Hetzner Price Adjustment • Hacker News Board

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#121

Post by endorphine » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

ninjin wrote: post #8

lukeqsee wrote: post #4

While the pricing is interesting, I think the fact it is driven by the input costs of electricity is even more telling. The fact that electricity costs is the dominating (edit, correction: marginal ) cost of cloud computing basically means that: 1) We're up against physical barriers to lowering the cost (and ecological impact) of our clouds. 2) Optimizing for less compute will pay multi-fold dividends over the next f…

To be fair, Hetzner is notorious for pushing down prices for everything as far down as they can by any means necessary. So this most likely makes their price point more sensitive than many other providers to any cost increase. Here is a great walk-through of one of their data centres [1] and you will see how streamlined everything is down to the hardware components. Nearly nothing goes to waste. [1]: https://yewtu.be…

Why "notorious" though? Isn't this a good thing for them and for customers as well?

I would expect "famous", since this seems lika a feat/achievement to me.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#122

Post by jaywalk » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

telesilla wrote: post #73

jaywalk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has their own power efficient systems and will compete with AWS Are you saying Apple is going to roll out an AWS competitor to the public? I find that highly unlikely.

What other verticals does it have to seek out next, if growth is demanded by shareholders?

There's all kinds of consumer-oriented things they can expand into, like they're currently doing with sports on ATV+. I don't see how competing with AWS could ever work out for them, absent some anti-competitive stuff like allowing additional functionality for apps that use AppleCloud for their backend.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#123

Post by kuboble » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:43 PM UTC

barney54 wrote: post #49

kuboble wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in EU household electricity is largely subsidized and the industry always paid more.

It’s the other way around, at least in Germany. Households pay more than industry for electricity. https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Germany/electricity_price...

Well. I have to admit you're right. But it seems to not be universally true.

In Poland I have found that price for companies can be 3x higher based on at least one source. C11 - the tariff for the companies seem to cost 1.6 PLN / kwH [1] G11 - the same tarrif for households seem to cost more like 0.4-0.5PLN / kwH [2]

[1] https://www.energa.pl/mala-firma/umowy/prad-dla-firm.html [2] https://www.energa.pl/dom/umowy/taryfa.html

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#124

Post by ztrww » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

jansan wrote: post #35

zach_garwood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland has oil. Germany imports oil from Russia.

Only 0.2% of the electricity is generated from oil in Finland. But Finland produces a good quarter of its electricity from nuclear power. Maybe that makes a difference?

It’s hard to export electricity from Finland due to it’s geographic location and it’s main connections are with Sweden where electricity is also much cheaper than in continental Europe.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#125

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

lukeqsee wrote: post #4

While the pricing is interesting, I think the fact it is driven by the input costs of electricity is even more telling. The fact that electricity costs is the dominating (edit, correction: marginal ) cost of cloud computing basically means that: 1) We're up against physical barriers to lowering the cost (and ecological impact) of our clouds. 2) Optimizing for less compute will pay multi-fold dividends over the next f…

[deleted]

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#126

Post by aasasd » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

ninjin wrote: post #8

lukeqsee wrote: post #4

While the pricing is interesting, I think the fact it is driven by the input costs of electricity is even more telling. The fact that electricity costs is the dominating (edit, correction: marginal ) cost of cloud computing basically means that: 1) We're up against physical barriers to lowering the cost (and ecological impact) of our clouds. 2) Optimizing for less compute will pay multi-fold dividends over the next f…

To be fair, Hetzner is notorious for pushing down prices for everything as far down as they can by any means necessary. So this most likely makes their price point more sensitive than many other providers to any cost increase. Here is a great walk-through of one of their data centres [1] and you will see how streamlined everything is down to the hardware components. Nearly nothing goes to waste. [1]: https://yewtu.be…

Those consumer PCs don't look too energy-efficient, though.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#127

Post by sremani » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

If I am running Hetzner, I will be looking at an aggressive North American expansion. The energy cost gap between US and Europe are going to get bigger.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#128

Post by riskable » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #66

jbverschoor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM on desktop => ARM for development => ARM on servers => ARM on cloud. Apple's multi-billion contracts with AWS are ending this or next year, Apple has their own power efficient systems and will compete with AWS, as they have to maintain/increase growth.

> Apple has their own power efficient systems and will compete with AWS Are you saying Apple is going to roll out an AWS competitor to the public? I find that highly unlikely.

I dunno. I could see it... As long as you access the "iCloud Web Service" from an iDevice or a Mac there will be loads of useful and functional tools and features for you to take advantage of. It'll be 4x more expensive than AWS but the integration with Apple's ecosystem will be fantastic!

If you try to access it from a PC or an Android device though you'll have your bandwidth throttled and all your images will be reduced and compressed like it's 1999.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#129

Post by elcapitan » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

ninjin wrote: post #8

lukeqsee wrote: post #4

While the pricing is interesting, I think the fact it is driven by the input costs of electricity is even more telling. The fact that electricity costs is the dominating (edit, correction: marginal ) cost of cloud computing basically means that: 1) We're up against physical barriers to lowering the cost (and ecological impact) of our clouds. 2) Optimizing for less compute will pay multi-fold dividends over the next f…

To be fair, Hetzner is notorious for pushing down prices for everything as far down as they can by any means necessary. So this most likely makes their price point more sensitive than many other providers to any cost increase. Here is a great walk-through of one of their data centres [1] and you will see how streamlined everything is down to the hardware components. Nearly nothing goes to waste. [1]: https://yewtu.be…

Wow, that's really cool. Love the old midi-towers.

Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment

#130

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

spaceheater wrote: post #96

tzahifadida wrote: post #43

Worth it, especially because of the reasons the prices of electricity went up.

Worth how? Sanctions achieved nothing on the military front. Is it more of a scaremongering thing? 'If we didn't do it, things would have been much worse'?

German here. The causes of Germany's sky high electricity prices are not the Ukraine war.

A large part of the current spot price hike is the French bet on going all-in on nuclear: first, half the reactors is offline because they are simply broken down - they bet on Flamanville to replace parts of the extremely aged fleet which infamously failed. Then, the drought led to rivers drying up which means the reactors that are operational simply cannot get cooled, which led to a further reduction in capacity right when AC demands a lot of power, which in turn led to the French buying a shitload of capacity from Germany, and our spare capacity is mostly gas peaker plants since we phased out many coal stinkers over the last year.

The second part is regulatory... the fees that have to be paid for by everyone other than heavy industry for modernizing the grid and build out renewables are a large part, as well as the taxes that add on top of that.

And the last part is that states like Bavaria did their very best to impede the build-out of renewable energies (especially wind farms) and, worse, transit lines that could ship cheap North Sea wind energy to Bavaria - that led to an oversupply in the North where wind and solar have had to tune out because the energy could not be transferred to where it's needed.