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C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

blog.scaleway.com

11–20 of 231 posts

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#11
Avotons are very slow, an 8C SoC will typically be slower than an 8 year old 2C desktop CPU (I ran Go builds as a benchmark on my own 2.4 GHz C2750 vs. a 2008 iMac with 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo).

As for Scaleway, some people seem to like it very much, but I found their policy about spamming their users problematic. They (online.net) mock you at registration with a sleazy checked and disabled box for receiving spam ("product news" etc.), therefore I would consider their offers "ad-supported".

The C2 is advertised as "bare-metal", but since they offer a 4C variant, I doubt that (there's a 4C variant, the C2550, but that doesn't seem to be a sane choice). C2L might be a full dedicated box (or not), but C2S and C2M seem very much VPS/shared. It's likely to be based on SuperMicro MicroBlades: http://www.supermicro.nl/products/MicroBlade/module/MBI-6418... (4 nodes in 1 3U blade!).

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#14
I had a great experience with scaleway.

However last time I checked the still have only IPv4 and very few of them, it happens to me that I wanted to spin up an instance for a quick experiment but wasn't possible to have a public IP where to connect, mine was just a simple experiment, nothing important, but still...

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#16
post #14

I had a great experience with scaleway. However last time I checked the still have only IPv4 and very few of them, it happens to me that I wanted to spin up an instance for a quick experiment but wasn't possible to have a public IP where to connect, mine was just a simple experiment, nothing important, but still...

The FAQ [1] says that C1 servers don't support IPv6 but C2 servers do.

[1] https://www.scaleway.com/faq/server/

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#17
post #8
post #5

Prices seem really great but a few paragraphs down they say the servers are based on Avoton SoCs. Intel Avoton is an Atom chip (Silvermont core), so CPU-bound performance will be somewhat lower than the usual Sandy Bridge/Haswell/whatever core that you get on AWS or Google Compute Engine. It's a server SoC though so I/O throughput is probably pretty decent...

That's what scares me a bit. The multi-core performance is great (considering their pricing), but single-threaded performance is quite a bit below what the competition gets you. If you're running a web server with something single-threaded (like PHP) requests might start taking a bit longer than you're used to.

Well, that is the whole point, you are suppose to have a whole bunch of small, inexpensive, power efficient, cores.

If the software you normally use doesn't take advantage of, at least, multi core hardware, then you can obtain more value from other hosting provider...

On the other hand if your software can takes advantages of multicore hardware, or -- even better -- multi node architecture, then scaleway is likely the best option.

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#18
post #12

If you want even more affordable (but lower performance), http://lowendspirit.com/

I would be careful with them. I've bought couple VPSes there and there was always an issues. In one instance provider vanished after 3 months, in another one VPS is still live but it's terrible slow (high ping latency). I am not complaining much because I paid for them ~$7/year (yes, thats year) but still, the same companies offer more expensive options and I wouldn't risk data lost. Use DigitalOcean, I think its very reliable and fairly inexpensive solution, just avoid London datacenter if you are in UK, for some reason Amsterdam is way faster.

Re: C2: Affordable X86-64 Servers

#20
Not surprised to read in the comments they're a subsidiary of Online.net. Ever since they've introduced ultra-cheap dedicated boxes ten years ago, it seems everybody's been sub-renting either them or OVH. I wonder why there aren't more similar offers worldwide, at least in Europe (I can only think of Leaseweb, and they're data capped). The network backbone isn't much different in Britain, Holland or Germany. And the server units aren't really custom.
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