European server provider Hetzner now offers a 64GB RAM box for 109€/mon
In this technical retrospective (2012), @rmoriz shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 222 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 193 comments
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 is very cheap and probably much better than just hosting in the US.
Hetzner's lowest-end server offering is €39/month, or US$51/month: 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 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.
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?
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.
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.