If electricity becomes really scarce, they'll take some large industrial processes offline. Data centers won't be shut down. You'll be fine with OVH.
Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#22Iceland should be fine, they have plenty of renewable energy.
Hetzner in Finland is probably cheaper and with lower latency for Europeans.
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#23There will always be electricity available, but it'll come at a cost. I expect businesses running duplicate capacity for redundancy (ie AWS) to spike in price first. The French grid is mostly powered by nuclear and has been for years. I don't expect much of a problem there even with rising gas prices. The total energy consumption graphs online that show a significant amount of fossil fuels seem to also include other…
There's a problem with Nuclear this year due to 'mistery corrosion' [1]
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p...
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#24Wat? Where are you getting this from? Europe is completely fine from electricity standpoint. Most are doing deals with countries that have nuclear plants. Finland isn’t rationing anything either.
I think his worry is the percentage of power production in Europe that shifted from Coal to Natural Gas (read Russian Natural Gas).
But I just don't see it, I think governments in Europe would likely buy surplus US/Canada LNG ($$$) or scrable for extra gas from Norway/Qatar/Algeria instead of creating actual outages, specially considering how much coupling you have in EU power networks across countries. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#25For some context, the question is probably motivated by discussions such as [0]:
> "Let's prepare for a total cut-off of Russian gas. This is now the most likely option," [said French Minister of Economy, Bruno le Maire].
> Some companies could therefore be asked to "slow down their energy consumption, or even stop their energy consumption for a certain period of time" while it would be "totally impossible" for others to do so without triggering wider industrial repercussions," he explained.
[0] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/07/11/electricity-su...
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#26Hetzner has a US VPS location. Linode and Vultr are good, too. Anyway, I’d be surprised if things like OVH went down over this. I imagine they run some critical stuff and that France wouldn’t want their tech darlings to look so unstable.
While I agree that they won't shut down OVH France, I'd rather go with Hetzner Finland than Hetzner US. Mostly powered by renewables, much of that water, they'll be fine regardless of the availability of gas.
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#27OVH host government websites and services, if anything their DCs will have priority for electricity.
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#28The country I live in, Germany, is arguably even worse off than France.
But: there is a price to be paid for human life, freedoms, democracy and decency. We've been preaching for over 50 years about never letting a genocide happen again on the European soil. Now it's time to walk the talk and pay the price. Still, for us, it's a very modest price, when compared to what the Ukrainians are paying. We pay with discomfort, Ukrainians pay with their lives, limbs and all the horrors the human destruction can bring. Fuck Russia. Sorry for the offtopic and being melodramatic - I hope you will manage to keep your VPS running.
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#29Hetzner has a US VPS location. Linode and Vultr are good, too. Anyway, I’d be surprised if things like OVH went down over this. I imagine they run some critical stuff and that France wouldn’t want their tech darlings to look so unstable.
While I agree that they won't shut down OVH France, I'd rather go with Hetzner Finland than Hetzner US. Mostly powered by renewables, much of that water, they'll be fine regardless of the availability of gas.
I don't really know much about datacentre power feeds, but wouldn't those renewables be connected to the main grid rather than specifically dedicated to the Hetzner DC? In which case if there was strain or rationing it could be grid wide rather than Hetzner being isolated on their own power generation. I might be wrong though, and I'm sure even if they did introduce some kind of rationing then companies like Hetzner would be fine.
Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
#30For some context, the question is probably motivated by discussions such as [0]: > "Let's prepare for a total cut-off of Russian gas. This is now the most likely option," [said French Minister of Economy, Bruno le Maire]. > Some companies could therefore be asked to "slow down their energy consumption, or even stop their energy consumption for a certain period of time" while it would be "totally impossible" for other…
Is gas used to produce electricity? Mostly I think not.
The really large consumers are industrial and use it directly. Some can be shut down relatively easily and will be in case of trouble. Others, not so much and will stay on. Not sure if there are any gas powered smelters, but if you emergency shut down one of those you have to take it down and rebuild it after.