Hetzner recently started offering VPS (Virtual Private Servers) since October 2010. Being a Hetzner customer and avidly interested in virtualization, I was keen to find out what setup they had in place and what functionality they offered VPS customers (I’m thinking of moving from Xen to KVM myself). While they did offer 1 month free during their testing phase back in May 2010, I found out a little too late. Over the Christmas I had some time, so I said I’d try the VQ7 for a month. Below is the information I gleaned from the VPS itself and the Hetzner Forums. Note the VPSs and (host) setup may have been changed since. This information is valid for a VQ7 obtained in December2010-January2011.
VQ7 VPS General Information
- Single Core (see setup information below for MHz)
- 1 IP Address
- 512MB Ram
- 20GB Hard Disk
- 100Mbit Network Card
- 1TB Traffic per Month (If exceeded the speed is reduced to 10Mbps)
- €7.90 per month (
setup of €19.90Doesn’t seem to be a setup fee anymore. July2011)
Tools to Manage VPS
- VNC Console Available
The control panel opens a VNC applet connecting to the KVMhostIP on VNCssl (159XX)
After the applet was open, the URL address bar showed the KVMhostIP I was connected to.
I found that you can connect manually using a VNC client over non ssl to the KVMhostIP on port 59XX
With a quick telnet test, I found there were 25 listening VMs on the KVMhostIP (5900 – 5925)
With a quick test of URLs, browsing to http://188.40.x.xx/##/ (I found there were 27 VMs, where ## = VM number).
The VNC Password in the control panel did not change (even if the VPS was stopped and started). - Bandwidth Usage Graphs
- Optional Traffic Warning emails if Bandwidth exceeds X amount hourly, daily or monthly
- Start | Stop (equivalent to turning off the power supply)| Reset (Stop and Start in succession) VPS
Stop gave the warning: “Do you really want to stop the vServer? In most cases it is better to shutdown the vServer via Remote Konsole than stopping it. You should only stop it if it does not respond anymore.” - Rescue System
Same system as for dedicated servers. Boots off Network to a LiveCD environment allowing mounting of disks and also to reinstall the OS using “installimage” a scripted hetzner installer to install debian, ubuntu, centos, fedora etc. Uses same IP, and gives a new root password for the temporary LiveCD session. - Monitoring System with email notifications
Setup Information
- Uses KVM Virtualization
- KVM Host connected to 1Gbit Lan (via forum.hetzner)
- Not using Virtio (via lspci and forum.hetzner)
The reason for this is incase people want to install different OS’s, that they don’t have to require paravirtualized drivers. - SAS Hard Drive in the KVM Host (unconfirmed, but fast IO results in the VPS)
- KVM host running nginx on port 80 (for vncssl applet)
- KVM host SSH responds: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.3p1 Debian-3ubuntu4 (i.e. running: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS ?)
- traceroute in and from the VPS did not reveal the KVM host IP. The HostIP was determined from the VNC Applet address in the Control Panel
No IPv6. No additional IPv4 options.- IPv6 subnet available (/64)
- lspci
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX – 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
00:01.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5446
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 20)
00:04.0 RAM memory: Qumranet, Inc. Device 1002 - cat /proc/cpuinfo
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 2
model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.12.5
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 2806.922
cache size : 4096 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 4
wp : yes
flags : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm up rep_good pni cx16 popcnt lahf_lm
bogomips : 5638.24
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: - Hard Disk setup
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# cat /etc/fstab
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hda1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda2 /boot ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults 0 0
fdisk /dev/hda:
/dev/hda1 1 262 2102562 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 263 295 265072+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 296 2610 18595237+ 83 Linux
Initial VPS Tests
Tests and results varied. This is in no way complete. Results were slightly higher when I got the VPS first (with ~8000 Requests Per Second with Apache, and ~19 Seconds for compress-gzip).
- Network Speed: Full 100Mbps. Tested with wget.
- phoronix-test-suite benchmark apache
Phoronix Test Suite v2.8.2
Installed: apache [v1.1.0]
…….
Average: 6794.33 Requests Per Second
Compare Results - phoronix-test-suite benchmark compress-gzip
Installed: compress-gzip [v1.1.0]
…….
Average: 22.38 Seconds
Compare Results
Update – Feb 2011
So people were asking about uptime of the VPS. As I host a number of VPSs I was also keen to find out how uptime and kernel updates to the host would be applied and handled by hetzner.
During the week, I came back to find the following in a screen session I had running on my main server:
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# Broadcast message from root@Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal (Mon Feb 14 13:13:40 2Power button pressed The system is going down for system halt NOW! Connection to 88.xxx.xxx.xxx closed by remote host.
Clearly the host had went down for a reboot. I checked www.hetzner-status.de and sure enough the reboot was scheduled. I’m not sure how much notice was given. I should have received an email but it was my own fault I wasn’t subscribed. The downtime was 10 minutes. I was suprised that it was done during the middle of a weekday (as opposed to out of office hours). Below is the image of the scheduled downtime notice from the hetzner-status.de website. This was the first downtime in 60 days.
Update – April 2011
After keeping an eye on http://www.hetzner-status.de I found that Hetzner was now “pausing” VPSs when the KVM host had to go down for a reboot. This has pros and cons. The advantage been that services will remain running on the VPS when unpaused/started. If the KVM host reboot is quick, connections to your VPS may remain alive. The disadvantage been that you might never know if there were issues and that the KVM host had to be rebooted. Thus typing “uptime” may not reflect an accurate figure.
I also found that ports 59XX on the KVMhostIP were no longer accessible from the Internet or from an internal Hetzner IP (crossed out text above to reflect this).
An accurate reflection of uptime?
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# uptime 13:07:49 up 73 days, 22:44, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Hetzner do seem to be listing all reboots and pauses of VPSs on their status website so you know if anything did happen. You can also subscribe for email and news alerts.
Screenshots of hetzner-status showing “pause” of Vservers:
English Text
German Text
Update – July 2011
IPv6 Subnet (/64) is now available for free. Simply log into the hetzner robot, and you can request it automatically (automated setup).
How is there I/O, are you still happy with your vps?
The I/O is ok. I done some quick dd tests, see below for the results. I’m happy with the VPS, I think its good value compared to other VPS providers.
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=2M count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 152.635 s, 68.7 MB/s
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=4M count=2500
2500+0 records in
2500+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 160.253 s, 65.4 MB/s
Debian-50-lenny-64-minimal:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1M count=10000
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 178.781 s, 58.7 MB/s
holy crap, that sounds good. do you thing a non-linux webmaster can manage this? i’d really love to.
Btw, if you are person from outside EU or you are a EU company with VAT code, divide those price numbers by 1.19 as they don’t ask you to pay VAT in those cases.
Thats quite good, even very good.
You mentioned IPv6, did you receive a range or a small number of IPv6 ip’s with your vps?
With XEN HVM its easy to install a tunnelbroker, however I do prefer native.
How is the uptime? I do know that you are a new customer, so thats maybe a question you can not answer yet.
Hi Mark,
Yes, Hetzner will exclude VAT if your are a Company or outside the EU. It would be best for people to check out http://www.hetzner.de for the most up-to-date prices.
As for if a non-linux webmaster can manage this VPS, you would want a little experience. You’d have to know about SSH (how to login to a server over SSH using a program like PuTTY for windows), and you’d have to be willing to learn a little on managing a linux server. It’d be easiest going with Ubuntu pre-installed. It can get apache and mysql (a LAMP serer) setup with little effort.
Best of luck with it.
It’s a very good offer. I’m still thinking about it, but I’m going to wait what you can tell me about the uptime, and performance after a few weeks.
But what I don’t get is, why hetzner doesn’t provide native ipv6, even a small range like a /112 . Yes you can always sign up with sixxs or hurricane to load up a tunnel, but native is always better.
What about SWAP memory? If I read your blogpost, its 2gb ?
I would be using it as a production vps, webhosting, backup mail and dns. So it needs to be stable. I need to ask hetzner some other questions. I do use irssi (irclient), so I’m am a ‘IRC’-user I guess, don’t know if hetzner allows this.
Hey Jimmy,
Yep, there is 2GB of Swap. Nearly 30 days uptime so far. So far so good, however this is only a test server for me, so I won’t be doing much work or web hosting with it.
I agree with you completely on the ipv6. I’m sure its only a matter of time however as they have ipv6 rolled out for dedicated servers, and its managed via the robot interface of hetzner (see image).
Aye, I use screen and irssi myself, and can’t do without them.
Hetzner used to block outbound irc traffic to 6667, however I’m glad to say they don’t anymore.
wiki.hetzner.de and forum.hetzner.de (registration required) provide lots of information. I use google’s translation toolbar for some of the german pages.
Hello Stephen, how long did the setup of the VPS take ?
Andrei,
Hetzner had the VPS setup for me in 2-3 hours (of a Friday Evening) in December. I see there is a special offer at the moment (for February 2011) of a free setup, so I can imagine they may be a bit busy setting these up this month.
Yeah, I ordered one 12 hours ago, still waiting…
Yeah, its not automated. You will not regret buying a vps with them. price/quality is excellent. And at the moment, you don’t pay setup costs. I wish I waited 7 days, I did have to pay almost €20 🙂 But still!
I also wasn’t subscribed.
Subscribed myself to all ‘Fault reports’, except ‘Domain Registration Robot’. That will hopefully never happen again.
I got one of these last week.. they seem to have automated the creation process since I had the server 20mins after I submitted the request. Also, I asked them about IPv6, and their answer was that it should be available for virtual machines in April, which is great news.
Now, for the time being I’m trying to figure out which sixxs.net POP is closest.
Ya, I think they have the setup automated, with maybe just a single click required by an Admin to approve the account.
That’s great to hear regarding IPv6, I must keep a watch out.
I use the sixxs tunnel “dedus01 – SpeedPartner GmbH” in Duesseldorf, Germany on another server I have in Hetzner. I set it up 2 years ago so there may well be a closer one to Hetzner since then.
Hetzner vps sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have transfer rate ~1KB – ~80 Very, very, very slow!
Trying today reinstall system end server die…
Not worth 1E! Shit!
Sounds like really bad luck. From keeping an eye on forum.hetzner.de there are a few people having issues. Some more than others. Hetzner said on the forums that they are making improvements to stability.
I noticed also they have changed the ssh port on the host server, so can’t say definate if they’re still using ubuntu or if they’ve moved to debian 🙂
Just to let people know, its now possible (July 2011) to get a free IPv6 subnet (/64) with Hetzner VPSs 🙂
The setup looks to be all automated in the hetzner robot also. Just click to request a subnet, and its all done in seconds.
Stephen, can you do dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync for me? 🙂
I am thinking on canceling all vps’s I have with them. Disk IO is just pathetic on all of them.
root@Debian-60-squeeze-64-minimal ~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 11.981 s, 89.6 MB/s
Thanks, I can only dream that. I am happy if I have 20 MB/s…
My stats, vserver bought today at hetzner:
root@Debian-60-squeeze-64-minimal ~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=2M count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 87.5428 s, 120 MB/s
root@Debian-60-squeeze-64-minimal ~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=4M count=2500
2500+0 records in
2500+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 79.3818 s, 132 MB/s
root@Debian-60-squeeze-64-minimal ~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 6.592 s, 163 MB/s
After having compared the vserver offers from Hetzner and Greatnet.de (“GN”) – both offering KVM virtualized ones – I went for GN’s “VServer Business v2”:
GN runs its ververs with virtio drivers, which Hetzner does not. And, Hetzner does not pass CPU features such ass SSE3, SSE4* and AES to its vserves. Furthermore, for 20 EUR I got more space (120 GB instead of 80 GB), more memory (3 GB) and an additional core. Unfortunately IPv6 is not yet offered at GN’s.
HDD performance is fine at Greatnet.de. On /dev/vda with ext3:
But please keep in mind that performance can vary depending on the load of other vservers on the same machine!
More data on GN:
I hope this data helps when making a similar decision. I have not found it when I made mine. 😉
@Mark: Thanks for the info and advice on vservers with greatnet.de Just taking a look there and they seem to have a cheaper price to spec ratio than hetzner, which I was surprised. I’d be interested to hear how the uptime and network connectivity is in greatnet. Also, any idea on how many vservers they have on a host (or what ports are open on the host)? I have munin-node installed on my vserver with hetzner (which has nothing running on it) and I can see iowait spikes in the CPU Usage graph, as you said, presumably showing high io usage by other vservers on the same host.
I cannot say much about the uptime yet, but will blog about that next month. The vserver has a 100 mbit connection (Hentzer: 1 Gbit) and I have been able to push 10’949 kib/s through it over a long time (one direction; peaks at 12’010 kib/s).
From comparisons to some of my dedicated servers running as KVM hosts themselves I can tell that their host’s kernel seems to be configured very good. And after replacing the guest’s kernel (
x86_64-2.6.39.3-GN-SMPfor Gentoo – it is nowx86_64-3.2.0-rc3-mark+; both have been tickless) Redis 2.4.2 performs very good (± 2%):The numbers in brackets is what you can expect on an equal and idle dedicated server.
I got myself a second vserver, this time at Hetzner’s. And the performance there is unacceptable. The CPU is crippled, I have not been able to compile anything correctly due to that.
-march=nativedoesn’t work, I have resorted to-mmmx -msse -msse2 -mcx16 -mpopcnt. HDD performance is as unacceptable as asf noticed – I get only about 22 MB/s, too. Redis performs very bad:Server at Hetzner’s is cancelled immediately.
@Mark: Thanks for posting your latest findings. With hetzner I think it is a case of luck, if you get a “quiet” vserver host machine or a busy, possibly oversubscribed one.
Also in your previous comment, I think you mistakenly said that vservers at Hetzner had 1 Gbit. Vservers at Hetzner are connected at 100Mbps as far as I know.
When you cancelled the vserver, did you get your money back or have to pay for the minimum 30 days?
Just looking at Redis benchmarks, I seen: http://redis.io/topics/benchmarks Was it redis-benchmark that you used and if so, what were the inputs you used to test with?
Cheers.
Update on Stats – December 2011
Of course things change as time goes on and more VMs are put onto a host server. As a result a year later, I said I’d update my dd, lspci and cpuinfo that are now showing up on this save VM.
Hy
Can you test the performance again? 🙂
Regards
stapoch
@stapoch: I’m afraid I don’t have the VPS any more as I wasn’t using it. Take a look at the forums at: http://forum.hetzner.de/wbb2/ and ask a question there where someone may be able to give you more up-to-date information.
Just in case somebody still ends up here: I have currently KVM server with Hetzner, greatnet and netcup. Hetzner and greatnet have around 50MB/s, but look what the netcup server for same price does:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/testfile bs=2M count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 22,8552 s, 459 MB/s