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Hetzner Dedicated Auction Servers for Mass Storage for Saving cost, advise needed
We are in IOT business, few customers want just free, we use them as references to get more paying customers, few converts after a long period.
For free customers, We are thinking of using Hetzner Server Auctioned dedicated server Intel i7/4770, 32 GB, 2x 2TB/3TB, we need about 4 of them for redundant and cluster nature. Cost them close to 100 Euros per month, (by deducting tax, it seems viable)
Storage volume would go like 10 TB to 12 TB in the next 2 years. Right now, we use VPS with another german provider, but we need to offload to the cheapest option.
So far, we never used dedicated servers. Needed your experience before making our choice.
- What are the downside of running dedicated servers?
- What if RAM, Disk fails, will Hetzner replace sooner?
- What if the dedicated server fails completely, will they provide alternative hardware sooner
- Our tech stack already has Kubernetes, docker containers, cluster-aware system.
Do you suggest alternatives to Hetzner, I don't think, if that exists, if so, please recommend.
Comments
Theres only upsides in my opinion.
Guaranteed resources, no noisy neighbours and nobody messing up the entire node outside yourself. Theres actually less points of failures.
Those same downsides are with VPS providers.
Or you could go for HA VPS if you want 100% security which the dedicated server or normal VPS cannot provide.
The only serious downside is that you will be responsible for monitoring the server and its hardware.
Hetzner is good about replacing failed components, but you do need to notify them first. If you already have some automation and a monitoring system in place, then this shouldn't be terribly difficult to manage.
Otherwise, as @stefeman noted, there are very many upsides to having your own dedicated hardware.
Why don't you just email Hetzner for some of these? I'm sure they'll be more than happy to help.
Hetzner has nice cheap large disks for bulk storage. 2 Eur/TB (20EUR :the 10TB addon disks).
If you have network based data mirroring, auction servers + these fresh Hitachi disks will be a happy solution.
Try to get auction servers in different hetzner DCs for even more resilience.
Hetzner has failover IPs now for keeping your dedicated servers reachable from external networks.
Sounds like your software is capable of losing, or capable of being made to lose a node without causing an outage. Focus on that, then don’t care about the rest.
If you bank on the idea that two out of four servers won’t fail at the same time, you’ll probably die before you’re proven wrong. You might hear about failures every day, but no one ever hears about just how many systems don’t fail every day.
You’ll take backups anyway because you’re sane, so it’s all good.
If you need just HDD space, get a SX (storage) server.
Also, at least get ECC, i7's don't support it.
The community is experienced and offers insight. Always validating ideas with people in same boat is good. I will write to Hetzner, before that we will need to take care of other areas.
You have to manage everything yourself, they only do hardware support.
Yes. I advise you get 4TB drives as those are newer parts. Test the servers drive arrays, as I had some bad drives, especially in old servers.
Yes, you might be getting another replacement with a new IP, if you want to use the same IP it would take some time. Best is having the storage box to store your system backup files. Store your files in a different drive. Have the system drive lower than 512gb easier to manage.
Hetzner is currently the best bang for your buck. But in some territories especially apac, their bandwidth is pretty slow. They might cap you in busy hours.