Hetzner launches dual hexacore cpu, 128 GB ECC ram server for 299 €/month
In this technical retrospective (2013), @moonboots shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 29 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 11 comments
I have been a happy Hetzner customer for the past year.
I have a EX 4S server, with 32GB memory, 2x 3TB Hard Drives in Raid 1 and core I7. I installed VMWare ESX 5 on this machine and this is essentially my test lab on the cloud ( I am an information security engineer).
So, for the past year, I am able to host :
* Windows 2008 serverS (note the S, I have 4 of them running right now)
* a virtualized firewall (PFSENSE),
* one of the windows 2008 is my M$ Dev server (Visual Studio 2010 and 2012)
* several linux machines (backtrack, ubuntu server for zabbix, ubuntu 12.04 for all the atlassian suite),
* OpenVPN vpn server in debian
* FreeNAS machine
* Many other machines which I start and stop as I please, for testing purposes.
All this + 14 public IPV4 and a /64 public ipv6 for ONLY $109 dollars a month.
I don't have much latency issues and this machine is what has allowed me to drop my loaded desktop and work with just my rMBP because I have all the power I need for my work at just a SSH or RDP distance.
I suggest trying them out, specially the EX 5, which only costs 59 EUROS. Don't forget that if you are not in the Europe, you don't pay VAT (so it's another 19% discount)
Let me know if you have any specific questions. Too bad they don't have coupons or referrals :)
The only thing I have always disliked about Hetzner, is their traffic game. It's a horribly lame tactic to ever list unlimited traffic (unless it actually is).
10tb is a fine allotment, they should list that, and stop trying to be deceitful.
I have been a customer for quite a while, the only problem I have is, that they use used hard drives in their servers. If one of them fails, you can get it replaced for free but it is used one. You can get a new one but you have to pay for it
I'm constantly amazed at their pricing and overall good reviews.
Does anyone have experiencing using them in the USA? Is latency an issue?
Do they have a list of datacenter locations? Particularly datacenters in Switzerland?
I can't seem to find their DC locations.