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Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

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Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#31

Post by Etheryte »

nottorp wrote: post #30
Etheryte wrote: post #25

For 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.

I think the main effect is indirect. Not sure about France, but in many other countries in Europe gas is used extensively for both local and remote heating. If the price of gas soars, the industries that can will switch to electricity, making that price rise considerably as well. Europe already saw record highs in electricity prices in many regions last winter.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#32

Post by lakomen »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #11

> On it I run a small website with about 1000 visits per day. It's not vital that it remains up at all times (it doesn't bring money) but if I can do it for cheap I'm looking to relocate this VPS in a country where electricity won't be a problem. Your house. A site like that would run on a Raspberry Pi from a small solar panel and/or small (tiny) marine wind generator depending on your climate. Self-hosting is a lear…

Not everyone has a static ip. Most ISPs prohibit dedicated hosting on a private contract. Email from dynamic address is usually blocked and rightly so. Mixing business with private service is not a good idea. Throughput at home is usually way less and so is reliability.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#35

Post by zoobab »

nottorp wrote: post #30
Etheryte wrote: post #25

For 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.

The price of electricity is directly mapped onto the most expensive source, aka gas.

What a good idea to put that into law for the whole Europe.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#37

Post by hotpotamus »

derN3rd wrote: post #7

I can't imagine that these big hosting providers will shutdown parts of their infrastructure because of this. They will probably buy additional fuel before winter to prepare to run their generators in the times where electricity could be cut off.

Yep, I worked for a hosting provider based out of Texas during the winter blackout in 2021. We had plenty of issues, but power to the DC wasn't one. Moved to a different company this years that uses a colo/cloud provider in Austin, and they didn't have any problems from the blackouts either.

At the last place, they worked with power companies to run on generators for load shedding already, and in the event of failures, they had 48 hours or more of fuel on hand and contracts to get more fuel delivered as needed only in priority behind emergency services and hospitals. That's the point of using one of these providers; they try and plan for this sort of thing.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#38

Post by viraptor »

baremetal wrote: post #36
zeroth32 wrote: post #20

Dont worry, rationing will affect large electric consumers (industry, EV cars, heating...). VPS are too small.

youll be cold and hungry but the internet will work?

For some non-extreme cases, sure. It depends on the heating method, but for example European countries with hot water pumped central heating to blocks of flats are more likely to drop the temperature by a couple degrees than kill a data centre or phones (which often go over data links these days).

Is not as simple or fully centrally managed of course, but the idea is valid - communication is more important than some small level of extra comfort. But of course in the middle of the winter a data centre would be shut down before heating went off completely.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#39

Post by sofixa »

iammjm wrote: post #28

The 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 discomfor…

> We've been preaching for over 50 years about never letting a genocide happen again on the European soil

Maybe you mean 70 years(WWII), but genocides happened during the Yugoslav wars, or you meant the latter, which were only 30 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?

#40

Post by Elhana »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #24
klohto wrote: post #9

Wat? 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…

Problem is that you can't just go to Qatar and ask for some LNG delivery tommorow - they are supplying on long term contracts and they need to invest $$$ to increase production. Qatar already told EU (Germany?) that they can only supply extra if they sign a 20 year contract, not 1-2 years.
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