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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.
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.
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.
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:
┌─────────────┬──────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬────────────┐ │ USD/Month │ vCPU │ Memory │ Storage │ Traffic │ Provider │ ╞═════════════╪══════════╪════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪════════════╡ │ $3.41 │ 1 │ 2GB │ 20GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ │ $4.77 │ 2 │ 2GB │ 40GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ │ $5.00 │ 1 │ 1GB │ 25GB │ 1TB │ DO │ ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ │ $6.70 │ 2 │ 4GB │ 40GB │ 20TB │ Hetzner │ ├─────────────┼──────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┤ │ $10.00 │ 1 │ 2GB │ 25GB │ 2TB │ DO │ └─────────────┴──────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴────────────┘
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.
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.
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.
Until then, this is FIGBERT signing off. I should make a more consistent outro.
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