Hetzner EX 4S Unixbench, dd and htparm results

https://gist.github.com/1723876

by simon_kun • 14 years ago

60 42 14 years ago

gist.github.com

Kudos• 14 years ago

TLDR; the €59/mo EX 4S scores higher (1729) than AWS m2.4xlarge (1511).

pgroves• 14 years ago

That number for AWS is based on running the benchmark in May 2010 [1].

[1] http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/05/what-is-ecu-cpu-benchma...

simon_kun3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure AWS have updated their specs since then (all the specs for an ECU refer to a 1Ghz 2007 Xeon). We also tested our staging c1.xlarge and it scored less than the cloudharmony results indicated a c1.xlarge should.

JoachimSchipper• 14 years ago

bashtoni• 14 years ago

Apples / Oranges.

Quite apart from the ability to buy by the hour, the Hetzner offering really isn't suitable for processing any data you care about - it's not using ECC RAM, and the processor used doesn't support it.

qaywsx• 14 years ago

you could use the ex6:

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6

a little more expensive (69 EUR) and less RAM (16 GB) but using ECC.

sandGorgon• 14 years ago

or someone like providerservice.com who have almost the same specs but with no setup fee.

jules2• 14 years ago

If you're using an AWS m2.4xlarge (score: 1511) then you pay $2.00 per hour. If you're using this Hetzner (score: 1729) you pay less than $0.09 per hour. You'd have to use very few hours indeed for AWS to be cheaper. That's not even factoring in traffic. You get 10TB per month with Hetzner which would cost you an additional $1200/month (!) with Amazon. AFAICT Amazon doesn't use ECC ram either; at least I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Hetzner does have competitively priced servers with ECC ram.

mjb2• 14 years ago

Why is this being downvoted? The processor used (i-7 2600) does not support ECC RAM, and this platform does not include it. A server platform without ECC RAM is a pretty big disadvantage for several reasons, to most compelling being the high real-world rate of memory errors in real systems. Memory errors in non-ECC systems can be extremely difficult and expensive to track down, and can cause data corruption or loss if the machine is used in the data pipeline.

In one study (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf), strong correlations were found between age, usage and error rate. Before using a server without ECC RAM, it's worth doing a quick estimate of the amount of data you intend to move around, and whether it's worth it to you (and, more importantly, your customers) to save a little money going with a non-ECC platform.

Travis2• 14 years ago

What would be the downside to using non ECC RAM in a heavily loaded server? Would it cause processes to crash?

klaruz• 14 years ago

Do you have a link to where Amazon says EC2 uses ECC RAM? I can't seem to find one.

simon_kun3• 14 years ago

I can't find one either. In fact, AWS doesn't seem to be running with ECC RAM except for some of the GPU instances. Happy to be corrected here.

onfocusin• 14 years ago

You can get the one with ECC (EX 6) it's just 10euro extra / per month... which is still away cheeper than AWS.

vladd• 14 years ago

The price for Hetzner's EX 4S is 49.58 EUR for non-EU customers and 59 EUR per month VAT-included for most EU customers (EU corporations registered for VAT purposes need to apply the VAT specific to their own country).

An Amazon m2.4xlarge instance (High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Reserved Instance) with Heavy Utilization on a 3-year commitment costs $9'660 for the 3y term and 3 * 365 * 24 * $0.454 = $11'931 in usage fees, which means a $21'591 total, $7'197 per year or $600 per month (EUR 458 per month at the current exchange rate).

458 EUR versus 49-60 EUR is 9x more expensive at full-time usage. (instance type and price data extracted from http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ and http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ ).

If you were to consider just the Amazon Heavy Utilization term commitment for 3 years, that's still $9'660 / 3 / 12 = $268 (EUR 205) each month.

julian373• 14 years ago

That's hardly a fair comparison. Last time I checked Hetzner doesn't offer auto scaling, "elastic" load balancing, or any of the countless other features that EC2 offers. Actually, forget auto-scaling: what if you want to bring up another bunch of instances manually to deal with a spike in demand?

The EX 4S looks like a very compelling alternative for many use cases but saying that its 9x cheaper is comparing apples to oranges.

dasrecht• 14 years ago

Of course Elastic Scaling is not possible. Because Hosting a server in a datacenter and having cloud instances are two different stories. If you have need for flexibility you can simply run a loadbalancer having your base hardware hosted for a good price at hetzner (or another datacenter you like) and then spin up some AWS Instances behind the loadbalancer for dealing with spikes.

Or as others have written you can buy 3 boxes at hetzner and scale 300% ;)

Solution?

growt• 14 years ago

Maybe not 9x, but how about 3x?

You can rent 3 Hetzner servers to deal with 300% load spikes or improve reliability. And you're still 3 times cheaper then EC2.

fleitz2• 14 years ago

Actually it's a really fair comparison, for the price of the AWS service you can buy 9 hetzner instances. So you don't need to spin anything up, just buy it.

A long term contract is the perfect comparison because it's a similar service, you know you'll be using the capacity so you pay up front to have it 'reserved' and in exchange receive reduced prices. Normally with EC2 you'd buy 1 instance and then spin up 8 more on demand, with hetzner you just buy 9 machines and pay the same price you'd pay for 1 AWS machine. When your load spikes you've got 8 extra machines to handle the load. Voila, "auto scaling".

I don't know very many businesses that need to scale beyond 8X capacity for an afternoon. If you really think you need the EC2 API to add and remove machines on demand just install UEC.

It may be comparing apples to oranges but I can tell you that when I need fruit if apples are a $1/lb and oranges are $9/lb I buy apples.

Personally, I think the XS29 @ $299 per month would have been a much better comparison, with 15 drives you could push through some serious IO which would make it suitable for running a database on.

nirvana2• 14 years ago

The only problem with your comparison is that you forgot to include the 149 Euro setup fee for the Hetzner server. I don't think this makes a material difference however over three years.

Some would say this isn't fair because you're not including elastic scaling which AWS supports, however you can't elastically scale with a 3 year commitment. Further its hard to estimate how much scaling you'll need because that's a highly variable figure.

But you can say that you will need to keep some number of servers up and running 24/7 for your service.

I think it would be a more perfect comparison to compare AWS's on-demand price to Hetzner with the built in higher performance of the 4S considered as a hot standby for scaling. (I don't know how long it takes Hetzner to provision extras, though I hear its relatively fast.) Since servers are cheap (at Hetzner, at least) it seems reasonable to have 1 or 2 extra spun up if you really have spiky traffic.

Since I'm planning to get a cluster of Hetzner boxes to support a Riak distributed cluster, and each Hetzner box is over provisioned for my needs (if I get a 4S I think they will be way over-provisioned, leaving a lot of headroom for this "elastic scaling" issue)... I think I'll compare the price of the same number of each boxes. (The AWS box has less performance, but I can elastically scale if I need to, and I'll just give the cost of those short term scale-ups to Amazon for free in this example.) The results may not be a perfect example for whatever others are considering, but it is a reasonable comparison for my purposes. (my service is a big data service, involving a lot of map reduce, requiring a cluster for operational simplicity and reliability as well as the ability to scale to millions of customers. I don't know if we'll get millions of customers, but one of our closest competitors had millions of customers within a few weeks.)

Amortizing the 4@ m2.4xlarge = 4* $600/month = $2,400 (using the $600 for the reserved instance costs from vladd's example.)

4@ Hetzner 4S = $149 Euro setup fee, amortized over 3 years = 4.14 Euro/month Add the 49.58 Euros in hosting = 53.71 euros x 4 servers = 214.87 euros or $282.50 a month.

So, for my cluster, AWS is 8.5 times as expensive.

I think that $282 per month is a lot easier for a scrappy startup to handle than $2,400 as well. This brings "big data" within the realm of undefended mortals.

Many people use AWS for all the extra services that AWS offers. The value of these services is, of course, subjective, as some startups will need them and others won't. But they all are based on a custom Amazon API which means if you build your architecture across many servers at Amazon you've got a fair amount of lock-in.

For me, I'll take the 8.5X reduction in costs, over lock in anyway. If Hetzner starts performing poorly, I can migrate without too much difficulty, and without having to re-architect my service.

cmer• 14 years ago

You might also want to check out some benchmarks I ran a few weeks ago. It compares many types of EC2 instances: http://blog.carlmercier.com/2012/01/05/ec2-is-basically-one-...

krobertson• 14 years ago

Why is this company getting so much attention as of late? I've never heard of them until recently, and considering how crowded the whole VPS/dedicated server market is, what makes them stand out?

julian373• 14 years ago

They are well known in Germany, they've been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, provider of VPS and colo services over here since the mid 90s.

The recent buzz is the first time I see them mentioned on US-centric sites though, if memory serves.

As for your question, it appears that many people find the price/performance ratio of the EX 4S compelling.

rorrr• 14 years ago

Because their prices are amazing.

inovica• 14 years ago

I've used them for a few years now. I think they used to be very much German-language focused, but over the past couple of years they have become more and more international. They give good support and the servers I have with them have been rock solid

hjalle2• 14 years ago

This server is does not come with ECC-memory. How "bad" would it be to run a database server on a non ecc server?

stephenson• 14 years ago

As said other places, they have ECC servers to: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6

hjalle2• 14 years ago

I never meant to criticise, I saw that they have ECC-servers as well, I just wondered what the implications would be if running a database on a non ecc server, as I've never really understood how much damage it could cause.

smw• 14 years ago

Does anyone offer a similar product / price point in the US? I haven't found anything remotely close. Why not?

simon_kun3• 14 years ago

For those that are curious, the motherboard in these systems is a ASUSTeK P8H67-M PRO. Seems like it's a gaming board - understandable given it's an i7 platform.

Hetzner EX 4S Unixbench, dd and htparm results

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