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Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#51

Post by alecco »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #4

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server ma…

They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#52

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

Spending caps is the biggest reason for me. Granted, some VPS don't offer this (vital!) feature, but none of the big 3 or similar services do.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#53

Post by bluedino »

baby_souffle wrote: post #39
enlyth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago I was going through my secondary email and noticed I was getting a $0.01 monthly bill from AWS. Having not used AWS for years, I logged in to check it out, navigated through the Kafkaesque maze of their services until I found what I was looking for: A lone S3 storage bucket, with one file, "Squirrel.jpg". A 200kB picture of a squirrel that I uploaded 8 years ago and can't remember why.

> I was getting a $0.01 monthly bill from AWS. I wonder what the cost to AWS was for keeping track of that and running your CC. There's no way they made money off you / that 12 cents/year cost them *at least* 12 cents to collect every year

My vps provider bills in $5 blocks

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#54

Post by joseda-hg »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

I could pay like 30 bucks a month for an absolutely overspecc'd VPS (64GB/16c) that would cost around 20X on AWS (According to ChatGPT; which sounds about right based on the last time I cared to even look into it)

Does it have a billion 9's of reliability? No, but I don't care, it has literally never not worked when I've used it

Customer Service so far has been human, but that will vary greatly for the provider

I also use a different provider for work related hosting, and the reduced latency of being within 20 ms of the DC has been probably the single biggest (perceived) perf improvement my users have ever seen, specially on the legacy webforms platform we recently decomissioned (We're a bit too geographically far for most Datacenters of most large providers)

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#55

Post by gruturo »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

Predictable and extremely low costs for less critical stuff. My 2 main ones are respectively around 4 and 8 EUR per _year_.

I use them to run wireguard to evade geoblocks when I'm travelling, a few redundant monitoring scripts alerting me of reachability issues of more critical stuff I care about, they serve as contingency access channels to my home (and home assistant) if my primary channels are down.

I get no support, no updates, it's all on me - which is fine, it allows me to stay current and not lose hands-on practice on skills which I anyway need for my job (and which are anyway my passion). I don't even get an entire IPv4 - I get.... 1/3000th of it? (21 ports, the rest are forwarded to other customers). Suits me fine.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#56

Post by gopher_space »

zeagle wrote: post #13
saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

Until recently I had a 4gb ram 80gb ssd+2tb hd VPS running debian in a Montreal data centre with a real use 700 mbit pipe to my city with a budget provider for the equivalent of $80USD/year. When fio speeds were slow they moved me to a less crowded server. I gave it up as don't need it and moved my personal sites back to NFS for peanuts a year and services to my NAS. The pricing, offsite storage for my backups, Canad…

> Trying to think of learning about AWS and screwing up usage based billing was daunting!

One of the hard rules we learned pre-pandemic was that services attached to usage based billing should really exit on error. It's a lesson I'm keeping in mind working with agents and routing (and the main reason I'm local-first).

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#57

Post by ddtaylor »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

I like Vultr for the simplicity of my own projects. I really hate spending my time on provisioning and similar labyrinths.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#58

Post by tokyobreakfast »

vbezhenar wrote: post #48
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #23

RAM shortage or competent programmer shortage? Can't get a Linux box to idle (or even install) under 512M these days. Can't find a web developer worth a shit who doesn't think he needs a Python backend application server to print "Hello, world" when you could do this with a static page served with something like OpenBSD with two-digit RAM requirements. It's not the RAM that's changed; it's everyone around the RAM. A…

You definitely can use Linux with few simple servers with 128 MB RAM. Install can be tricky indeed, but if you have installed system, it's easier.

Yeah I'll need conclusive proof of that.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#59

Post by bee_rider »

actionfromafar wrote: post #37
dist-epoch wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China also needs RAM for AIs, especially since they have plenty of electrical power and building speed to pump out data-centers.

Turns out their wind "opercapacity" maybe isn't. Maybe they are trading chip efficiency for raw power.

Something I’ve been sort of wondering about—LLM training seems like it ought to be the most dispatchable possible workload (easy to pause the thing when you don’t have enough wind power, say). But, when I’ve brought this up before people have pointed out that, basically, top-tier GPU time is just so valuable that they always want to be training full speed ahead.

But, hypothetically if they had a ton of previous gen GPUs (so, less efficient) and a ton of intermittent energy (from solar or wind) maybe it could be a good tradeoff to run them intermittently?

Ultimately a workload that can profitably consumer “free” watts (and therefore flops) from renewable overprovisioning would be good for society I guess.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#60

Post by nerdsniper »

alecco wrote: post #51
ZenoArrow wrote: post #4

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server ma…

They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.

It’s fine if it’s just filling Chinese manufacturing. Low-cost VPS hosts are going to be using brands like Supermicro anyways. It still gets exported.

Except for RAM from YMTC, which the USA gave a near-death sentence to by placing it on the Dept. of Commerce “Entity List” so no USA-associated business can do business with YMTC now.

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