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  1. #1

    Hetzner: One Year review over a Dedicated Server

    Web Hosting company: Hetzner.de
    Period of review: 05/2012 - 05/2013
    Server location: Germany
    Type of server: Dedicated server

    Server Details: EX 4 package).
    RAM: 16GB DDR 3 RAM
    CPU: Intel® Core™ Quad-Core i7-2600
    HD: 2x3 TB SATA 6GB HD

    General server info
    ===================
    cPanel Version 11.34.1 (build 7)
    Apache version 2.2.22
    PHP version 5.3.10
    MySQL version 5.1.66-cll
    Architecture x86_64
    Operating system linux
    Kernel version 2.6.32-220.13.1.el6.x86_64
    cPanel Pro 1.0 (RC1)
    Service Status Click to View
    Unlimited bandwidth

    Server status
    =============
    Server Load 3.10 (8 cpus)
    Memory Used 12.3 %
    Swap Used 0.9 %
    Disk /dev/md2 (/) 67 %
    Disk /usr/tmpDSK (/tmp) 4 %
    Disk /dev/md1 (/boot) 18 %
    Disk /dev/md3 (/home) 12 %
    Disk /tmp (/var/tmp) 4 %


    This is a one year review for Hetzner and I will review it as a game editor, like I always used to.

    I've been in Hetzner for one year. I went there because I have a large gaming community (GameWorld.gr) and I had to move on to a large server. So this was the cheapest solution I could find. To be honest I didn't read a review of Hetzner and experience the whole situation by myself.

    Performance
    From the beginning of the whole experience, my site was very slow. The situation was getting worse, due to my heavy database which consists of Joomla, phpbb and JomSocial (Joomla component which creates Facebook-like communities). Most people told me that I need a good coder for optimization and that "It's not server's fault". Months passed and the slow speed continued. I was forced to remove components and modules to balance between speed and good services for our users. Slow server speed still continued, mostly in times between 13:00-04:00 (local greek time), so basically 15 hours per day.

    Note that I not only had slow server response (5-15 seconds) but also blank pages and CPU reaching 100%.

    Hetzner usually applies used hard drives on a new server. This means that you might get a hard drive with a high READ_ERROR_RATE (not bad sectors) which might cause you a problem. I had to change hard drives twice during 1 year, and by checking posts in this forum, I see that other users had this issues too. Note that if you ask swap for a drive which doesn't have bad sectors but has millions of re-allocated sectors they reject to swap the drive. If and when they do they always use new hard drives. But that doesn't save server's performance and slowdowns.

    Dear client,

    The requested hardware check has passed as you can see with an
    fault hard drive with SN: W1F0MN4X so we would like replace the drive.
    -----------------%<-----------------
    DMESG ERROR DMESG-Fehler, dmesg enthaelt Fehler
    [09:45h-09:45h]
    NIC OK
    [09:44h-09:45h] - 24.03.2013/09:44h
    CPU OK [09:29h-09:44h] - 24.03.2013/09:29h
    RAM OK [07:18h-09:29h] Log 24.03.2013/07:18h
    HDDTEST-W1F0MN4X ERROR Finished (DMESG-Check, Device:
    sda);
    HDDTEST-Z1F0AC9D OK Finished (Mode: long, Device: sdb);
    -----------------%<-----------------

    Please make backups and confirm the date loss for this drive and
    after that tell us when we may replace the drive.
    Support
    When I began using Hetzner, their server support was very slow. I was receiving replies to my emails after 24 hours. During the last months they worked on this, increased their support team and now their responses are received within 1-3 hours which is overall good.

    Abuse
    One more serious issue with Hetzner is their abuse team. I'm an admin since 1997 and I have changed 10 web hosting companies till today. I NEVER saw a thing like this. If you have a portal with registered users, you have a big chance of getting spammed through your mail server. You will have to make sure that mail server is not visible to anyone (through SSH) otherwise spammers will use it, and you will often get emails from abuse@hetzner.de telling you to "Get action within 24 hours".

    Actually Abuse department is one of the worst. They should tell you to BLOCK outgoing traffic to your mail server, but they don't tell you anything! They just advise you to ask your web admin. So if your web admin doesn't know what's wrong, you will just have to fill a fake promise, until of course abuse department gets back to you a couple of days after with a new complaint received from Spamhaus. By the way both these guys and Hetzner co-operate like police, and actually forward you even emails from ANY guy in the world. One of my competitors sent them an email telling that he received spam from us (this guy is a troll). They've even forwarded this to me as well without checking that the statement was false!

    So if you don't respond within 24 hours, Hetzner blocks the IP of your server! How nice would be that? I have 2,5 million page views per month, 28.000 registered users, sponsorships by Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Razer, and various other companies, and on the other hand I have Hetzner who blocks my site, reduces my traffic and causes users to leave and sponsors to complain!

    Who is going to refund me for this? My site was brought down for 12 hours, 2 times in 1 year. Not to mention slowspeeds. Worst of all, their department works 07:00-21:00 GMT+1 Monday to Friday so if they block your IP at night or even worse Friday night then you are out for more than 48 hours!

    "You are leaving? Let's re-charge you"
    When I quit Hetzner on May, I sent an email to them telling I quit. They didn't respond. One month after they charged my credit card! But they failed! Why? Because I was so lucky that I had no money on this card! If I had money I would be charged!

    Afterwards Hetzner told me that "If you want the server to be closed, enter the robot admin panel and ask for closure" The official closing date of the server was...one month after! Excuse me? Bureaucracy in a private company? When I say "Close it" just close it and stop charging me. Charging someone means that he renews his server for +1 month. Who told Hetzner that I want a renewal?

    Well I won't even put money on this credit card so they can try to charge me as many times as they want. They won't get a euro. On the contrary, I should be the one who would sue Hetzner for losing revenue from slowdows and site being offline.

    Summary
    After one year with Hetzner I wouldn't recommend this site to any active businessman who owns a "heavy" website and wants to have 100% uptime and good speed. If you want that just go elsewhere! Hetzner is only a cheap solution for someone that wants the most low priced dedicated server. Support is good, but abuse department will drive you NUTS!

    On the other hand, just think that with 30-40 euros you can have a really high-end machine with 100% uptime and best speed possible. So...is it worth all this trouble? You choose!

    Rating
    Performance: 5
    Speed: 3
    Support: 6
    Uptime: 7
    Prices: 10
    Overall: 5

    Positives:
    - Best prices on the web.
    - Lately they have reduced email response times, sometimes overall response is within 1-3 hours which is overall good.

    Negatives:
    - Cheap hardware, often errors in hard drives.
    - Slow server performance
    - Abuse team often exaggerates, might bring your site down for up to 48 hours if you don't respond
    - They re-charge one more month when you quit

  2. #2
    They should tell you to BLOCK outgoing traffic to your mail server, but they don't tell you anything! They just advise you to ask your web admin. So if your web admin doesn't know what's wrong, you will just have to fill a fake promise, until of course abuse department gets back to you a couple of days after with a new complaint received from Spamhaus.
    I always thought that a server's owner is responsible for everything that is happening at the server.
    In general abuse team is not obliged to do anything.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    43
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    Most people told me that I need a good coder for optimization and that "It's not server's fault".
    And these people are right.
    I'm running a website 10 times larger than yours, plus some very heavy background jobs, and the servers are doing good (I have 1 master and 1 slave just for backups).

    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    Hetzner usually applies used hard drives on a new server.
    So about other provides, do you think if a customer comes, orders a server and leaves after 2 months, do they throw out the server to thrash? They rent hardware to another customer.
    That's how their business work, what do you expect?


    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    If you have a portal with registered users, you have a big chance of getting spammed through your mail server. You will have to make sure that mail server is not visible to anyone (through SSH) otherwise spammers will use it, and you will often get emails from abuse@hetzner.de telling you to "Get action within 24 hours".
    If spammers use your server to send spam, that means you have failed to configure it properly.
    I suggest outsource email messaging to a 3rd party, it's almost free.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    IWhen I quit Hetzner on May, I sent an email to them telling I quit.
    Why didn't you use robot? It's much faster, server can be cancelled in seconds there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    Hetzner is only a cheap solution for someone that wants the most low priced dedicated server.
    Hetzner is a good solution for someone who either has knowledge or staff to operate servers.


    Quote Originally Posted by Kotsolis View Post
    PHP version 5.3.10
    MySQL version 5.1.66-cll
    PHP version is old, probably vulnerable to exploits.
    MySQL version is very old, anyone who cared about performance would update it.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Posts
    341
    I am sorry about your bad experience with them.
    What I am amazed for is this:
    1. You say you have sponsorships by Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Razer, and various other companies, but you still decided to go with
    a) one of the cheapest datacenters in the whole world
    b) you don't have a sysadmin to manage your server which essentially is unmanaged, that is well known fact. Their worry about the performance of your website is ZERO, NADA. They really couldn't care less. If you need more resources - get more resources. If you need website optimization, optimize it.
    c) you decided to not follow the rules and cancel in a proper way. When I'll think about it, it's much easier to login to robot and click on "cancelation" then contact support and confirm cancelation. Just login to robot and you'll be done in 15 seconds.

    What I agree with you is their abuse team. It's really terrible team. Their support staff is nothing special, I hope you won't need them ever. The last time I contacted them I had a good laugh.
    Me: Hello, since 30+ minutes this server is inaccessible. Are you experiencing problems in the DC? Thanks.
    The support guy: Dear Client, as requested, we have restarted the server.
    I never requested restart of the server, I never mentioned the word restart. I could have restart it myself. I was short and precise, I asked if they are experiencing any issue with their DC. Yet he restarted my server.

    I have been with Hetzner for 2+ years and I would suggest them to anyone that can manage their server (or hire someone that will manage the server). Also get used to not contact support. They will reboot anything they put their hands on.
    Last edited by xeno007; 07-15-2013 at 10:39 PM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    ::1/128
    Posts
    247
    I will leave my comment on every paragraph
    Performance:

    Server Details: EX 4 package).
    RAM: 16GB DDR 3 RAM
    CPU: Intel® Core™ Quad-Core i7-2600
    HD: 2x3 TB SATA 6GB HD
    We use by ...far worst machines for forums with 900 active users the same time
    (from whos.among.us) and more than 10TB traffic per month.
    (Both forums (greeks by the way - Hello!) with more than 300.000 registered members).

    (and when I say worst I mean worst... Athlons and i7 920)

    So, it's not only about the server, it's about configuration.
    1) Apache conf, keep alive? timeout ? maxclient limits ?
    2) MySQL conf. buffers ? innodb? timeouts ?
    3) Php conf. memory limit ? timeouts ?
    4) driver. mysql ? mysqli ? pdo ?
    5) Php handler - the worst - suphp ? fcgi ? dso ?
    6) if fcgi then: opcode cacher or not ?
    7) any cacher in front of it ? nginx for example?

    But again if you think it's the drives, did you check performance from rescue console ? You can use dd for example the check reads and writes.
    What was the average %wa, and it was the same on both drives?

    You could check both disks and then assemble the raid to check it again as a raid.

    Support
    They are unmanaged, so it's usual. Can't say anything here sorry.


    Abuse
    I consider Hetzner's DCs by far the most "clean" from the side of spam / malware issues. When I analyze logs from firewalls like CSF I never saw an IP owned by hetzner to do anything weird (scanning , attacking , brute forcing , sniffing around generally) to my servers. I usually see OVH IPs but that's another thing (among the half china, russia and usa subnets)

    They should like it this way so they have a strict abuse policy I think.


    They should tell you to BLOCK outgoing traffic to your mail server, but they don't tell you anything!
    That's about support: it's unmanaged.
    They don't care if you are running centos, freebsd, windows 98 or cracked iOS on pc hardware. It's your responsibility to fix it.

    That's the bad things of unmanaged.
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    █ Create DNS Clusters between different Web Hosting Panels - Supports multiple Operating Systems and Panels

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by ThePriest View Post
    And these people are right.
    I'm running a website 10 times larger than yours, plus some very heavy background jobs, and the servers are doing good (I have 1 master and 1 slave just for backups).
    Sure thing I need. It's just no matter how many times I've co-operated with web admins and asked for optimization, everyone was saying that they optimized my server, but instead I didn't see any big differences. Most people in here who have sent me PMs to handle such a task don't have this knowledge because optimization is not so easy as maintenance! It requires deeper knowledge.

    Quote Originally Posted by ThePriest View Post
    So about other provides, do you think if a customer comes, orders a server and leaves after 2 months, do they throw out the server to thrash? They rent hardware to another customer.
    That's how their business work, what do you expect?
    I've co-operated with about 7-8 companies for 15 years. ALL of them charge you for specific period. Even if you cancel a few days earlier you don't pay nothing. It's ILLEGAL to be charged WITHOUT your knowledge for a service that you actually won't ever get! And you don't need to be a lawyer to understand this.

    Quote Originally Posted by ThePriest View Post
    Hetzner is a good solution for someone who either has knowledge or staff to operate servers.
    90% of Site admins (small or big company owners) don't.

    PHP version is old, probably vulnerable to exploits.
    MySQL version is very old, anyone who cared about performance would update it.
    Will check. Thanks.

    Quote Originally Posted by xeno007 View Post
    1. You say you have sponsorships by Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Razer, and various other companies
    It's Greece, it's crisis here, and their representatives here don't have the huge budget you imagine.

    @chrismfz : I would consider staying with them if their abuse team wasn't such a total fail and if -as xeno007 said- their support team wasn't so bad and so slow. And because I called them 4 times, I spoke with a german guy there only ONCE. The other 3 times I thought I was speaking with someone from Middle East or Asia with little knowledge of English. If they hire employees who don't have a good level at english language just to save money then a misunderstanding in some specific situations can cost you a lot.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Agios Dimitrios,Attiki,GR
    Posts
    114
    Quote Originally Posted by chrismfz View Post
    I will leave my comment on every paragraph
    Performance:



    We use by ...far worst machines for forums with 900 active users the same time
    (from whos.among.us) and more than 10TB traffic per month.
    (Both forums (greeks by the way - Hello!) with more than 300.000 registered members).

    (and when I say worst I mean worst... Athlons and i7 920)

    So, it's not only about the server, it's about configuration.
    1) Apache conf, keep alive? timeout ? maxclient limits ?
    2) MySQL conf. buffers ? innodb? timeouts ?
    3) Php conf. memory limit ? timeouts ?
    4) driver. mysql ? mysqli ? pdo ?
    5) Php handler - the worst - suphp ? fcgi ? dso ?
    6) if fcgi then: opcode cacher or not ?
    7) any cacher in front of it ? nginx for example?

    But again if you think it's the drives, did you check performance from rescue console ? You can use dd for example the check reads and writes.
    What was the average %wa, and it was the same on both drives?

    You could check both disks and then assemble the raid to check it again as a raid.

    Support
    They are unmanaged, so it's usual. Can't say anything here sorry.


    Abuse
    I consider Hetzner's DCs by far the most "clean" from the side of spam / malware issues. When I analyze logs from firewalls like CSF I never saw an IP owned by hetzner to do anything weird (scanning , attacking , brute forcing , sniffing around generally) to my servers. I usually see OVH IPs but that's another thing (among the half china, russia and usa subnets)

    They should like it this way so they have a strict abuse policy I think.



    That's about support: it's unmanaged.
    They don't care if you are running centos, freebsd, windows 98 or cracked iOS on pc hardware. It's your responsibility to fix it.

    That's the bad things of unmanaged.

    i agree with you you have to check configuration
    ALso you forget you are responsible for server
    owner is responsible for everything that is happening at the server dont blame the others
    Company : rotame.com Complete Internet Solutions
    Location : Greece, Athens
    Datacenter: DE, UK | OS: Centos | WebServer: Apache | CP: CPanel

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