Hetzner now provides IPv6 only dedicated servers
In this technical retrospective (2021), @miyuru 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 Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE 371 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 252 comments
I don't know if others have experienced it, but I run a monitoring server from Hetzner and have daily issues with IPv6 latency and packet loss (edit: Finland DC).
I monitor 3 other IPv6 locations, the monitoring server will very randomly throw alerts, and only from Hetzner. Yet, when I opened a ticket, I was told it was the fault of the other providers, despite the mtr traces showing otherwise, and not having issues outside Hetzner.
Hopefully more IPv6 users means that I won't be the only one impacted by those networking issues. I find IPv6 useful for servers that are not public-facing. They are firewalled of course, but it also means I can access them directly from home without hops or VPN (my home having a static IPv6 address).
Warning, Rootless Docker doesn't support the ability to see the users source IP yet with IPv6.
* https://github.com/rootless-containers/rootlesskit/issues/258 ↗
* https://github.com/rootless-containers/slirp4netns/issues/253 ↗
This has repercussions if you need to be able to see the user's IP for throttling, banning, etc.
We ordered a new root server a few days before this, but are trying to primarily use IPv6 anyway. However the more I try to set things up, the more painful it becomes, with services like Github not being entirely available on IPv6, various ISPs not supporting IPv6 at all, so service proxying is needed etc.
Is there any best-practice for IPv6 VM host setup? I found the IPv6 First Guide [0], but I'm not entirely happy with the bridged networking to VMs being used.
[0] https://ipv6-first-guide.hillbrecht.de/ ↗
The announcement doesn't indicate why I would want this. Is it for politically motivated people who want to help push IPv6 forward? Is it to simplify configuration?
I had to click through to the FAQ to read about additional cost for IPv4, but there the difference isn't specified, so it led to more questions, but I gave up.
Reminded me of this other front page item: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/07/25/faqs-why-we-dont-have-them/ ↗
Unfortunately, the firewall offering that Hetzner provides for their dedicated servers is IPv4 only.
So, if you're using software on the server which mucks around with firewall rules (eg using OS provided firewall on the server isn't good enough), then you're sad out of luck.
And their current IPv4 firewall has a 10 rule limit per server, which can't be raised. Mind boggling. :(
I've asked Hetzner if they have any plans to extend their firewall to include IPv6 support, or raise the # of firewall rules, but they have no plans to at this stage. :( :( :(