Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

hetzner.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 345 posts

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#71

Post by senko »

habibur wrote: post #62
andyp-kw wrote: post #4

The prices seem cheaper than Digital Ocean and AWS Lightsail. What's the catch ?

Hetzner was launched [or may be got popular] after DigitalOcean took off. Since then they priced their boxes competitively relative to DO. A little bit less. That's still holding. Also note that at that time hosting in Europe wasn't a popular option, unlike what we see now.

You may be talking about their VPS offering.

Dedicated servers there were an option way before DigitalOcean, if I remember correctly (I recall at one point having some Linode and some Hetzner servers, DigitalOcean was not in the picture).

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#72

Post by christophilus »

config_yml wrote: post #37
Hetzner_OL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Object storage is, indeed, very high up on the list of hoped-for items on our customer wish list for cloud products. I can add a +1 to that for you and send it onto the dev team. As always, we don't announce roadmaps of upcoming features and when they will be ready. We prefer to announce things when they go live -- just like today! --Katie

I wouldn't hold your breath for this. I think Hetzner wants to stick to compute offerings, they don't have the manpower to run managed services like object storage or databases.

I'm personally fine with this, if it allows them to continue offering such solid value.

Wasabi is a great, inexpensive object store for anyone who's looking for that. I've had a really good experience with them (we have a little over 80TB of data there), and have found their support to be top-notch especially when you consider the price.

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#74

Post by Hetzner_OL »

capableweb wrote: post #59
christophilus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. For me, the only thing I miss when using Hetzner is the lack of a good startup script. Hetzner has something like an Ansible YML file you can use, but then if you want to reimage your machine, it doesn't give you any choice (that I've found) except to reuse the original script. What I'd like to have is something like Linode's start scripts feature which I've always found to be very nicely implemented.

Why have startup scripts when you can run your very own images? `Installimage` ( https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/operating-sy... ) allows you to install and run your own custom images, so run any bootstrapping once, create image from the results and then install that on the machines. If you really really need startup scripts, it'll be trivial to add it to your own image. Packer (and similar tooling) m…

Hetzner Cloud also has an extensive ISO library, and if there is something that is missing from that library that you would like to have -- including a specific custom image -- customers can write a support ticket on Cloud Console and our team can upload it for you. --Katie

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#75

Post by Kiro »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #15

I hope they created an offspring company with no access to the Hetzner main infrastructure. It would be very inconvenient to lose the "hosted in Germany" - a.k.a. "not accessible data for the US" - aspect in terms of GDPR.

How can AWS claim they are GDPR compliant?

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#76

Post by usrusr »

andyp-kw wrote: post #4

The prices seem cheaper than Digital Ocean and AWS Lightsail. What's the catch ?

Nobody is getting "trickle down"-level rich from it. It's an organically grown company that bootstrapped without any big high risk/high reward investment that expects massive returns in absence of failure. Basically a mom&pop from what in the US would be considered flyover that just happens to have found its way to large scale competetiveness. Through a unique combination of frugality and decisive spending I think.

Early example: a weirdly memorable ad captaign around 2000 that for many years occupied the single most expensive computer related print ad slot in Germany (decisive spending) with a series of ads that seemed not quite "high production values", but also not deliberately grungy, a weird "definitely trying to be high gloss perfection, but somehow not quite there" (like in-house best effort or some local design house, certainly not the big-name agency you'd expect for ads on that slot). More recent example: their hardware seems to be a continuation from early-Google style "desktops on shelves" that's now a custom rack design (still noticeably lower density than typical 16") that's all about finding good price/reliability spots in cheap CotS parts, e.g. according to certain "begins the scene" blogger visits they sort for publicity, price-optimized custom versions of desktop mainboards (same PCB but not placing any parts they don't need). Chances are company with big investor backing would either go all standard rack parts (from a supplier like Dell or something like that) or go all in designing their own.

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#77

Post by martin-adams »

Hetzner_OL wrote: post #35
KingOfCoders wrote: post #13

Hetzner customer for 20 (?) years. Wish they would add managed databases to their cloud.

Wow! Twenty years in this industry is a lifetime! Thanks so much for supporting us all these years! I will pass on a +1 for you to the dev team about the managed databases. --Katie

I absolutely love using Hetzner. Top of my wishlist is Managed Databases and Managed Kubernetes. This is the main of the reason why I'm using Digitalocean for production and Hetzner for more stateless use cases.

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#78

Post by christophilus »

capableweb wrote: post #59
christophilus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. For me, the only thing I miss when using Hetzner is the lack of a good startup script. Hetzner has something like an Ansible YML file you can use, but then if you want to reimage your machine, it doesn't give you any choice (that I've found) except to reuse the original script. What I'd like to have is something like Linode's start scripts feature which I've always found to be very nicely implemented.

Why have startup scripts when you can run your very own images? `Installimage` ( https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/operating-sy... ) allows you to install and run your own custom images, so run any bootstrapping once, create image from the results and then install that on the machines. If you really really need startup scripts, it'll be trivial to add it to your own image. Packer (and similar tooling) m…

It's just a minor gripe, but... a simple bash script (like Linode's start scripts) is a lot easier than what Hetzner offers-- a custom ISO? Nah. I'll just scp my script when the server is ready and run it myself.

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#79

Post by christophilus »

habibur wrote: post #62
andyp-kw wrote: post #4

The prices seem cheaper than Digital Ocean and AWS Lightsail. What's the catch ?

Hetzner was launched [or may be got popular] after DigitalOcean took off. Since then they priced their boxes competitively relative to DO. A little bit less. That's still holding. Also note that at that time hosting in Europe wasn't a popular option, unlike what we see now.

Hetzner has been around for 20 years, IIRC. Their cloud offering is newer, though.

Re: Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location

#80

Post by niemandhier »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #50
holoduke wrote: post #23

I am running a cluster of machines at Hetzner for years. Generally i am satisfied, but i like to share some bad experiences which took a month to fix. At some point some of my servers were facing random cpu stalls mostly at occuring midnight. I spend hours and nights to find out the cause. But i wasnt able to find it. Tracing the issue resulting in different causes everytime. After I contacted the Hetzner support tea…

> I contacted support again and received an arrogant email that the issue is related to my software and that they couldnt help me further. Doesn't surprise me, German companies always know better and will try to prove you wrong, whether you're their customer or supplier. Such is the business culture, I think.

I think its an issue of inter cultural communication.

My impression is that in Germany you bear the burden of proof that you actually have a problem, that its not your own fault, and that you did your part trying to fix it.

You usually can get good support in Germany ( even at government offices ) , IF you show up with your Leitordner ( legendary German ring binders) with all the receipts, all the possibly relevant account numbers, transaction ids and a detailed analysis of your own problem.

There is nothing that signals to German support staff that you have to be taken seriously like a ring binder, preferably with color coded markers at the margins and lots of punch pockets.

If you think this is satire, try it the next time you have an in person appointment...

Post reply on HN