Hetzner for "serious" business

[karel]

Hello (and sorry for using English, but my German is poor).

I'm interested in Hetzner.de (Root servers), but I have a few questions for someone already with Hetzner.

My situation: I run a small "custom" webhosting business and run / provide support for three e-commerce sites (online shops) in the Czech Republic. Currently, I have a virtual server with actually very good uptime (99.985 for last two years, and most downtimes were my fault), but I need to upgrade.

Unfortunately, the market in the Czech Republic is extremely fragmented, so most companies that provide dedicated servers are "one-man-shows" (with no support during the weekend or with very limited support - e.g. my current host - not a one-man-show, but still - won't replace faulty server during weekend). Bigger companies provide funny things like Celeron's, servers that have less power than my virtual server and unlimited traffic ("we cut you down when we decide to") - imagine 1and1, but worse. So, I'm looking for a server elsewhere (Germany has good peering).

Hetzner seems to be quite good (except a few bad things, like RAM with no ECC and probably desktop computers). I've read several reviews, not many bad things about them. However, does anybody use Hetzner for "serious" business (webhosting, e-commerce)? If my server dies and Saturday 23:00, will it be replaced in a reasonable time? Is a reasonable uptime (99.9+) possible with Hetzner? Any other thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[reallumpi]

Hi,

I have a Server with Hetzner for about 2 Years now and i'm really satisfied. By now i had only 1 faulty HDD but they solved the Issue very fast, but if you are running a serious business consider adding the "High availibilty Pack" for €69/month +69€ Setup. Also you need the "Flexi Pack" for 15€/month to add that Service. It has the advantage that you get 2 Out-of-Business-time Support Tickets/month (eg. in case something breakes during weekends), redundant PSU and also they add the Eric Express Card for Remote Access even if the Network Settings are broken etc. It might not be the cheapest but if you sum it up, for example with the EQ9 Server, you get a really Highend Package for less than 200€/month for each Server.

One other thing i don't really know is how good or bad the Hetzner routing to Czech Republic is, maybe try to check the Ripe Page (AS24940) to get an Overview about Peerings and check the major uptsreams like Level3 against some Major Czech ISP's. Unfortunately Hetzner does not provide a looking Glas Interface as far as i know but maybe the Support can also send you some traceroutes if you provide them testing IP's (i can also do if you send them to me).

regards,
Martin

 

[karel]

... It has the advantage that you get 2 Out-of-Business-time Support Tickets/month (eg. in case something breakes during weekends)...

Which means that I have to pay for support if the hardware breaks during weekend / on graveyard shift? I wonder how expensive that could get.

One other thing i don't really know is how good or bad the Hetzner routing to Czech Republic is

I didn't know either, so I ran a test. I placed an image from Hetzner.de on my server and let about 1500 visitors download the same image both from my current server (CZ) and from Detzner (DE) - it was measured with JavaScript, so accuracy is in hundreds of miliseconds. The results surprised me, some visitors even had better connection to Hetzner than to my current server.

 

[reallumpi]

Which means that I have to pay for support if the hardware breaks during weekend / on graveyard shift? I wonder how expensive that could get.

You just have, as far as i know as i never had an outtage during weekend, to pay for the emergency support during non business hours. You don't have to pay for the HDD or whatever itself. If you want to run a business i think 85€/Server more each month is maybe something reasonable and makes you sleep better probably but it's up to you as you can also open an Support ticket an pay on a per incident basis. But if it would be my choice i would add that 85€ just because of the redundant Power Supply and also the Eric Express Card.