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Cheap vps or server for encoding
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Cheap vps or server for encoding

mahjongmahjong Member
edited January 2017 in Requests

Dear Users,

I would like to ask if any of you know providers which allows video encoding on their servers. I am looking for the cheapest solutions as i do not need speedy encodes. Would use the server for ffmpeg x264 encoding. I need about 50GB space with 500GB of transfer at least. CPU wise it would be great if i could get at least a dual core intel atom (as you see, i don't need much). It is much more for learning purposes, don't know when will i be able to use it 24/7.
I know how to use cpulimit, but i would prefer a dedicated CPU core. My budget is around 5$/e month, but invoice can be quarterly/half year or (depending on the deal) yearly too.

For now the following servers/providers meet my requirements:

  • 5 euro kimsufi - i can never see it in stock.

  • 15$/quarterly atom with vortexnode - not in stock

  • online.net is a little bit over the edge with the 9 euro + tax, also 20 euro + tax setup fee

In stock, but unsure if they allow encoding:

  • time4vps smallest storage vps (1,9ghz CPU guaranteed) 4e/month

  • scaleway smallest baremetal 2.99e/month

Anything similar which is in my budget and allows video encoding?

Thank you in advance!

Comments

  • bacloudbacloud Member, Patron Provider
    edited January 2017
  • As you can see i provided examples of very good providers but they are out of stock. So it is not impossible. Also i do not need a fast server/vps, but one which allows encoding. Read before post. Thank you!

  • ContraWebContraWeb Member
    edited January 2017

    I can provide u:

    50GB SSD

    1GB DDR4 RAM

    5TB Bandwidth

    1x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz

    In the Netherlands

    For $5/Month

    Please PM me if interested as we do not have this package on our website.

  • Any baremetal server such as the scaleway c1 will let you cpu-hog as much as you want: that's the point of a dedi. But, the c1 is pretty slow and often out of stock these days. I have one and have been wanting to bench a transcode on it sometime. It only has reasonable total speed because it has 4 cores. The 4 cores put together is about like one E5 thread.

    Imo it's almost always better to transcode with a dedi if you do it a lot, but an occasional quick one (up to a few cpu minutes) won't bother most vps hosts. Anyway it looks like you got an offer. Otherwise I'd suggest a BuyVM slice at $3.50 or $7 a month.

  • I think @ishaq was complaining about "no one using the too damn overpowered cpu in this host node" a few times.

    Thanked by 1Ishaq
  • I'm sure we can accommodate this. What location do you prefer?

    PM me and we can discuss.

  • If you really want an Atom, I can sort you out with one. :)

    Thanked by 1mahjong
  • Thank you for all the answer, probably i will take the offer by @VortexMagnus :)!

  • VortexMagnus's Atom is better but if it weren't available, another alternative in super cheap dedis is digicube.fr's low end atoms: http://digicube.fr/rapidserveurs

  • If all he needs is two atom cores, why not get a Scaleway VPS? Its 2 atom cores for 3€ a month.

  • MagicalTrain said: If all he needs is two atom cores, why not get a Scaleway VPS? Its 2 atom cores for 3€ a month.

    That's a vps and I don't know what happens if you peg the cores for weeks. That said I've done it for some hours without any complaints. It's nice that they're hourly so you can spin them down when you're done with them. They're just so slow though! The 8 core box has reasonable throughput because of the parallelism, but if you want to transcode one long video, you'll need to somehow chop it into parts and transcode them simultaneously if you want to use all the cores.

    I don't know what happens if you spin up a small DO or Vultr vps and cpu-hose it for some hours before shutting it down. I've wondered. But so far I just do most everything on a cheap Hetzner dedi.

  • mahjongmahjong Member
    edited February 2017

    I prefer dedicated for transcoding videos and scraping jobs (or anything cpu intensive). I used ramnode in the past with cpulimit, there were no complaints. For now i would like to go for more dedicated resources so i don't have to be careful about a wrongly written script hogging cpu.

    @Willie: why would you need to cut videos to smaller parts? Cannot ffmpeg (or most video encoders) use multiple threads on scaleway? Is it because of the arm processor on the smallest server? Or what is the reason for this suggestion?

  • This is the reason why sometime we need servers with GPU.

  • williewillie Member
    edited February 2017

    Most of the ffmpeg transcoders I've used are single threaded or essentially so. If there are specific ones you're interested, I could test. I generally use a Hetzner i7-3770 which has 4 cores, 8 threads, but I get around 100% cpu usage in a transcoding run instead of 400% or 800%. I did try it on a C1 ARM just to see what would happen, and it worked but was around 10x slower per core than the i7. The Atom is maybe 5x slower per core but has twice as many cores, so comes to maybe 1/3 to 1/2 the total speed of the i7.

  • mahjongmahjong Member
    edited February 2017

    @willie - that is interesting. What codec did you use? Did you set the threads flag in ffmpeg? It should definitely use multiple core.

    Thanked by 1ad0
  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR
    edited February 2017

    Hello,

    You can try our KVM packages, encoding is allowed. If you need dedicated cores, please take a look at Hybrid Servers. wishosting.com

  • I recently got a "root server" at Netcup which has 2 dedicated cores with 6GB RAM for 7EUR/month. If you are registered as a company outside Germany, they can remove the VAT so that it becomes 36EUR/6 months (still over your budget). Found them via this forum itself.

  • We can provide you with a VPS or Atom server for this. If you're still interested, please contact us at http://hostingspecialists.co.uk/submitticket.php and we can put a price together for you.

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited February 2017

    If you can rise a little your budget...

    https://www.wholesaleinternet.net/dedicated/

    Dedicates server
    Auto installations / reinstallations / rescue mode / ~10 OS to chose
    Intel Core2Duo Preconfigured
    1.6GHz or faster - 1 processor
    2 Cores / 2 Threads
    GB DDR2
    250GB SATA
    100mbit Unmetered
    10$ per month
    Delivered instantly

  • williewillie Member
    edited February 2017

    Wow, those are almost always out of stock but they're available right now. Comparable machine would be the 4 core Atom Scaleway at 12 euro/mo, with 8gb ram and 50gb ssd. Hourly billing again, which is nice.

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited February 2017

    willie said: 4 core Atom Scaleway

    The 4 core atoms (avoton c2550) I think are enough stronger than the Core2Duo (most of them are E7300) with benchmark 2329 compared to ~1700 for the C2D, but the plus of WSI server is the local and x5 hard disk, the extra ip availibility and the easier way to troubleshot the server (rescue mode). And it is ~3$ cheaper. On the other hand, Scaleway's 4core atoms are VTx capable, WSI C2D are not.

  • williewillie Member
    edited February 2017

    You can add ip's to the scaleway, 1 euro/month each, point and click interface. You can also shut off the server (stop paying for it) while holding on to the disk space (1 euro/mo/50gb) and ip's (so they stay static). Then when you spin up a new server you can connect the old disk and ips to it.

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited February 2017

    willie said: You can add ip's to the scaleway, 1 euro/month each

    This is not true, unfortunately... You can have reserved ips (1 euro each) but they cannot be attached to a server, only replace or change the default one. All of scaleway's servers can handle only one ip (see https://www.scaleway.com/docs/deal-with-private-reserved-ips/).

    willie said: You can also shut off the server (stop paying for it) while holding on to the disk space (1 euro/mo/50gb)

    You can shut down a server by moving the HDD image to cold storage. This can take even 5 minutes to complete (because scaleway's system converts hdd contents from storage pool to image). But you cannot troubleshot the server by using something like IPMI or a rescue system (there isn't any rescue system there).
    As of the ip, it is not attached to the shutdown server but to the client's account (deleting/shutting down a server does not include by default the ip). Then, you can reuse it if you spin on the server again, or attache it to a new instance.

    P.S. I have both C2D from WSI and C2 from Scaleway live atm.

  • jvnadr said: You can have reserved ips (1 euro each) but they cannot be attached to a server, only replace or change the default one. All of scaleway's servers can handle only one ip

    Oh oops, I misunderstood the docs then. I never tried to use more than one ip so it wasn't an issue. Thanks.

    Thanked by 1jvnadr
  • willie said: Oh oops, I misunderstood the docs then

    Of course, I wish you were true...

  • For those who interested: i will take @VortexMagnus's offer.
    Also i contacted time4vps about the CPU on their storage servers. Though it is dedicated one core, you can only utilize it fully for one hour, so the 'dedicated' one core is more like guaranteed cpu speed (or something like that, but definitely not dedicated).

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