ENGINEERING 28 upvotes 2024

Hetzner now throttling shared CPUs if you use >20%

28 pts
Hacker News Signal
2024 · Shared by @micw
Hetzner now throttling shared CPUs if you use >20% by @micw

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled reflections, business mechanics, and tactical takeaways:

In this technical retrospective (2024), @micw shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
2
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
3
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.

Founder's Discussion Replies (@micw)

Direct clarifications and follow-up comments shared by the author during the live discussion:

OP @micw Original Author

Hetzner has changed their FAQ for shared CPU cloud servers. Similar to AWS they define a CPU baseline (20-33%, depending on server type). If that baseline is permanently exceeded, the CPUs are throttled.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

Key perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (20 total discussions):

IU @iudqnolq Peer Contributor
LY @lyu07282 Peer Contributor

I would think if you have something that needs >20% CPU constantly, you really shouldn't be relying on a shared resource for it in the first place.

To put it in relation we are talking here about less than 15€ per month for 2 dedicated vCPUs/8GB/80GB vs. 5€ per month with half the RAM and HDD. It really doesn't matter.

AN @andrewstuart Peer Contributor

What if you needed to use your hetzner or Amazon computers to do………. computing?

HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE 28 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 20 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: