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Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

fourplex.net

171–180 of 260 posts

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV. I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.

I was corrected elsewhere when I thought RAM was more expensive 10 years ago. RAM was actually cheaper 10 years ago, when it was DDR3/DDR4 too. If any company can replicate the 10 year old SOTA, they can bring prices down.

This is what I expect to happen. 2016's ram was good enough for consumers then and probably still is for a huge class of consumers now. I'd rather 32GB of DDR3 than 8gb of DDR5.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will grow exponentially and catch the western market unawares in 10-15 years with a sudden flood of cheap, effective chips. Just like everything else China makes. Electric vehicles for example.

Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV. I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.

China has a luxury of being able to not really care about the cost when it comes to what they view as a strategic advantage.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#173
post #75
post #62

While 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! O…

I previously ran another VPS host who did the same exact thing (before OVH did it?). Unlike Fourplex.net which uses modern ASRock Ryzen 9000 servers, Qeru.net used older HPE DL360 Gen9 servers. I gave 3GB of RAM for $3-4/mo then. But these servers weren't very fast. I ended up selling the business, and am happy I did.

Question: how a person can provide VPS host srevices without being a reseller? Did you own the hardware? I am super interested. Hey, I even would pay for a series of articles about this!

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV. I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.

China has a luxury of being able to not really care about the cost when it comes to what they view as a strategic advantage.

This option is available to any sovereign country.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a luxury of being able to not really care about the cost when it comes to what they view as a strategic advantage.

This option is available to any sovereign country.

In fact, it is what most European countries used to do for their strategic industries.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#176
post #173
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I previously ran another VPS host who did the same exact thing (before OVH did it?). Unlike Fourplex.net which uses modern ASRock Ryzen 9000 servers, Qeru.net used older HPE DL360 Gen9 servers. I gave 3GB of RAM for $3-4/mo then. But these servers weren't very fast. I ended up selling the business, and am happy I did.

Question: how a person can provide VPS host srevices without being a reseller? Did you own the hardware? I am super interested. Hey, I even would pay for a series of articles about this!

This is something I'd love to know, too. I like servers, infrastructure, and terminals, so doing something like this has been in the back of my head for a while now

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#177
post #84

The US passed the Chips act in 2022. Is there really nobody reaching for those billions ready to crank out some memory four years later?

This was in the news recently: https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-deta...

Coming soon, in late 2030.

https://www.syracuse.com/micron/2025/11/micron-chip-factorie...

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#178
post #120

This article looks like actual gibberish to me? It goes on about DSL and dial-up for some reason? And yes VPS providers are affected by ram shortage. Turns out things that need ram are affected by ram shortages. 5 stars for the insight

The Bell / telephony analogy is unrelated and forced. Feels like the author had an Idea, and asked an LLM to force the analogy.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#179
post #173
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I previously ran another VPS host who did the same exact thing (before OVH did it?). Unlike Fourplex.net which uses modern ASRock Ryzen 9000 servers, Qeru.net used older HPE DL360 Gen9 servers. I gave 3GB of RAM for $3-4/mo then. But these servers weren't very fast. I ended up selling the business, and am happy I did.

Question: how a person can provide VPS host srevices without being a reseller? Did you own the hardware? I am super interested. Hey, I even would pay for a series of articles about this!

Start reading /r/homelab if you don't already. Old enterprise hardware can be had for pennies.

You obviously won't host the service at home, but it's a good intro to the hardware side of things.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#180
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, don't try AWS. I tried it once and now I'm stuck with $0 bill emails coming each month that I can't stop.

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.

That should be below the threshold for AWS’s free tier. I have more than that in S3 and I’m not being charged a cent.
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