Can we get smaller VM hosts? I’ve seen some minimums at 512MB for a host. I need 8MB at most sometimes.
Update: Fourplex (this host) uses a 1GB minimum.
Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#62While not a small host, I thought I would mention what I observed with OVH's VPS offering. I was considering their line of VPSes recently because of how generous the cores/ram quantities were given the price. For example, the smallest offering is 4 cores / 8GB at just over $4 a month.
What I found is that it is cheap because the cores, and presumably ram, is old. Like, 2013 era Xeon E3-1275 v3 old. But that's fine! Old hardware like this uses old ram that is less affected by the current shortage. It's good enough for my needs.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#63Small VPS hosts shouldn’t really exist. They’re either resellers or just half-assing it.
How can you trust Gary from GaryHosting not to just steal all your data? How can you trust him to have redundant networks? You just can’t.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#64I don't know if you can consider Netcup "small", but their RS 4000 G12 ("root server", basically a VPS with dedicated/guaranteed resources) costs ~€31 for a monthly contract for any location in Europe without VAT included. It's 12 dedicated cores of a modern EPYC CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe. I got that offer during their Black Friday sale and pay €25/month (price before VAT), plus the offer I got has a 2TB NVMe instead o…
So with 8 customers per box (AMD EPYC™ 9645 CPU has 96 cores) if they have single-cpu boxes, that would need 256 GiB RAM.
CPU launch price 11000 USD. RAM will likely be another 10000 USD
20000 / 8 customers / 40 USD/mo = 62 months just to recoup CPU and RAM let alone other components.
Weird, whenever I napkin math offers of any HW for renting, I get that I could buy it myself in 1-2 years of rent. Sometimes faster.
Do they not intend to recoup the costs of HW? :)
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#65Out 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?
The only advantage is cheapness, for personal use.
If you’re a government agency or a company you don’t care about saving $14/month, you want a secure provider. And these hosts are not secure, you’re basically just on your own.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#66Out 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?
Most of my customers (small VPS host here) don't like the companies behind AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, especially the amount of influence they have in the world and how they wield it. And the pricing often isn't that much different between a small VPS host and either a cloud provider or one of the larger VPS providers (Akamai/Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.) - larger providers have economies of scale, but smaller providers don't have as much overhead for paying sales and C-suite.
There's also the human touch in terms of who you talk to: a lot of the smallest VPS hosts are 1-2 people, both technical, so customer support = sysadmin = contact for everything.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#67Small VPS hosts shouldn’t really exist. They’re either resellers or just half-assing it. How can you trust Gary from GaryHosting not to just steal all your data? How can you trust him to have redundant networks? You just can’t.
Ideally all cloud applications hostable on any platform would just provide the following services to clients:
A. rendezvous services so clients can connect to one another,
B. storage/retrieval of encrypted data where the host does not have the key to decrypt,
C. transport of encrypted data which cannot be known by the host due to B above.
> How can you trust him to have redundant networks
You can't, so abstract that away at the application layer. Make it not dependent on a single host or network.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is true.
We use ASRock Rack servers, mainly because the only option for our industry are OEMs like Supermicro and ASRock. Dell and HPE are non-starters, except for our "storage" offering.
Back in 2019, HPE was a good midrange option. Then came ASRock Rack who obliterated HPE with the X470D4U, relegating HPE to high-end enterprise servers. But also made Ryzen-based VPS hosts including yours truly, BuyVM, et al.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#69I'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…
I am very hopeful of CXMT. But then then it could take a while for them to ramp up production. Maybe by then, the AI bubble would've burst.
One problem with US sanctions is it could hurt US companies too, like in the case of cutting-edge EUV and CXMT. This is when China is actually a hero and not a villain.
Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?
#70Most low-end providers will just keep using old hardware for longer. IPv4 shortages didn’t kill it, and I don’t think this will either.
For providers like us, we have to lease IPv4. We came long after IPv4 was already depleted. IPv4 prices did go down. Despite that, the $15/year 128MB BuyVM plan is long-gone.
But for a new provider like us, we'd have to spend more than an established player like BuyVM or RackNerd who bought most of their servers pre-AI-boom.