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"Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

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Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#271

Post by banku_brougham »

bazzargh wrote: post #174
diggan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great question is "When did you last try to restore from a backup?" which usually is answered with "It's the built-in tooling, why would we assume it's broken?" or similar. Then fast-forward some months/years, and they try to restore from backups only to realize the backups never actually backed up what they cared about.

A fun one like that, a few years back we had some code using dynamodb that used the automatic point-in-time backups. I asked if it had been tested, need you guess the reply? Of course it turns out that the restore can only happen to a _new database name_ not the original, and the code had in multiple places hardcoded the assumption of what the db was called. So restoring also involved patching the code and rolling th…

'Roll-middle-out'

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#272

Post by lxgr »

doublerabbit wrote: post #200
jimjimwii wrote: post #169

Backups are irrelevent here (yes, backups are important). if hetzner really deleted production data without warning or providing a grace period for their customer to migrate their data, then they are simply not a stable foundation to build on. I have never been a customer of google cloud for this reason and i sure as hell wont deploy new servers on hetzner until they provide a clear statement on what went wrong and w…

> they are simply not a stable foundation to build on. They're a budget host, you should always proceed with caution and never rely on for production. It's the same as buying a second hand eBay server to host users upon. I learnt that the hard way. > Hetzner, the ball is in your court. Not really. If you read the T&C, you'll find that they can do anything with the server. From their T&C: 2.7. Furthermore, we reserve…

> Not really. If you read the T&C, you'll find that they can do anything with the server.

Yes, but that doesn’t mean that they have to.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#273

Post by movedx »

fireant wrote: post #269
movedx wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue I see here is the misguided assumption that Cloud is just automatically and unilaterally better than on-premise or professionally managed, hosted hardware. This isn't true in most cases. There are so many providers, and therefore examples, of physical tin being accessible in under a minute with cost:hardware ratios that blow Cloud out if the sky (pun! ha!) OVH have a server for USD $95/month (with n…

People on HN refuse to see this being an option in these discussions. Is either "cloud" or "build and manage your own physical rack inside a colo housing"

It's wild to me how hardcoded some of these people are. I think a lot of the younger generation on here might not have experienced the "bare metal days", so they don't know how far you can push the hardware and how much you can squeeze out of it.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#274

Post by auspex »

diggan wrote: post #22
KingOfCoders wrote: post #19

Whenever I ask a CTO if they have a backup (or plan-B) they say we're on AWS, we backup there and they will never go down as a company. And then I ask them what they do when their account gets shut (e.g. because they are selling something bad on Amazon and have the same phone number as the company account?) Or the instance some years ago where GCP closed because someone had wrongly classified image on their drive? Yo…

Another great question is "When did you last try to restore from a backup?" which usually is answered with "It's the built-in tooling, why would we assume it's broken?" or similar. Then fast-forward some months/years, and they try to restore from backups only to realize the backups never actually backed up what they cared about.

You have to test restoration as part of SOC 2, so most companies with real customers do it at least once a year.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#275

Post by sertraline »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #264
sertraline wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner was always like that, even before the AI wave. They lowball people with cheap pricing and arguably this attracts a lot of "unwanted" people, so Hetzner always acted strict on such issues. Last time I used them (pre-2020) they were going as far as requesting customer's ID and rejecting them on the basis of country of origin, and I assume this also includes facial features that may resemble "an average scammer"…

> they were going as far as requesting customer's ID and rejecting them on the basis of country of origin Wouldn't this be required for most cloud providers? Else, how do filter out buyers from Iran, Syria, or North Korea, who are probably banned from buying your EU-based services?

I've used OVH, Scaleway, Linode and Amazon in the past, right now I use a small provider that resells Serverius and Hetzner, none of them ever asked me for my ID and all of them allow usage of VPN to sign up for service. As to payment, at least Amazon used to allow usage of debit cards in the past. Hetzner was the only provider that asked me for an ID. I'm not from the banned countries either.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#276

Post by soulofmischief »

thephyber wrote: post #242
conductr wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt responsibility is a concern, GP just doesn’t enjoy being a part of the shit show

And my core point is that most companies are shit shows. Employees know what bullet points they should have to minimize downside risk, but struggle with how to get those done while also minimizing upside risk. In a world of scarcity, just keep communicating the tech debt. Maybe occasionally propose a project to address it.

Some people actually want to spend their time contributing to something meaningful. It also sounds like OP is worried executive incompetence might affect his job security.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#278

Post by Antitoxic6185 »

SamWhited wrote: post #47
aurareturn wrote: post #4

Hang on, Hetzner literally deleted all their data without warning? That’s actually insane and business killing. Both for Hetzner’s reputation and potentially for their customer.

This happens literally all the time with Hetzner, I can't tell you how many times I've heard some variation of this story (or seen it here on HN), but they're cheap, and most people aren't going to find the people complaining online about it even if they do actually try to find out more about the company, so I'm afraid it hasn't hurt them much.

A lot of people suck up to them, they seem to require formal ID proof to authorize your account outside EU and they can deny you without any reason whatsoever. If you look up online about similar things happening to others, the standard response you would see is "If you don't like them, take your business elsewhere". I would rather pay more with digital ocean than to be treated like untouchable with hetzner.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#279

Post by jamesfinlayson »

bazzargh wrote: post #174
diggan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great question is "When did you last try to restore from a backup?" which usually is answered with "It's the built-in tooling, why would we assume it's broken?" or similar. Then fast-forward some months/years, and they try to restore from backups only to realize the backups never actually backed up what they cared about.

A fun one like that, a few years back we had some code using dynamodb that used the automatic point-in-time backups. I asked if it had been tested, need you guess the reply? Of course it turns out that the restore can only happen to a _new database name_ not the original, and the code had in multiple places hardcoded the assumption of what the db was called. So restoring also involved patching the code and rolling th…

Ugh, very annoying limitation. I've written scripts to create dummy tables, restore backups and sync across to existing tables twice now.

Re: "Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

#280

Post by cutemonster »

egorfine wrote: post #221
spookie wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really moot today given the current geopolitical landscape? I would assume not given they're based in Germany.

It's moot because it makes no sense to mine on CPU or even on an entry level GPU that Hetzner did provide at one point. You will make a couple of $/m. Besides, no mainstream crypto is mined anymore except Bitcoin.

What's in place instead of mining, nowadays? Proof of stake or sth like that?
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