OVH vs Hetzner dedi

[willie]

I've had a couple of OVH dedis (currently just one) at BHS and generally been happy with them despite what seems like a disorganized operation on OVH's part.  I use them primarily for personal storage and computation, i.e. I don't run any public-facing services on them, though I do download a few (legal) torrents on a regular basis. 

Unfortunately my existing server is almost completely out of disk space (2TB hard disk plus 500GB ftp/nfs storage) and as an older model,  it has some other annoying limitations (100 mbit ethernet makes the ftp/nfs area slow to access--newer OVH servers all have gbit internal network). 

I see that Hetzner has some better servers (faster cpu and more disk space) in their robot auction for about the same cost as I'm currently paying for my OVH server, so I'm thinking of migrating.  This would be the i7-2600 or i7-3700 with 2x 3TB disks and 16gb ram. 

Does anyone have any general opinions of this issue?  I've heard people complain about Hetzner's network, for example. They are also reportedly very intolerant of customers getting DDOS'd.  I think that's less of an issue for me (I keep a low profile) than for (say) a gameserver operator, but I wonder if I have to be concerned at all.  If I ever run a public service on the box I could easily see proxying it through a remote VPS.

Any other issues such as dealing with the company?  Hetzner actually seems to be somewhat better organized than OVH.

Thanks

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I've never actually used Hetzner, but from what I can tell they're pretty nice and decent with everything.

As a user, I know there's a popular MMOBG hosted on three Hetzner dedicated servers. They rarely have downtimes and packetloss has been pretty minimal (except for isolated incidents), and I'd say is probably more reliable than OVH.

Network also shouldn't be a major problem. I'd say review their ToS and AUP.

Sorry I can't tell you from the other-side, but from a client/user side it's not bad at all.

 

[5n1p]

I had Hetzner dedi for few game server few years back. It was working for about 2 years. Since it was for game server there were DDOS's, but in total it was down for 3 days because of it, one's it was for a day and second time for 2 days, and that is about it. I don't know now but back then I haven't noticed any network problems, even had good ping from people from Asia. If your server's IP is used in DDOS you will get notified only if someone is actually complaining about it, and you should respond to email you get, if you don't respond they will do it for you. I think it was good and I would get one again if I needed one. 

 

[fm7]

I suggest you take a look at online.net.

 

[DomainBop]

Does anyone have any general opinions of this issue?  I've heard people complain about Hetzner's network, for example

I'd rate their network above average and definitely better than OVH BHS (the BHS network sucks compared to OVH France).  Their network has improved greatly over the past couple of years.   Swiftway (who has been known to be critical of other networks) even had favorable things to say about Hetzner's network on WHT (here and here )

I use one of my servers at Hetzner for a remote desktop (x2go/Debian xfce4, connecting from NYC) and the performance and stability is excellent (the server is in DC1 in Nuremberg not the data center park in Falkenstein but network performance in both locations is roughly the same)

Latencies to Hetzner from North America are about 10ms more than from OVH France but download speeds are slightly faster.  See below...

OVH (Gravelines DC) ~# wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash


CPU model :  Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1245 V2 @ 3.40GHz


Number of cores : 8


CPU frequency :  3638.000 MHz


Total amount of ram : 32145 MB


Total amount of swap : 32997 MB


System uptime :   96 days, 11:20,       


Download speed from CacheFly: 94.2MB/s


Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 8.68MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 10.7MB/s


Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 7.92MB/s


Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 35.3MB/s


Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 41.4MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 4.10MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 10.4MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 7.70MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 17.7MB/s


I/O speed :  177 MB/s



Hetzner (DC1 Nuremberg) ~ # wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash


CPU model :  Intel® Core i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz


CPU frequency :  1600.000 MHz


Total amount of ram : 32108 MB


Total amount of swap : 65534 MB


System uptime :   11 days, 6:18       


Download speed from CacheFly: 94.3MB/s


Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 9.21MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 18.0MB/s


Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 7.74MB/s


Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 62.3MB/s


Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 68.7MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 5.94MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 17.7MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 13.8MB/s


Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 26.9MB/s


I/O speed :  246 MB/s

They are also reportedly very intolerant of customers getting DDOS'd.

Hetzner doesn't put up with any shit whether it's DDoS or SPAM (as evidenced by the fact that they have 0 SBL's and Spamhaus gives them a silver star for proactively fighting spam).  I run production servers at Hetzner and I'd much rather use a DC like Hetzner that tries to keep it's network clean than a network like Ecatel/CC/etc. that welcomes any Tom, Skid, or Harry.

 

[Kruno]

Hetzner is fine if you don't plan on getting DDoS'd. If you get hit on Friday you have your IP nullrouted until Monday. Nice way to ruin your weekend. 

 

[willie]

Thanks for the advice and I guess Hetzner is sounding pretty good.  Online.net doesn't have any product like this: their lowest end server with more than 2x2TB disk is a Pro LTS that's 120 euro/month.  The Hetzner boxes with 2x3TB start around 40 euro/month.

I've been pretty happy with the BHS network because almost all my transit is within north america, and in fact had been worrying a bit about getting stuff from north america to Hetzner.  But those Linode transfer figures are impressive.

OVH (SoYouStart) purports to have a W3520 box with 2x2TB for 42 USD/month (setup fee waived if you pay a full year up front) and I was thinking maybe it would work out ok to just get two of those, but they're always out of stock and I don't want to shell out that much cash all at once.  I'm surprised there aren't more of these low-midrange dedis with 3TB and 4TB disks.  SYS has a 2x4TB storage box for 70 USD/month but it has 8gb of ram and a wimpy cpu (i3-2130).  Two of the W3520's would be 84/month, with (combined) 4x2TB, 32GB ram, and maybe 3x the total cpu speed, which seems much more attractive than the only slightly cheaper i3.

 

[lbft]

One thing to keep in mind about Hetzner is that (unless they've changed it) they assign the WHOIS for your /64 of IPv6 in your name and address. Not at all important for a business but something an individual might find to be a problem.

 

[libro22]

Not a direct OVH client but the gameserver I frequent to is using them before (EU). Ping from Asia is acceptable, speed is not a problem. But yeah, get DDoSed and you're down frequently, sometimes longer.

 

[DomainBop]

  The Hetzner boxes with 2x3TB start around 40 euro/month.

The prices shown on the Hetzner/ServerBidding sites include 19% VAT so if you're outside the EU the prices are lower: current low prices are 31.09 euros VAT exclusive (37 w/VAT) for the i7-2600 and 37 euros VAT excl (44 w/VAT) for the i7-3770

 

[splitice]

Hetzners DDoS handling policies was one of the main reasons we first opened our DDoS Protection range (I used to have quite a few servers with them). Not that I would call it bad, its as expected for a good quality network without mitigation technology.

 

[Clouvider-Dom]

Just bear in mind that i7 is not a 'server grade' hardware.

 

[CentralHosts]

Both providers have a solid network infrastructure but if you are going to be needing support and do not want to wait days then I would look at other providers. 

 

[DomainBop]

Both providers have a solid network infrastructure but if you are going to be needing support and do not want to wait days then I would look at other providers. 

So are you saying that if something goes wrong with one of the servers you rent from OVH that your VPS customers in your France location could be looking at an extended downtime?

dig fr2.centralhosts.net


; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> fr2.centralhosts.net


;; global options: +cmd


;; Got answer:


;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18025


;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0


;; QUESTION SECTION:


;fr2.centralhosts.net.        IN    A


;; ANSWER SECTION:


fr2.centralhosts.net.    14400    IN    A    46.105.107.31

 

[willie]

Just bear in mind that i7 is not a 'server grade' hardware.

Should I care about this?  They have E3-1245's for a few euro more, and 1245v2's for a few more than that.  Prices of everything have fallen. 

I ended up renewing my OVH server for another month (path of least resistance) but it's coming up again soon, so I'm again considering this Hetzner migration.  All the relevant Hetzner servers have gotten cheaper.  The i7-2600 is now 37 euro incl vat.

 

[DomainBop]

Should I care about this?  They have E3-1245's for a few euro more, and 1245v2's for a few more than that.  Prices of everything have fallen.

If you're using it for personal storage and computation an i7 will be fine and will save you a few dollars (just remember to check the drives when you first get it because they are used)

 

[blergh]

Hetzner has dropped significantly since a few years back. Support is horrendous with replacing the wrong drives multiple times in a row, nulling boxes for days, selling a box on serverbidding and then deploying a completely different one etc etc.

Sure, it's cheap but the support is none-existent.

 

[Serveo]

Wasn't hetzner down this week?

 

[jvkz]

Hetzner do offer 14 days money back guarantee on every server you order from auction. So, if for any reason you do not want server just cancel it and get full refund within 14 days of your order. Pre-Sale is quite active but technical team is a bit slow.

 

[willie]

Hetzner seems to have just introduced a new server to their robot system and apparently deployed a lot of them.  i7-3770, 32gb ram, 2x 3tb drives, for 34 euro fixed price (non auction).  This is vs the earlier ones with 16gb ram that were costing a little more in the auctions.  The 32gb's were getting snapped up fast and I had to try about 5 times (filling in my name and address etc. each time) but eventually got one last night, and they still have them this morning.

The main annoying thing is that smartctl reports two different types of hard drives.  /dev/sdb is a TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 with 164 power on hours and no apparent problems, but /dev/sda is a Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN166 with 12793 power on hours and what looks like 52 UNC errors at around 8687 hours, though it's passed multiple self tests. 12793 hours is around 1.5 years suggesting the box was first built with two Seagate drives, one of them failed and was replaced by the Toshiba drive, and the other is potentially near failure now. 

What to do?

For 39 euro they have an E3-1245v2 box with 16gb ECC ram and 2x 3tb enterprise drives.  For my purposes the 32gb ram is nice but not really important, the ECC might make more difference (since I do long computations sometimes), and the cpu speed is about the same.  I don't know if the so-called enterprise drives will be any newer or more reliable than what I have now.

Network transfer from California is quite a bit slower than from California to Beauharnois, but I can't really expect otherwise, given the transatlantic link.