Hetzner introduces new server product with insane parameters for 59 EUR/mth
In this technical retrospective (2012), @ergo14 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 ★ 147 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 87 comments
My issue with Hetzner is that by the time you add in management options necessary for a remote dedicated server, your monthly cost isn't that much better than other options.
Example: To have remote KVM/IP you'd need to first pay 15EUR for their flexipack for the privilege of adding additional features. then 19EUR mo and 149 EUR setup for KVM/IP Now you're up to $122USD/mo + almost $400USD for setup.
Compare to Incero's WebHostingTalk offer: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1121998 which is $99/mo paid in quarterly batches. Which is server grade, better CPU, ECC RAM, with KVM/IP and is in the US (Texas).
Hetzner is still cheaper overall with the 32GB -- because they're not dealing with much more expensive server class ECC RAM, but I just feel its important to bring the initial low number you see: 59 to a realistic place...
Been planning to set up a cluster with Hertzner using the EX 4, so the 4S is like getting 16GB more RAM for 10 Euros more a month. This is great news.
One thing I have wondered about is whether hosting in Germany is a good idea.
First is the latency issues. Will serving web pages to customers on the west coast of the US really suffer? (this is in the minimum viable product stage-- we're not google yet)
Secondly, I'm not all that familiar with all the laws of the EU. I don't want to run afoul of them, but I haven't found a good summary of best practices for services hosted in the EU.
I've been using Hetzner for about a year after migrating off Slicehost to Linode and then to Hetzner.
I'd recommend Linode if you need really good service (they once tracked down and patched a kernel bug for me), but if you don't want amazing support and just want some really good specs at a good price Hetzner is great, especially if you're in Europe.
Is this host trustworthy ? Feature wise it seems too good to be true:
Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quadcore incl. Hyper-Threading Technology
``` RAM 32 GB DDR3 RAM Hard disks 2 x 3 TB SATA 6 Gb/s HDD 7200 rpm (Software-RAID 1) NIC 1 GBit OnBoard connected at 100 MBit Backup Space 100 GB Traffic Unlimited* ```
I'm using Hetzner for 10years, with very very few major problems (I only remember 1).
I compared them some time ago to EC2 pricewise:
http://codemonkeyism.com/dark-side-virtualized-servers-cloud/
And setup of a new server is quite fast too.