8 ms·

Hetzner EX 4S Unixbench, dd and htparm results

60 points by simon_kun 15y ago

Kudos 15y ago
TLDR; the €59/mo EX 4S scores higher (1729) than AWS m2.4xlarge (1511).
- pgroves 15y ago
  That number for AWS is based on running the benchmark in May 2010 [1]. [1] http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/05/what-is-ecu-cpu-benchmarking-in-cloud.html http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/05/what-is-ecu-cpu-benchma...
  - simon_kun 15y ago
    I'm not sure AWS have updated their specs since then (all the specs for an ECU refer to a 1Ghz 2007 Xeon). We also tested our staging c1.xlarge and it scored less than the cloudharmony results indicated a c1.xlarge should.
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
Related to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537513.
bashtoni 15y ago
Apples / Oranges. Quite apart from the ability to buy by the hour, the Hetzner offering really isn't suitable for processing any data you care about - it's not using ECC RAM, and the processor used doesn't support it.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- qaywsx 15y ago
  you could use the ex6: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 a little more expensive (69 EUR) and less RAM (16 GB) but using ECC.
  - sandGorgon 15y ago
    or someone like providerservice.com who have almost the same specs but with no setup fee.
- jules 15y ago
  If you're using an AWS m2.4xlarge (score: 1511) then you pay $2.00 per hour. If you're using this Hetzner (score: 1729) you pay less than $0.09 per hour. You'd have to use very few hours indeed for AWS to be cheaper. That's not even factoring in traffic. You get 10TB per month with Hetzner which would cost you an additional $1200/month (!) with Amazon. AFAICT Amazon doesn't use ECC ram either; at least I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Hetzner does have competitively priced servers with ECC ram.
- mjb 15y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? The processor used (i-7 2600) does not support ECC RAM, and this platform does not include it. A server platform without ECC RAM is a pretty big disadvantage for several reasons, to most compelling being the high real-world rate of memory errors in real systems. Memory errors in non-ECC systems can be extremely difficult and expensive to track down, and can cause data corruption or loss if the machine is used in the data pipeline. In one study (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf), strong correlations were found between age, usage and error rate. Before using a server without ECC RAM, it's worth doing a quick estimate of the amount of data you intend to move around, and whether it's worth it to you (and, more importantly, your customers) to save a little money going with a non-ECC platform.
  - Travis 15y ago
    What would be the downside to using non ECC RAM in a heavily loaded server? Would it cause processes to crash?
    - Diederich 15y ago
      If you are lucky, processes would crash. More likely there would be silent bits of data corruption.
      - Travis 15y ago
        Gotcha, so it would just depend on what bits in RAM were corrupted (data versus process instructions)? I am curious about a couple of specific use cases that I can think of where this might affect me (and, most likely, would be common points of failure for others): 1. data in the MySQL tables (stored in memory) is corrupted. Would mysql crash? Indicate table corruption, and I could just reload it from disk? Write corrupted data to disk, and permanently trash my data collection? 2. large process that's running data analysis (say a big python process with tons of data in RAM). Would one of my variables (say an int with value 4) turn into another number? Would it become unreadable? I appreciate the effort to explain this. I know, in theory, why ECC RAM is useful, but I have difficulty visualizing real world scenarios.
- klaruz 15y ago
  Do you have a link to where Amazon says EC2 uses ECC RAM? I can't seem to find one.
  - simon_kun 15y ago
    I can't find one either. In fact, AWS doesn't seem to be running with ECC RAM except for some of the GPU instances. Happy to be corrected here.
- onfocusin 15y ago
  You can get the one with ECC (EX 6) it's just 10euro extra / per month... which is still away cheeper than AWS.
vladd 15y ago
The price for Hetzner's EX 4S is 49.58 EUR for non-EU customers and 59 EUR per month VAT-included for most EU customers (EU corporations registered for VAT purposes need to apply the VAT specific to their own country). An Amazon m2.4xlarge instance (High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Reserved Instance) with Heavy Utilization on a 3-year commitment costs $9'660 for the 3y term and 3 * 365 * 24 * $0.454 = $11'931 in usage fees, which means a $21'591 total, $7'197 per year or $600 per month (EUR 458 per month at the current exchange rate). 458 EUR versus 49-60 EUR is 9x more expensive at full-time usage. (instance type and price data extracted from http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ and http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ ). If you were to consider just the Amazon Heavy Utilization term commitment for 3 years, that's still $9'660 / 3 / 12 = $268 (EUR 205) each month.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- julian37 15y ago
  That's hardly a fair comparison. Last time I checked Hetzner doesn't offer auto scaling, "elastic" load balancing, or any of the countless other features that EC2 offers. Actually, forget auto-scaling: what if you want to bring up another bunch of instances manually to deal with a spike in demand? The EX 4S looks like a very compelling alternative for many use cases but saying that its 9x cheaper is comparing apples to oranges.
  - dasrecht 15y ago
    Of course Elastic Scaling is not possible. Because Hosting a server in a datacenter and having cloud instances are two different stories. If you have need for flexibility you can simply run a loadbalancer having your base hardware hosted for a good price at hetzner (or another datacenter you like) and then spin up some AWS Instances behind the loadbalancer for dealing with spikes. Or as others have written you can buy 3 boxes at hetzner and scale 300% ;) Solution?
    - 15y ago
cmer 15y ago
You might also want to check out some benchmarks I ran a few weeks ago. It compares many types of EC2 instances: http://blog.carlmercier.com/2012/01/05/ec2-is-basically-one-big-ripoff/ http://blog.carlmercier.com/2012/01/05/ec2-is-basically-one-...
krobertson 15y ago
Why is this company getting so much attention as of late? I've never heard of them until recently, and considering how crowded the whole VPS/dedicated server market is, what makes them stand out?
- julian37 15y ago
  They are well known in Germany, they've been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, provider of VPS and colo services over here since the mid 90s. The recent buzz is the first time I see them mentioned on US-centric sites though, if memory serves. As for your question, it appears that many people find the price/performance ratio of the EX 4S compelling.
- rorrr 15y ago
  Because their prices are amazing.
- inovica 15y ago
  I've used them for a few years now. I think they used to be very much German-language focused, but over the past couple of years they have become more and more international. They give good support and the servers I have with them have been rock solid
hjalle 15y ago
This server is does not come with ECC-memory. How "bad" would it be to run a database server on a non ecc server?
- stephenson 15y ago
  As said other places, they have ECC servers to: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6
  - hjalle 15y ago
    I never meant to criticise, I saw that they have ECC-servers as well, I just wondered what the implications would be if running a database on a non ecc server, as I've never really understood how much damage it could cause.
    - espennilsen 15y ago
      Short answer: ECC will save you from having corrupt data written to your database if one of the DIMMs are corrupt.
      - Arelius 15y ago
        Or more importantly, if cosmic rays hit your data in the wrong way.
smw 15y ago
Does anyone offer a similar product / price point in the US? I haven't found anything remotely close. Why not?
simon_kun 15y ago
For those that are curious, the motherboard in these systems is a ASUSTeK P8H67-M PRO. Seems like it's a gaming board - understandable given it's an i7 platform.

60 points by simon_kun 15y ago

Kudos 15y ago

TLDR; the €59/mo EX 4S scores higher (1729) than AWS m2.4xlarge (1511).

pgroves 15y ago
That number for AWS is based on running the benchmark in May 2010 [1]. [1] http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/05/what-is-ecu-cpu-benchmarking-in-cloud.html http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/05/what-is-ecu-cpu-benchma...
- simon_kun 15y ago
  I'm not sure AWS have updated their specs since then (all the specs for an ECU refer to a 1Ghz 2007 Xeon). We also tested our staging c1.xlarge and it scored less than the cloudharmony results indicated a c1.xlarge should.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

Related to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537513.

bashtoni 15y ago

Apples / Oranges. Quite apart from the ability to buy by the hour, the Hetzner offering really isn't suitable for processing any data you care about - it's not using ECC RAM, and the processor used doesn't support it.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
qaywsx 15y ago
you could use the ex6: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 a little more expensive (69 EUR) and less RAM (16 GB) but using ECC.
- sandGorgon 15y ago
  or someone like providerservice.com who have almost the same specs but with no setup fee.
jules 15y ago
If you're using an AWS m2.4xlarge (score: 1511) then you pay $2.00 per hour. If you're using this Hetzner (score: 1729) you pay less than $0.09 per hour. You'd have to use very few hours indeed for AWS to be cheaper. That's not even factoring in traffic. You get 10TB per month with Hetzner which would cost you an additional $1200/month (!) with Amazon. AFAICT Amazon doesn't use ECC ram either; at least I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Hetzner does have competitively priced servers with ECC ram.
mjb 15y ago
Why is this being downvoted? The processor used (i-7 2600) does not support ECC RAM, and this platform does not include it. A server platform without ECC RAM is a pretty big disadvantage for several reasons, to most compelling being the high real-world rate of memory errors in real systems. Memory errors in non-ECC systems can be extremely difficult and expensive to track down, and can cause data corruption or loss if the machine is used in the data pipeline. In one study (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Ebianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf), strong correlations were found between age, usage and error rate. Before using a server without ECC RAM, it's worth doing a quick estimate of the amount of data you intend to move around, and whether it's worth it to you (and, more importantly, your customers) to save a little money going with a non-ECC platform.
- Travis 15y ago
  What would be the downside to using non ECC RAM in a heavily loaded server? Would it cause processes to crash?
  - Diederich 15y ago
    If you are lucky, processes would crash. More likely there would be silent bits of data corruption.
    - Travis 15y ago
      Gotcha, so it would just depend on what bits in RAM were corrupted (data versus process instructions)? I am curious about a couple of specific use cases that I can think of where this might affect me (and, most likely, would be common points of failure for others): 1. data in the MySQL tables (stored in memory) is corrupted. Would mysql crash? Indicate table corruption, and I could just reload it from disk? Write corrupted data to disk, and permanently trash my data collection? 2. large process that's running data analysis (say a big python process with tons of data in RAM). Would one of my variables (say an int with value 4) turn into another number? Would it become unreadable? I appreciate the effort to explain this. I know, in theory, why ECC RAM is useful, but I have difficulty visualizing real world scenarios.
klaruz 15y ago
Do you have a link to where Amazon says EC2 uses ECC RAM? I can't seem to find one.
- simon_kun 15y ago
  I can't find one either. In fact, AWS doesn't seem to be running with ECC RAM except for some of the GPU instances. Happy to be corrected here.
onfocusin 15y ago
You can get the one with ECC (EX 6) it's just 10euro extra / per month... which is still away cheeper than AWS.

vladd 15y ago

The price for Hetzner's EX 4S is 49.58 EUR for non-EU customers and 59 EUR per month VAT-included for most EU customers (EU corporations registered for VAT purposes need to apply the VAT specific to their own country). An Amazon m2.4xlarge instance (High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Reserved Instance) with Heavy Utilization on a 3-year commitment costs $9'660 for the 3y term and 3 * 365 * 24 * $0.454 = $11'931 in usage fees, which means a $21'591 total, $7'197 per year or $600 per month (EUR 458 per month at the current exchange rate). 458 EUR versus 49-60 EUR is 9x more expensive at full-time usage. (instance type and price data extracted from http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ and http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ ). If you were to consider just the Amazon Heavy Utilization term commitment for 3 years, that's still $9'660 / 3 / 12 = $268 (EUR 205) each month.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
julian37 15y ago
That's hardly a fair comparison. Last time I checked Hetzner doesn't offer auto scaling, "elastic" load balancing, or any of the countless other features that EC2 offers. Actually, forget auto-scaling: what if you want to bring up another bunch of instances manually to deal with a spike in demand? The EX 4S looks like a very compelling alternative for many use cases but saying that its 9x cheaper is comparing apples to oranges.
- dasrecht 15y ago
  Of course Elastic Scaling is not possible. Because Hosting a server in a datacenter and having cloud instances are two different stories. If you have need for flexibility you can simply run a loadbalancer having your base hardware hosted for a good price at hetzner (or another datacenter you like) and then spin up some AWS Instances behind the loadbalancer for dealing with spikes. Or as others have written you can buy 3 boxes at hetzner and scale 300% ;) Solution?
  - 15y ago

cmer 15y ago

You might also want to check out some benchmarks I ran a few weeks ago. It compares many types of EC2 instances: http://blog.carlmercier.com/2012/01/05/ec2-is-basically-one-big-ripoff/ http://blog.carlmercier.com/2012/01/05/ec2-is-basically-one-...

krobertson 15y ago

Why is this company getting so much attention as of late? I've never heard of them until recently, and considering how crowded the whole VPS/dedicated server market is, what makes them stand out?

julian37 15y ago
They are well known in Germany, they've been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, provider of VPS and colo services over here since the mid 90s. The recent buzz is the first time I see them mentioned on US-centric sites though, if memory serves. As for your question, it appears that many people find the price/performance ratio of the EX 4S compelling.
rorrr 15y ago
Because their prices are amazing.
inovica 15y ago
I've used them for a few years now. I think they used to be very much German-language focused, but over the past couple of years they have become more and more international. They give good support and the servers I have with them have been rock solid

hjalle 15y ago

This server is does not come with ECC-memory. How "bad" would it be to run a database server on a non ecc server?

stephenson 15y ago
As said other places, they have ECC servers to: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6
- hjalle 15y ago
  I never meant to criticise, I saw that they have ECC-servers as well, I just wondered what the implications would be if running a database on a non ecc server, as I've never really understood how much damage it could cause.
  - espennilsen 15y ago
    Short answer: ECC will save you from having corrupt data written to your database if one of the DIMMs are corrupt.
    - Arelius 15y ago
      Or more importantly, if cosmic rays hit your data in the wrong way.

smw 15y ago

Does anyone offer a similar product / price point in the US? I haven't found anything remotely close. Why not?

simon_kun 15y ago

For those that are curious, the motherboard in these systems is a ASUSTeK P8H67-M PRO. Seems like it's a gaming board - understandable given it's an i7 platform.