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dedi & VPS hosting primer
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dedi & VPS hosting primer

jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker
edited November 2019 in Tutorials

Not that it's the first one of its kind but when I saw todays "Best KVM VPS under €3 and €5 per month" thread I decided that it was about time for someone to provide some hosting basics insight.

For a start most people think that the hardware costs are decisive. Well, they are usually not as you will see further down. What really drives the cost of providing dedis and VPSs is (in no particular order)

  • IPs
  • Bandwidth
  • Electricity
  • Support

Lets start with the last one, power. In Europe you'll pay anywhere between about 0.1€ and 0.3€ per kWh (in a DC). Small fries, right? Nope, very wrong. Let me show you:
Assume a server with a typical configuration: dual 100W processor + another 50W for memory and SSDs. An average month has 30.5 days of 24 hrs each, so power costs will be about 0.25 x 30.5 x 24 x 0.3€ (in DE) = about 55€
"But a server doesn't run full speed all the time" I hear you say. Well, yes and no. Yes it doesn't always run full speed. But No because TDP is not the real world max. power drawn by a processor. My second point is that no matter what, power is a major cost factor, in fact it is typically a multiple of the hardware cost.
And yes, that also means that it makes a big difference whether a processor has a 50W vs a, say 120W TDP.
But of course we must also see the number of cores and the performance of the cores. More below.

Bandwidth may look cheap at, say €1.25 per TB - but keep in mind that the end product, say a VPS sells for just a couple of bucks, so even €1/mo is a major cost factor.

Finally IPs, a particularly nasty issue for many because not only do they cost about €1 per month (if you are lucky, e.g. with Hetzner) but those costs are also bound to further rise.

And at this point we have not even looked at hardware, colo, and human resources!

So, what does a provider need in terms of hardware? Well, that largely depends on how he plays the game. He can go cheap and rent a dedi from e.g. Hetzner, say with 8 cores, 32 GB memory, 2 x 240 GB SSD (soft raid) plus an upgrade to a 10 Gb/s port plus 10 TB plus say 35 IPs for about €120 per month (let's not be picky about the exact price) and slice it up into 32 KVM VPS (each getting half a HT). The problem is that that will cost him about 4€ per month so even if he were willing to work for free he'd have to sell at an unattractive price.

"But he could slice it into more pieces!" you say? Well, kind of. If he did that he'd also need more IPs, say 64 and more bandwidth. In other words: no, not really. Where he would save is at the hardware but he'd pay dearly to get more VPS out of that box and end up with a considerably weaker product.

So, let's be realistic. He really has just 2 routes: he either creates a more powerful product by slicing it into 16 "root" servers, each with it's dedicated HT, 2 GB memory, about 15 GB SSD (Raid 1) and tries to sell them for €8+(whatever he and his team need to earn) per "root" VPS. Not really something that'd sell well and easy.
Or he slices it up into 32 KVM VPS with ?? GB SSD? Because "7.5 GB SSD" doesn't sell well, So, let's say he upgrades the SSDs to 480GB but that adds about €25 to his cost, so he would need to sell those 32 VPS with 1GB mem. and 15 GB SSD for min. €4.5 + whatever he and his team need (e.g. to provide support).

Clearly this (renting dedis) is not the smart route to go. So, what's better?

The answer is "scale of operations" or in other words, going bigger, much bigger. You see, there is a reason why the large providers can either sell a lot cheaper or make considerably more profit (or make any profit at all ...). Running larger operations also means larger purchase quantities which again means lower prices. That, in fact, is one of the major reasons why large companies can afford to sell a TB for a bit more than €1 ... and still earn something on it - while a small provider might struggle to get comparable quality bandwidth for 3 times the cost.
Note that other cost factors also go down with size. Example: a full rack costs less than 3 times 1/3 racks which again cost (considerably!) less than 14 time 1HU.

Let me put a counter-point (to the above dedi based VPS example). Let's look at @cociu's operations.

  • He has his own DC. His DC almost certainly can't compare to a tier 3 DC but in the low end market that doesn't matter.We saw this just recently with @dedicatserver_ro who uses two Tier 3 (or even 4) DCs. The problem (at least in the low end market) is that people aren't attracted by high value brands and Tier 3 or 4 DCs - they are attracted by price, by bang for the buck.

  • He was smart enough (like some other providers here) to buy lots of IP4 subnets when they still were less expensive than today. That too is a major advantage, especially with mid to large scale operations.

  • Electric power in Romania is dirt cheap compared to Germany (where it's particularly expensive). That factor gives him a significant cost advantage compared to his competitors who pay double or even triple the price.

  • He went in kind of big, anyway for a small team player with maybe 3 people (incl. himself). He didn't start with 3 dedis but with at least half a rack full of servers.

  • Human resources in Romania are much cheaper than in Germany, UK, NL, or France. As in "maybe a 3rd of the costs in DE,FR, ...".

  • A factor that was and still is ridiculed by many: he already had a business. Granted perfumes have next to nothing in common with hosting, but having any (not super small) business means that many things are already in place and can be shared. Example: tax advisor, bookkeeping, secretary, administrative tasks, lawyer, etc.. Keep in mind that for an accountant it makes little difference whether he books dedis, perfumes, or office supplies.

Let's look a bit closer and compare his costs (my educated guess) to the costs of a typical small to midsize player.

You can buy

  • (A) a HP-Bladecenter with 16x BL460c G6 each with 2x Xeon L5640 (6 cores) 2,6GHz (60W) and 48GB mem. (and throw the disks away and put in 32 new 1 TB HDDs, for all together about €4000
  • (B) a HP-Bladecenter with 16x BL460c G8 each with 2x E5-2660v2 (8 cores, 95W) and 32GB RAM and add 32 new 480 GB SSDs for about €8500
  • (C) a HP-Bladecenter with 16x BL460c G8 each with 2x E-2630 v3 (8 cores, 85W) and 32GB mem and add 32 1TB SSDs for about €13000

I went with HP Blade Centers because they are often used in hosting and considered relatively cheap when bought 2nd hand. First note the difference between (B) and (C). The big difference? v3 8-core E5-26xx vs v2 and DDR4 memory vs. DDR3. Btw, adding 1TB SSDs instead of 500GB SSDs is not a significant cost factor.

Now, divide those hw costs by 36 (because we assume 3 years lifetime) and then by the number of cores. Result: (A) € 0.6, (B) €0.92, (C) €1.41. That is what your costs per core and month are.
Next add colo and power costs. Colo costs are the same for the three as they are all Blade Centers with 10 HU. Colo costs per hw. core for our 3 variants are ca. €2.80, €2.20, and €2.20. But again, cociu can beat all but the largest players on colo cost. I would be surprised if his costs were 2/3 of the normal costs and I guess they are actually about €1.20 per hw core.

Power costs, when assuming an avg. 2/3 load: (A) €400/133, (B) €565/188, (C) €519/173 with the first number being el. cost at €0.3 per kWh and the second at €0.1.
But what we are really interested in is el. cost per core. In Germany those are about €2, €2.2 and €2.0 while in Romania they are (probably even less than) half of that. Btw, those numbers my also help you to understand why Atoms, Arms, and low power Xeons are so attractive for providers or while some days ago I said that using an 5630L server as basis for cheap VPS is a smart choice. Those cores consume about half the power of normal 85 - 95 W E5-26xx Xeons which means that a VPS can be about €1 per month cheaper.

Maybe now you understand better why a smart player that is also at the right location and chooses his hardware smartly (in our selection it would be (B)) can offer say a 1 dedicated core, 2 GB mem., and 25 GB SSD VPS €2 to €2.50 cheaper than the average player in Germany putting his systems in some providers colo. And that also holds true for normal VPS and even dedis. Side note: Of course really big players with at least a cage or even a room pay less for colo but they still pay more than cociu I guess.

Which leads us to a final point, bandwidth. Let's face it: bandwidth is not as expensive as many providers want us to believe. And I'm not even talking about the ridiculously cheap (and not exactly attractive in terms of quality, but neither as bad as some paint them) 10 Gb/s HE lines. No, let's be reasonable and assume that the cost of a decent 10 Gb/s line is €3600 (which is easy to calculate with), which means a TB costs €1 - and again, that's a decent line. Based on what I know any provider who is large enough, say beyond 40 Gb/s, has costs that are closer to €0.5 per TB (or even less) by using a mix of decent and dirt-cheap bandwidth.

So, there you have it. One can earn real money in hosting - but not as a me-too hoster lacking experience, know-how, financial resources and the readiness to provide good support.

Which leads me to my closing amazement, again with cociu. Why on earth is his support so sh_tty? I mean, you can get decently qualified people in Romania (yes, you can!) for a fraction of the cost of even sh_tty support persons in DE, FR, UK, NL, ... yet his support really sucked. Well noted, I'm not bringing this up to bash cociu, honestly. I bring it up because he has built up something that could become really big. His location isn't perfect but neither is it bad (about 40 ms to DE_FRA, that's much less than what e.g. Americans often experience in their country), electricity is dirt cheap, human resources are cheap, having built his own DC keeps his colo costs way below what others pay, he seems to have a nice fat stash of IPs, short, he operates under excellent conditions. I bet that once his support is halfway decent (not even great, just halfway decent, say less than 6 hrs. response time) he could grow immensely, which again would provide an excellent basis to expand to other countries.

Well, whatever, I hope, my post can help others to better understand how hosting works and what the real costs are. Or in other words: No, you won't get a decent 2 vCores, 2 GB, 20 GB, 2TB VPS for under €3 - but you can and do get decent VPSs for a really good price here at LET.

Edit: Added "support" to the major cost factors. I first hadn't because it's hard to assess and analyze but Hani convinced me to at least clearly mention it.

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Comments

  • poissonpoisson Member
    edited November 2019

    Very valid points, just that it is a wall of text. Most people don't read past 5 lines.

    tl;dr: Most lowend VPS customers do not care which tier the provider's DC is, just like how most people do not care which type of SSL certificate is used, so focus on other things that matter such as hardware, electricity costs and bandwidth if you want to build a successful hosting business.

    Thanked by 1NobodyInteresting
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    @poisson

    Probably I'm stubborn but I'm not yet giving up, I'm still believing that there are many people out there that are not yet completely twitter "communication" crippled.
    And hey, laying a rather complex matter down in no more than a mid size wall of text isn't that bad. Also note that I tried to structure it.

    Thanked by 2TimboJones Shazan
  • servarica_haniservarica_hani Member, Patron Provider

    I like the post it details the most important cost factors for hosts but I would say you underestimated the cost of support team

    For us it is large part of total cost (they dont do just support most of the time they do other maintenance tasks for the infra)

    ofcourse you could get by with almost no support and I think some providers are saving on that but usually to have decent support you will have to pay and wait (training the guys working with you take months if not years ) so it is not cheap

    Thanked by 1jsg
  • FAT32FAT32 Administrator, Deal Compiler Extraordinaire

    I didnt expect to see such informative post here in LET recently. Then I look at the author, not to my surprise it is from jsg :)

    Thanked by 1jsg
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker
    edited November 2019

    @Hani

    You are perfectly right but that factor is very hard to grab and analyze. Plus I'm rather generous in that regard on LET because one can't reasonably expect super-cheap VPSs plus top-notch support. So, if I get an answer within half a day I'm OK with that.

    And I at least tried to hint at the support cost factor. Probably not clearly enough.

    @FAT32 said:
    I didnt expect to see such informative post here in LET recently. Then I look at the author, not to my surprise it is from jsg :)

    Thanks a lot for that sweet compliment! It really feels good to see that my effort was not in vain and that some people here like it and/or find it useful.

    Maybe it can help to keep some discussions short in the future by simply pointing to this primer.

  • FAT32FAT32 Administrator, Deal Compiler Extraordinaire

    Perhaps you can change to a clickbait title: "Truths that providers don't want you to know"

  • This post should be a sticky

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy
    edited November 2019

    Meanwhile..

    @Gam3over said:

    I Have 340 Servers sold out on this day

    :joy:

    Nevertheless, good write up!

    Server Hosting in all its reality.

  • @jsg said:
    Probably I'm stubborn but I'm not yet giving up, I'm still believing that there are many people out there that are not yet completely twitter "communication" crippled.
    And hey, laying a rather complex matter down in no more than a mid size wall of text isn't that bad. Also note that I tried to structure it.

    I don't mind walls of text; in fact, I appreciate the writing very much. I just thought that I would provide a tl;dr for people who don't want to go through that (or at least do not have the time right now and want to read later). :)

    Thanked by 2jsg uptime
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    @FAT32 said:
    Perhaps you can change to a clickbait title: "Truths that providers don't want you to know"

    Yes, that would probably get a lot more views - but it wouldn't be me. But you got me thinking.Feel free to do your mod thing if you really feel that another title would be better. I trust you.

    @poisson

    Thanks for the friendly service, I mean it, but frankly my concern is largely focused on those who do not mind to read more than 5 lines. As I said, I'm stubborn (probably to compensate for being ugly *g).

    Thanked by 2FAT32 poisson
  • seriesnseriesn Member
    edited November 2019

    Excellent point! From a providers Prospective, who rents and also allocates, unless you have at least a rack, those super budget deals makes 0 sense.

    So how are most of the smaller or even mid size/semi bigsize providers offering insane pricing with all the goodies?

    A) Volume - The more you have, the less you pay.

    B ) Marketing Exposure. Average cost/acquisitions is around ~230+usd after all the marketing/ads/affiliates pay outside etc. Or even more. One can either spend that, or pass down the savings to their clients.

    Some big corporations, spends thousands (t-mobile usa, on average spend $3800 usd per new customer add)

    C) Loss leaders with the hope of getting upgrades/bigger deals etc.

    D) The crappiest one, overselling. No need to explain that farther. How's overselling beneficial?
    Bag of Lays used to cost $1 10 years ago and $1 today. Difference? Now you barely get 10 chips in a bag.

    There are many more to it as well. But that is also how real world business works. Most small businesses don't make any profit for almost the first 3 years. Which is why you see a grocery store owner, while owning a business, works like a slave in his own store, with his whole family, while the generic idea of owning a business is to seat back and count cash.

    Most of us, we are in it for the long haul and focusing strongly on building a brand image (following the steps of big brother fran, uncle sal and many others), while we have other projects and income sources that supports us. You won't see crazy deals because we want to provide quality with qty.

    We will also see crazy oversold deals, where your 10GB Ram vps won't run 1 decent wordpress installs and while you think you are getting a deal, you will also see those providers either folding, selling or simply disappearing once they grabbed just enough to afford a new iPhone.

    Tldr; Thanks @jsg

  • @jsg said:
    Probably I'm stubborn but I'm not yet giving up, I'm still believing that there are many people out there that are not yet completely twitter "communication" crippled.
    And hey, laying a rather complex matter down in no more than a mid size wall of text isn't that bad. Also note that I tried to structure it.

    sigh I regret reading it (because it was sooo looonnnggg) but, yes, I do agree with you. You got your point across well, even with @cociu as an example. It was well structured and was easy to understand.

    I just hope people out there are as bored as me, reading tall texts on forum posts...

    Thanked by 1jsg
  • @seriesn said:
    B ) Marketing Exposure. Average cost/acquisitions is around ~230+usd after all the marketing/ads/affiliates pay outside etc. Or even more. One can either spend that, or pass down the savings to their clients.

    LET is a great place to save on marketing and pass savings to clients, especially if you manage to get a platinum reputation where users willing market for you to new clients. Of course, you can also go in the wrong direction and it's @Gam3over

    Thanked by 3DP jsg dahartigan
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker
    edited November 2019

    @somik

    Well, let me put it like this: I did my part. Whether others do their part (and read it) is up to them.

    Btw, as "I don't read more than 5 lines" seems to be so trendy and celebrated: How do those people pass college or even just high school? I had to read thousands upon thousands of really boring pages of texts (e.g about the geography of countries I couldn't care less about) in school and university - and I could not even choose to read it or not, unlike the people here.

    @poisson

    I think you nailed an important point here.

    Fun fact: I happen to know from multiple providers whom I benchmarked and reviewed that there seem to be two levels:

    • level a: being reviewed at all, no matter the outcome (unless it's terribly bad).
    • level b: getting a more or less positive review.

    And both drive people to the reviewed providers, albeit evidently with a much lower success rate when the review is not positive.

  • Excellent post! I think the big take away, for me atleast, is the importance of scale and support. Scale will help improve margins, but solid support will help keep your current customers and hopefully referrals.

  • 21 days to go before Black Friday super crazy deals.

  • @jsg said:
    @somik

    Well, let me put it like this: I did my part. Whether others do their part (and read it) is up to them.

    Btw, as "I don't read more than 5 lines" seems to be so trendy and celebrated: How do those people pass college or even just high school? I had to read thousands upon thousands of really boring pages of texts (e.g about the geography of countries I couldn't care less about) in school and university - and I could not even choose to read it or not, unlike the people here.

    I guess it's more of "have to" vs "choice of not to". For any schools or univs, if you want to pass with good grades, you have to study, specially if you're expected to graduate and find a job in a saturated job market. They take a break from all the reading by going online. So they refuse to read anymore (at least that's what happened in my case).

    Once you complete your studies and start working, you either have limited time to go online or go online from work with someone looking over your shoulders. So you don't have the time to read. You just want to check what's going on, make one or two small comments and be done with it.

    That's from my generation at least.

    The next generation grew up with instant messaging and Twitter like sites. They are so used to sharing their thoughts that they don't have the time to sit down and read or write any more then 500 characters. Do note that I'm generalizing the situation, even knowing there are outliers for every generalization.

    Finally, some people here in this forum are here for a purpose, not to spend their free time here. They want to read a few lines, comment and get their total number of comments up.

    Anyway, regardless, I'm sure many will read your post on why cheapest isn't always the best choice and the factors involved to make something cheapest.

  • cociucociu Member
    edited November 2019

    cooling , space , people is not so cheap , generator, ups +battery , racks , km of cables, patch ... etc etc. BUT yes once you have all this the server cost is not a huge amount in this days. Also a decent upstream is cost arrownd 100 eur/1gbps (if you buy at least 10gbps) . HE was offer me 6000 dollars for 100gbps

    Thanked by 2jsg poisson
  • creep said: 21 days to go before Black Friday super crazy deals

    :)

  • @cociu said:
    cooling , space , people is not so cheap , generator, ups +battery , racks , km of cables, patch ... etc etc. BUT yes once you have all this the server cost is not a huge amount in this days. Also a decent upstream is cost arrownd 100 eur/1gbps (if you buy at least 10gbps) . HE was offer me 6000 dollars for 100gbps

    Damn, thats some expensive bandwidth... Is it more expensive then US or is US bandwidth more expensive?

  • somik said: Damn, thats some expensive bandwidth... Is it more expensive then US or is US bandwidth more expensive?

    we talk about dedicated lines ?

  • @cociu said:
    we talk about dedicated lines ?

    Yes, the dedicated bandwidth, the ones that datacenters use, not the residential or shared lines.

  • @jsg said: Which leads us to a final point, bandwidth.

    I guess that the cost of DDoS protection (if DDoS protection is offered) could be added in this connection

    Thanked by 2jsg uptime
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    @angstrom said:

    @jsg said: Which leads us to a final point, bandwidth.

    I guess that the cost of DDoS protection (if DDoS protection is offered) could be added in this connection

    Yes. And they tend to be hefty.

  • dedicatserver_rodedicatserver_ro Member, Host Rep

    cociu said: Also a decent upstream is cost arrownd 100 eur/1gbps (if you buy at least 10gbps) . HE was offer me 6000 dollars for 100gbps

    • the prices are for NX Data1/NxData2 -Bucharest not for Oradea,
    • what are the cost to transport even cheap L2 -10Gbps from Bucharest to Oradea? ( 600 km )
    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • @angstrom said:
    I guess that the cost of DDoS protection (if DDoS protection is offered) could be added in this connection

    @jsg said:
    Yes. And they tend to be hefty.

    Wait, i thought the DDOS protection is offered by the DC, is it also provided by network provider?

  • cociucociu Member
    edited November 2019

    dedicatserver_ro said: the prices are for NX Data1/NxData2 -Bucharest not for Oradea,

    what are the cost to transport even cheap L2 -10Gbps from Bucharest to Oradea? ( 600 km )

    here we go "top provider" if i publish the offer in 6000 dollars for 100gb including the transport you will share your sister ? Another shit comment from you ... do you know the cost for each one from here i see but you are verry interesed in cociu ... do you know what is this ? i have value .

    Thanked by 1dahartigan
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker
    edited November 2019

    @dedicatserver_ro said:

    cociu said: Also a decent upstream is cost arrownd 100 eur/1gbps (if you buy at least 10gbps) . HE was offer me 6000 dollars for 100gbps

    • the prices are for NX Data1/NxData2 -Bucharest not for Oradea,
    • what are the cost to transport even cheap L2 -10Gbps from Bucharest to Oradea? ( 600 km )

    If I'm not misinterpreting traceroute my route goes not via Bucharest but out of DE_FRA via Cluj-Napoca to the Bihor region (of which Oradea is the provincial capital). And Cluj-Napoca is not that far away from Oradea; in fact it is much, much closer to Oradea than to Bucharest.

    Btw, I don't think that @cociu lies with what he says.

    Cluj-Napoca is one the major romanian cities and backbones tend to form rings. It seems perfectly credible and reasonable to assume that Cluj-Napoca is connected no worse than Bucharest.

  • @cociu said:

    dedicatserver_ro said: the prices are for NX Data1/NxData2 -Bucharest not for Oradea,

    what are the cost to transport even cheap L2 -10Gbps from Bucharest to Oradea? ( 600 km )

    here we go "top provider" if i publish the offer in 6000 dollars for 100gb including the transport you will share your sister ? Another shit comment from you ... do you know the cost for each one from here i see but you are verry interesed in cociu ... do you know what is this ? i have value .

    Perhaps his interest in you is purely romantic?

  • @cociu I would advice you guys not to fight on open forum, but I guess @dedicatserver_ro did fire the first shots...

    Thanked by 2poisson vimalware
This discussion has been closed.