

Ask HN: $20 per month dedicated server?  - shail

Almost all the startups start with a VPS hosting.<p>The problem (haven't verified) is that when you are measuring performance metrics, they can be hell lot misleading because of the extra s/w sitting between your app and h/w.<p>I think there is a need for a dedicated server hosting for startups which is priced around $30 per month (2-4 core CPU ~3Ghz, 1-2 GB Ram, 500G hdd, 1TB bandwidth). What do you think about this idea?<p>I haven't done the cost calculation but would like inputs from someone experienced.
As a startup, will hosting on a dedicated server for 30$ per month be a exciting option? Would you take it?<p>Edit:
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Since $39 option is already there, then let me drop the price further $20. Obviously I can drop because its still an idea but I really want to know the price point at which startups will be more inclined to rent a dedicated server instead of a VPS because obviously dedicated is better. let me know if I am missing something here.
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csense
> when you are measuring performance metrics, they can be hell lot misleading

This is true regardless. For example, if your I/O benchmark is basically
sequential, and your application's access pattern is basically random, then
your benchmark is useless.

Ultimately, the only test that matters is whether a particular piece of
hardware runs your particular application. So as a startup, you write your
website, put it on a VPS, if it's slow then you get a bigger VPS or switch
providers. The common case is that a VPS is good enough, and once you grow
beyond it, that means you're getting enough revenue to afford an upgrade to a
bigger VPS or dedicated server out of money coming in.

If you _can't_ afford the upgrade when you need it, then it means either
you're inadequately capitalized (you don't have enough investment to survive
the bootstrapping regime where necessary server spending outstrips revenue),
or your code is too inefficient for your business model to be viable (making
$X in revenue costs more than $X worth of server resources, the
"bootstrapping" regime has no end).

> 1-2 GB Ram

Upgrade this. RAM is cheap, and you get a lot of performance out of it.

> I haven't done the cost calculation

The available information at my fingertips says buying a full rack (40U),
power included, costs $650 per month [1]. So that's $16.25 per 1U. That leaves
$3.75 per month, or $180 total over a 4-year lifetime. Let's say you use a
Raspberry Pi as the server, it costs $35. That leaves $145, or $3.02 per
server per month, to pay for bandwidth, labor, billing/accounting, storage
media, power cables, networking gear, and profit for the owner.

$20 is really aggressive pricing. $30 might be more reasonable.

If you have sunk costs, then you might be able to make it work. E.g. if you
just signed a multiyear deal for a ton of rack space, but the project you were
planning on using it for isn't going to fly due to your cofounder getting hit
by a bus, you can regard the rent on server space as a sunk cost since you'll
be paying for it anyway. Filling it with $20/month servers would almost
certainly be better than letting it sit idle (though maybe not better than
filling it with more expensive servers, subletting it to someone else, or
having your company declare bankruptcy).

~~~
shail
Thanks for the detailed reply. This clears my head a lot. I haven't sunk any
cost yet. I am trying to find the best fit.

Can I say for sure one thing that between dedicated vs VPS you will surely
choose dedicated?

Are there any downsides to dedicated servers from customer standpoint. I know
from providers standpoint it's requires more work.

~~~
csense
> Can I say for sure one thing that between dedicated vs VPS you will surely
> choose dedicated?

If they have the same specs and the same price, dedicated is probably better.

> Are there any downsides to dedicated servers from customer standpoint.

1\. Price.

2\. For a dedicated server I want a serial console and out-of-band rebooter,
so I can fix it myself when I bork the bootloader or hang the system. This can
all be done in software with VM's, but may require additional hardware for
dedicated servers.

3\. Monitoring of disk failure. On a VPS, the provider typically handles RAID,
and is pro-active about replacing failed disks. On a dedicated server, RAID is
up to the customer to manage, depending on your setup it might be the
customer's responsibility to alert support that a disk is bad, and diagnosing
a failed disk remotely might be challenging.

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gabipurcaru
Not $30/month, but 50 euros is in the same ballpark I guess --
<http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4>

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negrit
This already exist(In Europe at least)
<http://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml> And for even cheaper

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NonEUCitizen
$39/month available via ovh:

<http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/>

~~~
shail
This one seems to be a very interesting option. Anyone having any experience
with OVH? Would love to hear that.

~~~
kilburn
Long time (european) OVH customer here. We've had some 10 servers there for ~4
years.

TL;DR: The hardware is cheap. You _must_ have spare servers and plan for
failure because they _will_ fail from time to time. Avoid dealing with their
support people (just replace the server when there's some problem with it) and
you'll be fine.

In more detail:

\- Renew servers monthly. This will let you drop any server at any point and
only lose the remainder of that month's worth of server cost.

\- The hardware you get is _cheap_. This is generally not much of a problem,
but you _must_ expect things to fail at some point.

\- They handle most of these failures pretty quickly. A failed motherboard
gets replaced in less than 30min. usually.

\- The real PITA are the disk drives. They are _not_ enterprise disks, which
means that their failure rate and performance loss over time is larger than
what you are probably used to.

\- It is very hard to convince OVH to replace underperforming but operational
disks. Basically, it is hard to convince them about any degradation that
doesn't halt the server. The time you must spend to convince them is just not
worth it: replace the server and call it a day.

\- Hence, you should always be ready to switch from one server to another.
It's much easier to just rent a new server and cancel the older one than to
make them acknowledge non-obvious hardware problems.

\- A good strategy is to rotate servers every 1 or 2 years (tops) to avoid
getting to this point.

\- From time to time, a new server you rent is faulty. _Always_ test the
hardware _extensively_ before you start using it.

\- There will be outages from time to time, but they are rare. When this
happens, some of your servers will go offline for as much as 1h. Most of these
problems are caused by power supply problems, which means that your server
will get shut down uncleanly and may have problems coming back up.

\- Just for the fun: most of the outages are caused by them f __king up while
testing electrogen groups and /or backup power supplies. Sometimes we wish for
them to not have any redundancy systems to test...

All in all, the service is very good for that price, but you _must_ be
prepared to handle failures.

