of luck.
        
           | tredre3 wrote:
           | > Now find a guide showing you how to do a thing for any of
           | the BSDs. That guide is more usable on one of the other BSDs
           | than any Linux guide is usable on a different distro.
           | 
           | That's simply not true in my experience. Sure, man pages for
           | base utilities are usually interchangeable between BSDs, but
           | the same is true on Linux.
           | 
           | When it comes to the system (init, networking, firewalling,
           | package management, configuration, etc), BSDs are different
           | enough that you'll need your own variant's documentation to
           | make things work properly.
           | 
           | And again, Linux isn't that different there. More often than
           | not a page on the Arch wiki will put you on the right track
           | regardless of your distro of choice.
        
           | riku_iki wrote:
           | is freebsd more clean than debian in your opinion?..
        
         | sebtron wrote:
         | For OpenBSD on a server in particular, many useful tools (web
         | server, mail server, pf...) are developed by the same team and
         | better integrated in the base system. This means consistent
         | documentation, behavior and syntax (e.g. for configuration).
         | 
         | In contrast, Linux distributions are a collection of software
         | taken from different sources, with all the quirks that may
         | derive from this.
         | 
         | (I don't want to imply that the BSDs have only advantages over
         | Linux and not the other way round, but the OP asked
         | specifically why _BSD over Linux_).
        
         | NexRebular wrote:
         | Because not everything needs to be linux. In fact, this modern
         | trend of running linux everywhere from critical infrastructure
         | to IoT devices is worrying as it feels like a monoculture is
         | starting to rise its ugly head once again.
        
         | timrichard wrote:
         | If you're missing some CLI tooling on MacOS, it's worth
         | checking out the Homebrew repositories to see if you can find
         | what you're looking for. I use several up-to-date GNU versions
         | of utilities instead of the older BSD-flavoured versions that
         | shipped with MacOS.
        
         | brobdingnagians wrote:
         | For me, they've been easier to administer and more reliable.
         | I've had some running for years with minimal maintenance and
         | they just keep chugging along with no security issues and all
         | of the utilities I need out of the box.
        
           | maurice2k wrote:
           | For servers I'm exclusively using Debian for 20 years and
           | there was literally never a problem while upgrading from one
           | release to another. Of course there were hickups with
           | packages but not with the core system. I expect something
           | similar for BSDs...
        
           | fs111 wrote:
           | The same can be said for distros like debian. Seems like a
           | weak argument pro-BSD to me.
        
         | jonhohle wrote:
         | Crippled in what way?
         | 
         | Others point out Homebrew, but I still prefer MacPorts for
         | command line tools. It feels more "BSD" to me, while Homebrew
         | reminds me of some tools a Node developer would write (cheeky
         | terminology, overuse of emoji, cleverness over correctness,
         | etc.).
         | 
         | At home I just use macOS and FreeBSD and many of my personal
         | projects typically build on both. The base userland tools are
         | mostly the same, but the non-POSIX stuff diverges heavily (file
         | system control, process isolation, configuration, etc.)
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | When I need to install some random program, I can't just
           | create a container and build it. Instead, I need to install a
           | pile of random dependencies, and then homebrew, macports and
           | xcode all fight with each other.
           | 
           | Also, the MacOS window manager is objectively terrible. "Move
           | window to right of screen" involves a keypress, trackpad
           | hover, and menu selection. "Maximize window" doesn't exist.
           | "Minimize window" makes the window inaccessible with command-
           | tab and option-tab. Neither of those keyboard shortcuts
           | function properly if there is more than one monitor plugged
           | in.
           | 
           | Fractional scaling breakages still exist.
           | 
           | The font renderer is de-featured (vs the open source ones)
           | because it is working around some expired patents involving
           | true type hints.
           | 
           | It can no longer open postscript files.
           | 
           | I could go on for a long time.
           | 
           | MacOS makes a passible dumb terminal for accessing remote
           | development environments though. It also integrates in well
           | with iOS, etc.
        
         | mbivert wrote:
         | I think you're right in saying that it's not as versatile than
         | Linux, but if your needs are focused, then it's actually a
         | feature. For example, for small web servers: an OpenBSD base
         | install comes with httpd(8), relayd(8), sshd(8), pf(4), etc.:
         | tweak a few configuration files and drop a cross-compiled
         | single-binary Go and you're all set.
         | 
         | OTOH, if you want to toy around with "edgy" open-source
         | software, I would expect Linux to provide a better experience.
        
           | maurice2k wrote:
           | I think the same is true for Debian Linux.
           | 
           | Small and comes with a lot of packages that are only an "apt
           | install" away. I only install packages that I need an check
           | that nothing else is running and/or has open ports.
           | 
           | Don't see this as a pro BSD argument.
        
         | ahoka wrote:
         | You don't need to pay for more than one CPU core if you run
         | OpenBSD, because you can't utilize them anyway. ;)
        
         | hnarayanan wrote:
         | For OpenBSD in particular, security baked into the core.
        
         | hedora wrote:
         | Linux user for 25+ years here. (When did kernel 0.9 come out?)
         | 
         | I learned how to perform basic admin tasks for Linux and
         | OpenBSD in the 1990s.
         | 
         | I relearned how to do all those things under Linux at least
         | five times since then, and am facing yet another round of "why
         | the fuck is everything broken (regressed back to worse than
         | 1998 levels of stability) and different again this year?" with
         | my Linux machines.
         | 
         | I recently installed OpenBSD and FreeBSD in VirtualBox VMs and
         | am doing a bake off for my next desktop OS.
         | 
         | FreeBSD is slightly ahead from the "annoyingly terrible stuff
         | works in a pinch" perspective, since I have some windows game
         | getting to a splash screen via LLVMPipe under Steam. (It runs
         | out of DRAM, and needs a GPU that doesn't exist, so I'm
         | counting this as working.)
         | 
         | OpenBSD is ahead from the "if its available at all, then it is
         | solid" perspective.
         | 
         | Both of them are more familiar to me than the Linux desktop
         | that's hosting the Virtual Box VMs.
         | 
         | Also, I'm increasingly concerned about the ethics of the
         | upstream Linux development community. Red Hat's new business
         | model is based on violating the GPL (maybe they are not
         | technically breaking it, though I think they are), and they
         | have enough weight to force the ecosystem to do whatever they
         | want.
         | 
         | They've rammed all sorts of user-hostile crap (most of those
         | regressions, for example) on to my (ubuntu, arch, etc)
         | machines, so it's not just a theoretical concern.
        
         | sgt wrote:
         | I started with Linux back in the 90s then changed to OpenBSD in
         | 1997, then FreeBSD in 1998. Ran it for many years. Eagerly
         | awaited MacOS X as it was called back then, and I was not
         | disappointed.
         | 
         | In my opinion, macOS is the supreme UNIX(tm) workstation still,
         | although there are things you need to work around or disable
         | like SIP in rare cases. It definitely has BSD heritage, and
         | Homebrew is pretty mature at this point, which wasn't always
         | the case.
         | 
         | For servers though I tend to just stick to Linux these days,
         | mostly out of practicality. I miss the days of easily
         | recompiling the BSD kernel by just editing a single file.
        
       | endisneigh wrote:
       | What's the equivalent of Hetzner with respect to
       | price/performance located in unites states, if any for dedicated
       | servers.
        
         | heipei wrote:
         | There are none unfortunately. I've found Vultr to be good value
         | if you really need dedicated servers, OVH probably as well.
         | However, a Hetzner VPS with dedicated CPUs in the US is still
         | less expensive than the equivalent dedicated server at those
         | providers.
        
         | xmodem wrote:
         | OVH has a location in Canada (east coast), not quite as cheap
         | as Hetzner though
        
         | moooo99 wrote:
         | Hetzner does now have US based locations. However, as far I can
         | tell, they are restricted to their cloud products and not their
         | line of dedicated servers
        
       | Uptrenda wrote:
       | Nice, I just bought Hetzner's 'EX101' and I'm extremely happy
       | with it. Already hosting my own STUN, TURN, and echo servers.
       | They give you plenty of IPv6s and adding additional IPv4s is very
       | cheap. I'm happy with it.
       | 
       | I want to say that if any of you decide to try Hetzner and use
       | their auction process instead of their regular packages - make
       | sure you check out the details for the CPU. I made the mistake of
       | buying an old server on there because it had plenty of RAM, disk
       | space, and bandwidth. Then I saw the CPU was ancient and had only
       | 4 cores.
       | 
       | You know there is something quite unique and strange about
       | Hetzner. They charge you no money until your first invoice date
       | rolls around. So you essentially have access to their servers for
       | free until whenever the next invoice date is. It seems to me...
       | how to say it? Kind of crazy and insanely trusting. But it works,
       | I guess?
        
         | dizhn wrote:
         | On most servers there's a setup fee so people are not very
         | likely to run without paying. (I know it doesn't exist in
         | auction and they do have no-fee specials sometimes)
        
           | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
           | The setup fee is refunded too. Source: just had $258 returned
           | to me after Ampere Altra server did not behave as I expected
           | after running it for 13 days.
        
             | CrimsonRain wrote:
             | what was the issue?
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | It was behaving strangely under load - worked for a few
               | hours all right, then at some point all 80 cores
               | invariably fell into 1GHz mode with no way to return them
               | to work at normal 3GHz. Probably some software issue,
               | because reboot (and only reboot) fixed it. But after
               | reinstalling multiple kernels and much twiddling, I
               | bailed. Otherwise, a wonderful processor.
        
               | dizhn wrote:
               | I kind of sort of remember reading up on a throttling bug
               | on a laptop that was said to behave like that. I think it
               | was the GPU though.
        
             | dizhn wrote:
             | I didn't know that. That really cool. I didn't get to
             | experience it because I am quite a happy customer. (Knock
             | on wood and don't publicly cross them huh)
             | 
             | What was up with the Altra? I have a free instance (4
             | cores) on oracle cloud. Seems really capable.
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | I also had no problems with Hetzner's 16-core ARM cloud
               | instances. Maybe just a faulty server.
        
         | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
         | I think the return window is 14 days, not the whole month. And
         | I also think they will block you if you do it repeatedly.
        
         | lucw wrote:
         | Same here, I initially got an Epyc 1st generation server with
         | 256gb and was happy for a while, until I figured out single
         | core performance was important for my workflows (web
         | development). Then I got a a 7950x3d and i'm now super happy.
        
         | nielsole wrote:
         | They used to require sending a copy of an ID card as proof that
         | you are who you say you are. I guess gdpr put an end to that.
        
           | perihelions wrote:
           | They asked to 3d-scan my face and harvest my identifying
           | biometrics. So I closed my account and walked away.
           | 
           | If anyone's curious, this is the product Hetzner were using
           | at the time:
           | 
           | https://www.idenfy.com/identity-verification-service/
        
             | jamal-kumar wrote:
             | That's wild considering I'm 100% sure their resellers
             | aren't doing this
        
           | fs111 wrote:
           | why would the GDPR end that? This is still a legitimate ask
           | and they can do that legally.
        
             | jamal-kumar wrote:
             | Essentially because of data retention of someone's identity
             | card being inherent in such a system
        
               | dist-epoch wrote:
               | But they don't need to retain the data, they only need to
               | set a flag on your account "identity was validated".
        
           | KronisLV wrote:
           | > They used to require sending a copy of an ID card as proof
           | that you are who you say you are. I guess gdpr put an end to
           | that.
           | 
           | That was the case for me when I registered with Hetzner,
           | though that was a few years ago. Then again, I registered for
           | Contabo this month and still had to send my ID and something
           | to prove my address. Their justification was that they're
           | required by law to verify that data (KYC or something), so I
           | guess they have to process that data even with GDPR being a
           | thing.
        
         | brnt wrote:
         | > Kind of crazy and insanely trusting.
         | 
         | The reverse is always surprising to me: as if blocking a credit
         | card constitutes the ending of a contract.
         | 
         | In Europe, a contract isn't entered or broken by making or
         | blocking payment. Companies will very succesfully have their
         | contracts enforced, with any extra costs billed to you. Apart
         | from leaving the country, you're not going to get away with
         | non-payment.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | That's technically the case in most countries, just that
           | enforcing those contracts has a cost.
           | 
           | Blocking the credit card is banking on the company not
           | bothering to follow up, or (in case of company misbehavior),
           | forcing them to show up in court and air their dirty laundry
           | in front of the judge.
        
             | brnt wrote:
             | Maybe another difference is that some/many European
             | countries people just don't not pay bills. I once heard it
             | said about the Netherlands as being attractive to do
             | business.
        
               | mardifoufs wrote:
               | That's not true in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and
               | tons of other euro countries. Not familiar with the
               | Netherlands though.
        
               | rewmie wrote:
               | > Maybe another difference is that some/many European
               | countries people just don't not pay bills.
               | 
               | That's the first time I ever heard of such thing, and
               | I've lived in a few European countries. Some European
               | countries even standardized service payments on direct
               | debit, which worst case scenario leaves a bank holding
               | the bag for the debt.
        
             | SoftTalker wrote:
             | > forcing them to show up in court and air their dirty
             | laundry in front of the judge
             | 
             | And showing up in court has costs, which are not guaranteed
             | to be covered in any award/payment order, and even if you
             | win there is still the matter of actually collecting. If
             | it's all a matter of a few hundred dollars, most businesses
             | will just write it off.
        
           | berkle4455 wrote:
           | > Companies will very successfully have their contracts
           | enforced
           | 
           | Hetzner turned off all access to my paid server due to a
           | false-positive on their netscan/DDOS (literally it was
           | tailscaled doing a netcheck) protection and equally
           | incompetent technical support staff.
           | 
           | Can I sue them for breach of contract and subsequent damages?
           | I moved all my hosting off Hetzner as a result, but I'm still
           | very disappointed in their actions.
        
             | leni536 wrote:
             | While I didn't read the contract, I'm halfway sure that it
             | says that they can terminate the contract for any reason.
        
               | berkle4455 wrote:
               | They didn't terminate my contract though, they just
               | nullrouted my server. They even had the audacity at the
               | end of the month to send me a bill.
        
               | leni536 wrote:
               | Ah, that's shitty. I guess in theory you could demand a
               | refund or file a chargeback for an amount based on the
               | services they didn't contractually provide. As you ceased
               | doing business with them I don't think there would have
               | been any drawback to this. IANAL
        
           | cortesoft wrote:
           | > Apart from leaving the country, you're not going to get
           | away with non-payment.
           | 
           | Sure, but they are making these contracts with people not in
           | the country in the first place
        
         | unfunco wrote:
         | It's the same with AWS and GCP and Digital Ocean isn't it? An
         | active card check is performed but that's about it, you PAYG
         | and get billed at the end of the month.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Digital Ocean seem to do this too. At least at my tiny spend
         | level.
        
           | petecooper wrote:
           | In my experience, some of the DigitalOcean lower end tiers
           | have older Xeon chips that just feel slower. One of the first
           | things I do is run `yabs` on a new droplet to see exactly
           | where I'm at:
           | 
           | https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script
        
             | huijzer wrote:
             | Yes, good tip! I once searched for a super cheap VPS and
             | found one, but found out the hard way that the single core
             | performance was terrible; 3 times as slow as Hetzner.
        
         | fer wrote:
         | It was like this for me for years until a month I got double
         | invoice and now it's seemingly paid in advance. It might depend
         | on the pricing bracket (I jumped from a 40EUR dedicated to
         | 180EUR with extra hardware around that time, too).
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | > adding additional IPv4s is very cheap
         | 
         | How do you feel the pricing with Hetzner compares to others?
         | 
         | https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/ipv4-pricing/
        
         | m00dy wrote:
         | EX101 package is a bit high-end for running those server you
         | mentioned.
        
         | wiredfool wrote:
         | Their special deals are generally better than the Auction,
         | depending on what they're offering at the time.
         | 
         | I've got a couple AX101s with 4TB drives at around the price
         | for the current AX102s that only have 2tb drives.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ezequiel-garzon wrote:
       | After paying Vultr way too much for my personal toy OpenBSD
       | hosting, let me share my host TinyKVM [1] as a happy customer.
       | Obviously look at the terms, they clearly recommend not using it
       | for any critical purposes. It's a service offered by RAM Host
       | [2], based in Dallas.
       | 
       | A bit out of the blue, I'll say that I'm also a happy customer of
       | MXroute [3], which are also in Texas. I like these folk's no-
       | nonsense approach. I can only think of SpongeBob's friend Sandy,
       | and the experience have reinforced this stereotype :) No
       | affiliation, I'm sorry for this regional digression, have never
       | been to Texas unfortunately, but good job, guys!
       | 
       | [1] https://tinykvm.com
       | 
       | [2] https://ramhost.us
       | 
       | [3] https://mxroute.com
        
       | rmoriz wrote:
       | I wish Hetzner/Hetzner Cloud would support "bring your own IPs"
       | (BYOIP) as other cloud providers already do.
        
       | xinayder wrote:
       | They have ARM servers for as low as 3.79/mo with 2 vCPUs and 4 GB
       | RAM. And as of September 19 they are available in Nuremberg and
       | Finland as well, not just Falkenstein.
        
       | patrakov wrote:
       | So, somebody succeeded running OpenBSD/ARM64 in someone else's
       | stock pre-configured VM. Great!
       | 
       | But what about some bigger targets - e.g. running OpenBSD ARM64
       | on a stock bare-metal server provided by some dedicated hosting
       | company, not necessarily Hetzner?
        
       | infofarmer wrote:
       | Happily running FreeBSD 13 on Hetzner CAX11 since April [1] [2]
       | 
       | Great to see OpenBSD is now available as well!
       | 
       | [1] https://twitter.com/pandrewhk/status/1649020655558336514
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://gist.github.com/pandrewhk/2d62664bfb74a504b7f4a894fc...
        
         | petecooper wrote:
         | Thanks very much for the pointer to [2], that's just saved me a
         | heap of time and effort!
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-21 23:02 UTC)