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Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

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Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if it were anyone else, yeah I might agree, but I think Salvatore is being genuine here (and have seen Claude do a similarly surprising job fixing ops issues).

I don't think so. I think he's clearly abusing language (saying "Claude Code migrated the stufff", rather than "I migrated the stuff after using Claude to help write boilerplate, then I went on double-checking it, testing it, and then running it")

I don't think you've nailed it either. He SHOULD be saying "54 days ago, I powered on my computer and opened a terminal. From my editor I reviewed my code files and realized I had quite a mess on my hands. Realizing it was the year A.D. 2026, I decided to fire up a modern tool. I typed "claude" into my terminal. As it launched I told it I wanted helping taking my running programs and moving them from the virtual private servers I was running in Linode (inc) and Digital Ocean (co) to Hetzner (LLC). As Claude used it's tool use abilities it read the files and made suggestions on how to do the migrations, it indicated that it could go ahead and copy the files and run the needed commands but I would need to give it permission first. I granted it permission. Once it said the services were running, I instructed it to test that they were accessible and reliable while I reviewed the glowing new code it had written. In summary, with the help of Claude Code I was able to redeploy 37 services in Hetzner."

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#262
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…

IMO nobody was paying for magic compute. they're paying to not touch ten years of glue. if agents eat that glue, the moat gets thin fast.

> agents eat that glue

No wonder they hallucinate :)

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#263

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.

In 20 years of hosting all kinds of web services, some of them serving over 200m requests per month, a crashing single server was twice a problem. Dealing with over engineered bullshit, that behaved in strange ways that disrupted the service was far more often a problem. So, yes, redundancy is something that can be left away, if you're comfortable to be responsible for fixing things at a Saturday morning.

People also tend underestimate how much compute these dedicated servers got, compared to cloud offerings, and what that feels like without 100 layers of management abstraction in-between. You are likely not going to ever choke a plenty-cored, funny-RAMed root server at a fraction of your cloud costs. This overkill resource estate can be the answer to a lot of scalability worries. It's always there, no sharing shit all.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#264
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.

I don't see what checking a file system has to do with anything either.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#265

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.

I had like... less than 10 minutes downtime on Hetzner in years (funny enough, that makes my personal containers more reliable than productionized AWS and GCP deployments with their constant partial outages). So perhaps all that complexity (beyond maybe a backup container) isn't really necessary for companies where a bit of downtime doesn't really affect revenue?

Like, I know Leetcode tells otherwise, but most companies really don't need full FAANG stack with 99.999% uptime. A day of outage in a few years isn't going affect bottom lines.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I think he's clearly abusing language (saying "Claude Code migrated the stufff", rather than "I migrated the stuff after using Claude to help write boilerplate, then I went on double-checking it, testing it, and then running it")

I don't think you've nailed it either. He SHOULD be saying "54 days ago, I powered on my computer and opened a terminal. From my editor I reviewed my code files and realized I had quite a mess on my hands. Realizing it was the year A.D. 2026, I decided to fire up a modern tool. I typed "claude" into my terminal. As it launched I told it I wanted helping taking my running programs and moving them from the virtual priv…

I think the parent has a point. For how many other accomplishments is the tool framed as the responsible party? We don't say "cranes built the skyscraper", people did. Why do we shift accountability when it comes to AI?

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#267
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.

I signed up yesterday and didn't have to provide anything.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#268
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but done with a proxy in-between that can "pause" requests, you could have done the move with 0 seconds and no rejected requests, and I don't think mydumper/myloader/xtrabackup matters for that. The "migration" would be spinning up a new database, making it catch up, then switching over. If you can pause/hang in-flight requests while switching, not a single one needs to fail :)

The "making it catch up" is the tricky part. You need an initial backup for that. xtrabackup can take that backup "hot" without blocking read/writes. mysqldumper will block writes for whatever time that initial backup takes, for 2TB of data that's going to be hours. Once you have that initial back up you can set your replica and make it catch up , then you switch. I choose to take the few seconds of downtime doing th…

Isn't that just a flag? "--lock-tables=false", alternatively --single-transaction for InnoDB.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#269
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…

IMO nobody was paying for magic compute. they're paying to not touch ten years of glue. if agents eat that glue, the moat gets thin fast.

Yeah, at the last job there was a single outdated external wiki server left sitting in DO for those kinds of reasons while everything updated and internal had moved already (if not twice). If it hadn't become such a security risk it would never have been moved.

Re: Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner

#270

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

That's a trend which is more and more common nowadays. I wish the industry would adopt more zero knowledge methods in this regards. They are existing and mathematically proven but it seems there is no real adoption. - OpenAI wants my passport when topping up 100 USD - Bolt wanted recently my passport number to use their service - Anthropic seems wants to have passports for new users too - Soon age restriction in OS o…

It's partially because the internet only grants us free storage (noun), not free compute (verb).

Which is fundamental to so many XY problems, including why cloud services are so byzantine instead of just providing isolated secure shells with full root access within them. And why distrust is a growing force in the world instead of, say, unconditional love.

I always dreamed of winning the internet lottery so that I could help dismantle the systems of control which currently dominate our lives. Which starts with challenging paradigms from first principles. That looks like asking why we only have multicore computing in the cloud and not on our desktops (which could be used to build our own cloud servers).

When we're missing an abstraction layer, that creates injustice and a power drain from the many to the few. Some examples:

- CPU -> multicore MIMD (missing) -> GPU (based on the subset SIMD instead of MIMD upon which graphics libraries could be built)

- UDP -> connectionless reliable stream (missing) -> TCP (should have been a layer above UDB not beside it)

- UDP/TCP -> P2P (NAT and other limitations block this and were inherited by IPv6 as generational trauma) -> WebRTC (redundant if we had P2P that "just works")

- internet connection -> symmetric upload/download speed (blocked for legal reasons under the guise of overselling to reduce cost) -> self-hosted web servers (rare due to antitrust issues stemming from said legal reasons)

- internet connection -> multicast (missing due to suppression of content-addressable-memory/hash-tree/DHT/) -> self-hosted streaming (negates the need for regions and edge caching)

I had high hopes for Google and even Tesla (for disrupting the physical world). But instead of open standards, they gave us proprietary vendor lock-in: Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and NACS instead of J1772 (better yet both). Because of their refusal to interoperate at the lowest levels, there is little hope that they will do the real work of solving the hard problems at the highest levels.

For example, I just heard that China has built thousands of battery swap stations to provide effectively instant charging for electric vehicles, whereas that's something that Tesla can't accomplish because they chose to build Supercharger stations instead.

Once we begin to see the world this way, it's impossible to unsee it. It calls into question the fundamentals (like scarcity) which capitalism is based upon, and even the concept of profit itself.

From a spiritual perspective, I believe that this understanding is what blocks me from using my talents to use the system for personal gain to win the internet lottery. The people who own the systems of control don't have this understanding, and even view its basis in empathy as a liability. So we sacrifice the good of the many for the good of the few and call that progress.

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