Live data from Hacker News

Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

isayeter.com

111–120 of 454 posts

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#111

AWS only requires a card from me. I tried registering at Hetzner and they wanted a picture of my passport.

That's nuts. Why do they want a pic of your passport. Absolutely no to this - reason enough to go with AWS or alternatives. And why are ppl willingly giving it to hosting providers? Unnecessarily exposing yourself to identity theft if they get compromised.

Hetzner is like 1/10th the cost of ripoffs like AWS now, the passport data is deleted after verification and I can actually trust this claim coming from an EU company under GDPR that doesn't have any use for my personal data. You can also just bypass the passport requirement entirely by making a €20 Paypal deposit to the account.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#112
post #9

I moved two servers, one from Linode and the other from DO to Hetzner a few months ago, with similar savings. The best part was that the two servers had tens of different sites running, implemented in different languages, with obsolete libraries, MySQL and Redis instances. A total mess. Well: Claude Code migrated it all, sometimes rewriting parts when the libraries where no longer available. Today complex migrations…

Not every fscking story has to be about AI.

They really can't help themselves showing how they didn't put any effort doing a thing.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#113
post #9

I moved two servers, one from Linode and the other from DO to Hetzner a few months ago, with similar savings. The best part was that the two servers had tens of different sites running, implemented in different languages, with obsolete libraries, MySQL and Redis instances. A total mess. Well: Claude Code migrated it all, sometimes rewriting parts when the libraries where no longer available. Today complex migrations…

Wow a Claude add embedded into a Hetzner add. How deep does this go?

I think it is more the other direction. I asked Claude how to save money on my cloud costs, and it suggested migrating from DO to Hetzner.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#114

AWS only requires a card from me. I tried registering at Hetzner and they wanted a picture of my passport.

I signed up for Hetzner a few weeks ago and didn't have to provide any ID. I pay by credit card.

Not sure what differs in our cases, I'm based in EU.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#115

> Cloud providers are expensive for steady-state workloads. Asking the obvious question: why not your own server in a colo?

We used to run some servers in a colo, we had 4u. The problem with actually owning hardware is that you need a lot of it, and need to be prepared to manage things like upgrading firmware. You need to keep on top of the advisories for your network card, the power unit, the enterprise management card, etc. etc. If something goes wrong someone might need to drive in and plug in a keyboard. Eventually we admitted to ours…

Does dedicated hetzner servers handle this?

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#116
post #31

The migration sharing is admirable and useful teaching, thank you! I see the DigitalOcean vs Hetzner comparison as a tradeoff that we make in different domains all day long, similar to opening your DoorDash or UberEats instead of making your own dinner(and the cost ratio is similar too). I work in all 3 major clouds, on-prem, the works. I still head to the DigitalOcean console for bits and pieces type work or proof o…

Coolify on a Hetzner server is giving me the one click service experience

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#117
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just run 3 dedicated servers and design your app so that it never fails.

Can you elaborate? I'm coming up with similar designs recently (static site plus redundant servers) but my designs so far assume no database and ephemeral interactions. (Realtime multiplayer arcade games.) Curious what the delta to pain-in-ass would be if I want to deal with storing data. (And not just backups / migrations, but also GDPR, age verification etc.)

database isn't hard to have HA with, it's actually very easy to do any of this.

i already design with Auto Scale Group in mind, we run it in spot instance which tend to be much cheaper. Spot instances can be reclaimed anytime, so you need to keep this is kind.

I also have data blobs which are memory maped files, which are swapped with no downtime by pulling manifest from GCS bucket each hour, and swapping out the mmaped data.

i use replicas, with automatic voting based failover.

I've used mongo with replication and automative failover for a decade in production with no downtime, no data lost.

Recently, got into postgres, so far so good. Before that i always used RDS or other managed solution like Datastore, but they cost soo much compared to running your own stuff.

Healthchecks start new server in no time, even if my Hertzner server goes out or if whole Hertzer goes out, my system will launch digital ocean nodes which will start soaking up all requests.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#119
I started with DO in 2013 when they offered 20GB SSD, 512MB RAM for $5/mo. For some reason I paid no VAT then, but I do now. Their $4/mo option now is still 512MB, still 1 vCPU, but 10GB SSD. So it's like the last decade of technological progress with regards to RAM, CPU and storage that should either lead to price cuts/spec bumps didn't happen. And yeah, DO got expensive before AI bought up all the memory.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#120

Didn't Hetzner prices increase 30-40% recently? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120145 As such, I doubt the noted price reduction is reproducible. Combine this with Hetzner's sudden deletions of user accounts and services without warning, and it's a bad proposition. Search r/hetzner and r/vps for hetzner for these words: banned, deleted, terminated; there are many reports. What should stun you even more ab…

You could have loaded the Hetzner pricing page and checked - the server in the article is currently listed around $30/month higher. Not enough to materially change the equation
Post reply on HN