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Is it worth getting a Dedicated Server?
realbusiness
Member
in General
Right now - I can get
E3-1246v3
2*240gb SSD
32GB Ram
for around EUR38 a month
Or
Hetzner Cloud for:
8 Cpu
32GB Ram
240gb SSD
around EUR30 a month
Is dedicated worth the hassle? Is the CPU going to be much better? Or should I stick to the "cloud Vps"?
Comments
A dedicated is a dedicated machine and a cloud is shared, and performance can depend on provider.
I can see that E3 machine is offering twice disc space as well if that's important for you.
What are cpu specs for hetzner?
All I see is "Intel Skylake Xeon CPUs together with speedy NVMe SSDs".
Since they're around the same price, I'd say go with the cloud option. Unless you really want all the CPU cores and disk performance to yourself always.
E3-1246v3 2*240gb SSD 32GB Ram
for around EUR38 a month
where?
If consistent performance is important go with the dedicated. What's your application?
Python script. It appears to be CPU heavy.
The 8 core cloud server is a bit faster (total cpu) than the 4 core E3, though the clock speed is lower and (because of the shared ssd) the iops will also be lower. The cloud server has nice features like automated backups and snapshots if you want that. You do have to shut down the server while taking the backup or snapshot if you want to ensure consistent data.
With the dedi, you have the whole box completely to yourself and you're in control of everything. There are far more hardware options available. But you have to rent by the month and maybe pay a setup fee. The cloud servers have hourly billing so you can scale up and down depending on your workload.
If you set up the dedi's 2x ssd's as raid-1, you get the same usable space as the cloud server, which is already (your choice) local raid or distributed Ceph. If you choose Ceph you lose some iops, but if your host node crashes your VM can instantly migrate to another node.
My own preference is dedi for long term usage, cloud for short term, and make your own failover arrangements if you want a high-availability service. But, it depends a lot on what you're doing.
Hetzner
Thanks.
The main aim is to as much uptime as possible.
For RAW CPU power, the dedicated is a much better option (same number of faster cores/threads, compared to the Cloud VPS). For better availability, the VPS is slightly ahead due to the features (backups, snapshots etc).
In your case, dedicated seems to be the best choice since you want to hit the CPU hard with your Python script. Because the cloud option is most likely a shared resource, choosing this option will most likely result in a suspension and loss of service.
Hetzner cloud server with network storage is your best bet. With this (it costs no extra) if the host your server is running on dies, they boot it up on a different host. You don't get that level of redundancy with a dedicated server
No, the dedi is 4 cores/8 threads. The cloud server in practice is 8 real cores, though they are clocked slower than the E3 cores. Performance is about what you'd expect from scaling the frequencies and # of cores, i.e. the cloud server is around 1.3x faster. I have tested this and confirmed it on a 2 hour calculation running 100% cpu on all 8 cores, and similarly on some smaller tests.
What I don't know is what happens if you pound the cpu at 100% 24/7 for days or weeks. They might eventually throttle it. In reality the cloud server is 8 vcores on a humongous shared E5 box that's underutilized enough that you effectively can get 8 physical cores to yourself for long periods, but I can imagine their eventually deciding that you are a noisy neighbor.
Ok, I did not know that. When they say "cores", they usually mean "threads" (they = 99.9% providers). If Hetzner is providing real cores, that is awesome.
Of course they are hardware threads, and shared ones at that. It's just that the box has enough idle cycles (at least for now) that a busy thread can occupy an entire physical core for a substantial duration.
I think I will simply get 2 * 4vCPU and spread the load.
So if something went wrong with the dedicated, how quickly do they generally replace?
They are fast. Both issues with my dedi (failing hard drive and busted cpu fan) were fixed within 1/2 hour. Others report similar speed.
Can I ask what the python script does? Will it really run all cores nonstop? I'll be interested in hearing your experiences.
Python script collects data which we then analyse to form our own market intelligence.
I am sorry I am not sure about how many cores it will consume. I am not that technical. All I know if when we ran 6 scripts on 4vCPU server - it maxed out the CPU. Ram wasn't much used.
Where did Hetzner claimed that they run HA distributed Storage ?
https://www.hetzner.com/cloud see FAQ at bottom:
If you run it 24/7 you probably want one or more dedis. If you run it a few hours a day you're probably ok with the cloud servers.