2020-11-01-moving-to-hetzner-from-digitalocean.gmi (5141B)
1 # Moving to Hetzner Cloud from DigitalOcean 2 3 Since I began working on self-hosting, I've been using a DigitalOcean VPS running Debian 10. However, after investigating the alternatives in the space, I'll be moving to Hetzner Cloud when my DigitalOcean credits run out in six months. Here's why. 4 5 => https://m.do.co/c/1f23d011ae24 DigitalOcean (affiliate link) 6 => https://www.hetzner.com/ Hetzner Cloud 7 8 I went with DigitalOcean as my hosting platform primarily because of the USD$50 credit included with Github Student. I've used USD$20 of that credit as of today, and the remaining money should run out around April 2020, giving me almost a year of VPS for free. Not a bad deal. 9 10 => https://education.github.com/pack Github Student 11 12 With that said, as my credits hit the half-way point, I've begun to think about what's to come. Namely, the fact that my current server is running at a constant 80% memory usage – severely limiting what I can self-host. 13 14 ## Money talks... 15 16 I currently use the cheapest DigitalOcean VPS available. I have 1 vCPU, 1GB of RAM, 25GB of SSD, and 1TB of data transfer. All that power is packed in a clean USD$5 per month. This is, as far as cloud hosts go, pretty good bang for your buck. Hetzner blows that out of the water. Take a look at this table: 17 18 ```table 19 ┌─────────────┬──────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬────────────┐ 20 │ USD/Month │ vCPU │ Memory │ Storage │ Traffic │ Provider │ 21 ╞═════════════╪══════════╪════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪════════════╡ 22 │ $3.41 │ 1 │ 2GB │ 20GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ 23 ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ 24 │ $4.77 │ 2 │ 2GB │ 40GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ 25 ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ 26 │ $5.00 │ 1 │ 1GB │ 25GB │ 1TB │ DO │ 27 ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ 28 │ $6.70 │ 2 │ 4GB │ 40GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ 29 ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ 30 │ $10.00 │ 1 │ 2GB │ 25GB │ 2TB │ DO │ 31 └─────────────┴──────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴────────────┘ 32 ``` 33 34 Check out the math on that, seriously. Hetzner's base tier offers 1 vCPU, 2GB of ram, 20GB of SSD, and 20TB of data transfer for USD$3.41 per month. That's double the ram and 20 times the transfer for almost half the price of my current DigitalOcean droplet. The fourth down in the table above, the one I plan on purchasing, costs USD$1.70 more than DigitalOcean and has quadruple the performace of my current VPS. That's more than even Docker could need. Ok that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's still a lot. 35 36 ## ...and it speaks for the trees. 37 38 Hetzner is a green hosting provider, as certified by the Green Web Foundation. DigitalOcean is not. Obviously, climate change is important. If we look at it objectively, it's one of the only extinction-level threats to human existence at the moment. All that is to say that switching to a green hosting provider is the only thing I need to do according to a random online website carbon calculator, and you know I can't resist online website metrics. 39 40 => https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/ Green Hosting Provider Directory 41 => https://www.websitecarbon.com/ Random online carbon calculator 42 43 ## So that's nice. 44 45 Anyways, that's a pretty good summary of my thoughts on the move. I'm probably going to use the move to make a few other changes to my hosting setup (i.e. docker-compose to k3s, umami to plausible). I'll keep you all abreast of the latest updates to my hosting in future posts. 46 47 Until then, this is FIGBERT signing off. I should make a more consistent outro. 48