Hetzner Adds 8-core ODROID-XU4 ARM Based Server Line

[DomainBop]

First 8-core ARM offering announced today by Hetzner. 

Pricing ex. VAT is € 9.90 + € 9.90 for the smallest  2GB RAM/32GB MicroSD model,   The top of the line € 19.90 + € 19.90 setup is 2GB RAM/32GB MicroSD + 240GB SSD

8 core Samsung Exynos-5422 Octa-Core processors

1 1 Gbit/s-Port port/ 200 Mbit/s-Port guaranteed, 10TB traffic

Ubuntu 15.04 minimal operating system for ARM is currently the only OS offered

https://www.hetzner.de/us/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ax

The processor:

Equipped with four big cores (ARM® Cortex® -A15™ up to 2.1GHz) and four small cores (ARM® Cortex® -A7™ up to 1.5 GHz), the processor provides improved processing capabilities while maintaining the most efficient power consumption beyond imagination...

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/Exynos/w/solution.html#?v=octa_5422

 

[wlanboy]

Thanks for the finding.
Looks quite good and far beyond the Raspberry Pi hosting offers.

 

[wlanboy]

One drawback: SD-Card as storage.
If you look at the Online.Net offer of https://www.scaleway.com they offer cloud storage + no setup fees + hourly billing.

 

[willie]

Both offers are interesting.  The Hetzner one seems to have more network resources and maybe a faster cpu (scaleway is mysterious about what cpu it uses, claiming it's equivalent to an AWS M3 Medium instance).  The local disk has its attractions, as does the cloud storage.  The Scaleway cloud storage is cheaper if you need a lot.  Scaleway currently doesn't have ipv6, though they say they're working on it.  Scaleway has no setup fee, hourly billing, and a 1 month free offer for up to 10 units. 

 

[joepie91]

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

 

[jarland]

Nice to see someone else jumping on this. Online.net really bombed with Scaleway to me, not because it wasn't a good offering, but because the network seems intentionally slow (like lucky to pull of 10mbit to most places) on those things when we all know online.net has a great network.

 

[willie]

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

Thanks!  I was able to try that out and run some benchmarks.  Hand-wavingly I'd say it's around 1/10th of the speed of my i7-3770 Hetzner dedi, which is a pretty fast box.  That means with their 10 unit, 1 month deal you get the computational equivalent of a fairly serious dedi for 1 month for free.  After that it's 20 cents an hour (.02 each) but I think runabove.net x86 servers may end up more attractive.  Runabove itself has a 1 week trial offer.

I might try the scaleway 24 hour trial (need to give them a phone number for SMS verification to get that) and run some more complicated tests.  Anyway this is good to know about.  I've been wondering for a while about the speed of these ARM boards and it's good to finally get to try one.

I hope they didn't build too many of those boards since it will be more interesting when they get some 64 bit ones.  They should be about 2x as fast.

 

[DomainBop]

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

Thanks!  I was able to try that out and run some benchmarks.  Hand-wavingly I'd say it's around 1/10th of the speed of my i7-3770 Hetzner dedi, which is a pretty fast box.  That means with their 10 unit, 1 month deal you get the computational equivalent of a fairly serious dedi for 1 month for free.  After that it's 20 cents an hour (.02 each) but I think runabove.net x86 servers may end up more attractive.  Runabove itself has a 1 week trial offer.

I might try the scaleway 24 hour trial (need to give them a phone number for SMS verification to get that) and run some more complicated tests.  Anyway this is good to know about.  I've been wondering for a while about the speed of these ARM boards and it's good to finally get to try one.

I hope they didn't build too many of those boards since it will be more interesting when they get some 64 bit ones.  They should be about 2x as fast.

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

Thanks!  I was able to try that out and run some benchmarks.  Hand-wavingly I'd say it's around 1/10th of the speed of my i7-3770 Hetzner dedi, which is a pretty fast box.  That means with their 10 unit, 1 month deal you get the computational equivalent of a fairly serious dedi for 1 month for free.  After that it's 20 cents an hour (.02 each) but I think runabove.net x86 servers may end up more attractive.  Runabove itself has a 1 week trial offer.

I might try the scaleway 24 hour trial (need to give them a phone number for SMS verification to get that) and run some more complicated tests.  Anyway this is good to know about.  I've been wondering for a while about the speed of these ARM boards and it's good to finally get to try one.

I hope they didn't build too many of those boards since it will be more interesting when they get some 64 bit ones.  They should be about 2x as fast.

Scaleway reduced their pricing today from €9.99 to €2.99 per server https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/

 

[DomainBop]

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

Thanks!  I was able to try that out and run some benchmarks.  Hand-wavingly I'd say it's around 1/10th of the speed of my i7-3770 Hetzner dedi, which is a pretty fast box.  That means with their 10 unit, 1 month deal you get the computational equivalent of a fairly serious dedi for 1 month for free.  After that it's 20 cents an hour (.02 each) but I think runabove.net x86 servers may end up more attractive.  Runabove itself has a 1 week trial offer.

I might try the scaleway 24 hour trial (need to give them a phone number for SMS verification to get that) and run some more complicated tests.  Anyway this is good to know about.  I've been wondering for a while about the speed of these ARM boards and it's good to finally get to try one.

I hope they didn't build too many of those boards since it will be more interesting when they get some 64 bit ones.  They should be about 2x as fast.

Scaleway also offers free servers for 30 minutes. Inspired by InstantServer, I'm sure

Thanks!  I was able to try that out and run some benchmarks.  Hand-wavingly I'd say it's around 1/10th of the speed of my i7-3770 Hetzner dedi, which is a pretty fast box.  That means with their 10 unit, 1 month deal you get the computational equivalent of a fairly serious dedi for 1 month for free.  After that it's 20 cents an hour (.02 each) but I think runabove.net x86 servers may end up more attractive.  Runabove itself has a 1 week trial offer.

I might try the scaleway 24 hour trial (need to give them a phone number for SMS verification to get that) and run some more complicated tests.  Anyway this is good to know about.  I've been wondering for a while about the speed of these ARM boards and it's good to finally get to try one.

I hope they didn't build too many of those boards since it will be more interesting when they get some 64 bit ones.  They should be about 2x as fast.

Scaleway reduced their pricing today from €9.99 to €2.99 per server https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/

Found these ServerBear results for Scaleway (ARMv7 Processor rev 2 v7l ) on LET:  UnixBench around 700 puts them in the same range as an Atom D510 (~670) and N2800 (~750) and better than an Atom D425 or Via Nano U2250 (both around 440).  

http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2015/09/01/XXezDGzS9jKzHCzR

 

[willie]

Scaleway reduced their pricing today from €9.99 to €2.99 per server https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/

Nice!  And the 1/2 hour trial link still works.  But the 24 hour and 1 month trial offers seem to have disappeared, or at least they are no longer linked from the main page.  Oh well, the price reduction makes up for it .

Thanks for the unixbench score, which is pretty consistent with my cpu-intensive benchmarks.

 

[MannDude]

Anyone who is actually using these... how is their network?

 

[willie]

Scaleway network was good in the short tryout that I did (downloaded some source code and compiled it, among other things).  I haven't tried the Hetzner XU4's but assuming it's the regular Hetzner network, it's ok, a little bit spotty, you probably know about it.

 

[vampireJ]

Is 2gb ram a limit on those arm based server? What if you need more?

 

[drmike]

Is 2gb ram a limit on those arm based server? What if you need more?

Yeah it's a SoC based architecture.   Everything is hard shipped to the board and non-upgradable.

Pricing for this is WAY too high.  € 9.90 a month should be € 4.90  a month.

 

[Amitz]

Yeah it's a SoC based architecture.   Everything is hard shipped to the board and non-upgradable.

Pricing for this is WAY too high.  € 9.90 a month should be € 4.90  a month.

Pricing is EUR 2.99 in the meantime.

 

[Amitz]

Is 2gb ram a limit on those arm based server? What if you need more?

Then you either start to distribute the load on several of those small machines or get a bigger dedicated server.

 

[drmike]

Yeah it's a SoC based architecture.   Everything is hard shipped to the board and non-upgradable.

Pricing for this is WAY too high.  € 9.90 a month should be € 4.90  a month.

Pricing is EUR 2.99 in the meantime.

The Hetzner ARM offering is 9.90...  

2.99 EUR is that other company...

 

[Amitz]

The Hetzner ARM offering is 9.90...  

2.99 EUR is that other company...

You are so right! Where was my mind?

 

[drmike]

The Hetzner ARM offering is 9.90...  

2.99 EUR is that other company...

You are so right! Where was my mind?

Your mind was being hopeful like mine  You made me go look.

2.99 EUR is a good price, heck a great price all said.  $3.36 for those dealing in US dollars.  With that other company Scaleway that is....

Both companies are using Odroid boards.

Scaleway is running a C1 model: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433  - $35 

Hetzner is running a XU4 model or similar: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G143452239825  - $74

On top of those costs, they have power mechanism (which very well can be a simple USB connector) and storage.

Assumed both are running rackable server versions of this.  Scaleway has promo photos of units housing ~ 18 boards per 1U.

Puts Scaleway near $50~ retail pricing...   Puts Hetzner in the neigborhood of $90-100.

Scaleway at $3.36/mo would take $3/mo optimistically in a month.  Would take 16+ months to break even.  That's just on hardware.  Clearly they buying cheaper and mass (I hope).

Hetzner is $11.12/mo  would take $10.50/mo in a month.  Would take 9-10 months to break even just on hardware. 

ROI on business viability cash flow looks better on Hetzner.  Question is if they actually can fetch that $11+ a month.

Both companies have other scales of economy suspected with rack config with these.  Both better have their numbers right though.  It's lean on numbers as any ARM stuff is going to be where lacking fast connects, native SAS or SATA, etc.

 

[willie]

Scaleway uses its own hardware (https://www.scaleway.com/features/) and mentions (https://www.scaleway.com/press/ ) that they use a Marvell SOC and fit 912 servers into a rack.  Hetzner's deployment sounds more experimental but the Odroid board is likely to be a lot faster than the Scaleway board.  I'm guessing about 2x based on some benchmarks I saw, but will try running my own if I get a Scaleway account.  No more free trial > 1/2 hour, but I guess I can afford a day or two at 12 cents a day . 

Scaleway has a blog post about the price cut (https://blog.scaleway.com/2015/09/02/we-are-slashing-the-c1-price-by-70-percent/ ) but I have to wonder what was really going on, i.e. nobody was willing to pay the old price?  I wonder if the new price is sustainable.  It looks like a good deal for cloud cpu, if your application parallelizes well.

I agree Hetzner's pricing is less attractive, especially since the setup fee makes it unappealing to get one for 1 month just to try it out.  I guess their costs are higher, with that Odroid board.  There will probably be a 64-bit Odroid XU5 at some point, so we'll see what happens then.