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Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

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Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#201

Every time I see this kind of article, no one really bothers about sb/server redundancy, load balancers, etc. are we ok with just 1 big server that may fail and bring several services down? You saved a lot of money but you'll spend a lot of time in maintenance and future headaches.

If you have the setup within server fully scripted and automated (bash, pyinfra or ansible etc) and backups are in place then recovery isn't that hard. Downtime for sure maybe couple of hours for which you can point your DNS entries to a static page while you're restoring everything.

Not a bad tradeoff for 99.8% of shops out there.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#202
post #184

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

Do they always do this? I never had to present my passport as far as i can remember.

They do not. I've never had to present any documentation whatsoever to Hetzner and have been a happy customer for many years.

As I understand it, they ask only from accounts that check several boxes for common cases of abuse. So basically, personal accounts (as opposed to business accounts) from poor countries (by per capita, so e.g. India qualifies as poor).

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#203

Every time I see this kind of article, no one really bothers about sb/server redundancy, load balancers, etc. are we ok with just 1 big server that may fail and bring several services down? You saved a lot of money but you'll spend a lot of time in maintenance and future headaches.

DO doesn't do high availability droplets, and their migration policy is will try, if we detect poor health of server before it fails.

If someone starts thinking about redundancy and load balancers than DO's solution is rent a second similar sized droplet, and then add their load balancing service. If you do those things with Hetzner instead, you would still be spending less than you did with Digital Ocean.

Personally, what is keeping me on DO is that no single droplet I have is large enough to justify moving on its own, and I'm not prepared to deal with moving everything.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the service and how critical that website is. Sometimes it's completely acceptable that a server will run for 10 years with say 1 week or 1 month of downtime spread over those 10 years, yes. That's the sort of uptime you can see with single servers that are rarely changed and over-provisioned as many on Hetzner are. Some examples: Small businesses where the website is not core to operations and is more…

I feel like 95% of the web falls into this category. Like, have you ever said "That's it, I am never gonna visit this page again!", because of temporary downtime? Unless you are Amazon and every minute costs you bazillions, you are likely gonna get the better deal not worrying about availability and scalability. That 250€/m root server is a behemoth. Complete overkill for most anything. As a bonus, you are gonna be h…

> Like, have you ever said "That's it, I am never gonna visit this page again!", because of temporary downtime?

That's a strawman version of what happens.

There have been times when I've tried to visit a webshop to buy something but the site was broken or down, so I gave up and went to Amazon and bought an alternative.

I've also experienced multiple business situations where one of our services went down at an inconvenient time, a VP or CEO got upset, and they mandated that we migrate away from that service even if alternatives cost more.

If you think of your customers or visitors as perfectly loyal with infinite patience then downtime is not a problem.

> Unless you are Amazon and every minute costs you bazillions, you are likely gonna get the better deal not worrying about availability and scalability. That 250€/m root server is a behemoth. Complete overkill for most anything.

You don't need every minute of downtime to cost "bazillions" to justify a little redundancy. If you're spending 250 euros/month on a server, spending a little more to get a load balancer and a pair of servers isn't going to change your spend materially. Having two medium size servers behind a load balancer isn't usually much more expensive than having one oversized server handling it all.

There are additional benefits to having the load balancer set up for future migrations, or to scale up if you get an unexpected traffic spike. If you get a big traffic spike on a single server and it goes over capacity you're stuck. If you have a load balancer and a pair of servers you can easily start a 3rd or 4th to take the extra traffic.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#205
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like saying Mercedes is a scam because you’re fine with a Honda Civic. It’s a totally legitimate preference but not being in the target market doesn’t make something a scam.

AWS ain't no Mercedes. Mercedes feels premium and isn't full of bugs. AWS and Azure a charging an arm and a leg, but the offered quality is mostly perceived. Most of the bits and bobs they charge for are not providing much value for a vast majority of businesses. I won't even go over the complete lack of ergonomics with their portals.

> Mercedes feels premium and isn't full of bugs.

I see you've never actually owned or worked on a German car, especially in relation to even modest Japanese models. Maybe they were a little nicer inside in the 80s and maybe 90s, but "German car" and frankly "European make" is basically synonymous with "big expensive pile of shit that's an expensive pain in the ass when things start falling apart (which they seem to with increasing rapidity)." It's like the disease that plagued British cars for the longest time got contaminated with the German propensity to build overly complex monstrosities.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#206

Every time I see this kind of article, no one really bothers about sb/server redundancy, load balancers, etc. are we ok with just 1 big server that may fail and bring several services down? You saved a lot of money but you'll spend a lot of time in maintenance and future headaches.

Tbh, my one server paperless deployment has a higher uptime then most services.

If your scaling need is not that high, you can get very far with a single server

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#207

  > 30 MySQL databases (248 GB of data)
  > 34 Nginx virtual hosts across multiple domains
  > GitLab EE (42 GB backup)
  > Neo4J Graph DB (30 GB graph database)
  > Supervisor managing dozens of background workers
  > Gearman job queue
  > Several live mobile apps serving hundreds of thousands of users
He's doing all of that on a single server?!

I'm not against vertical scaling and stuff, but 30 db instances in one server is just crazy.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#208
post #156

> Old server: CentOS 7 — long past its end-of-life, but still running in production. New server: AlmaLinux 9.7 — a RHEL 9 compatible distribution and the natural successor to CentOS. So they did same mistake all over again. Debian or Ubuntu would just be upgrade-in-place and migrate

I work with Linux deployments for a living and I have no idea what you are talking about.

[flagged]

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#209
post #207

> 30 MySQL databases (248 GB of data) > 34 Nginx virtual hosts across multiple domains > GitLab EE (42 GB backup) > Neo4J Graph DB (30 GB graph database) > Supervisor managing dozens of background workers > Gearman job queue > Several live mobile apps serving hundreds of thousands of users He's doing all of that on a single server?! I'm not against vertical scaling and stuff, but 30 db instances in one server is just…

> 30 db instances

They didn't say that and the article didn't allude to that. 1 instance with 30 databases.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You just hear too many horror stories of data being leaked. Even if Hetzner uses a 3rd party system to do the verification - that 3rd party probably has to store your pics for some time.

But at least if there is an alternative then great.

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