This is a comprehensive review of a Hetzner VPS. The server is based in Helsinki, Finland.
I was attracted to Hetzner Online because of the reviews that I read on twitter and on various websites.
All the reviews of the Hetzner Online VPS were unanimous that the VPS is fast and responsive and that there is enormous value that one derives for the price that one is paying for the VPS.
So, I decided to check whether these claims about the speed and responsiveness of the Hetzner VPS is correct and to do my own review.
I bought a VPS from Hetzner with the following specifications.
Sever Model: CX11 VCPU: 1 RAM 2 GB SSD Disk: 20GB Price: 2.49 Euro per month
The price of 2.49 Euro for the Hetzner VPS translates to $2.89 which is quite reasonable.
Signing up/ registration
As a matter of policy, Hetzner Online insists on some proof of identification.
The proof can be in any form such as the passport, driver’s license, Income-tax account number etc.
Hetzner insists that the proof has to be from a Government body.
In fact, immediately on signing up, the following mail is received from Hetzner Online.
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9 Feb |
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Tel.: +49 9831 505-0 Fax: +49 9831 505-3 info@hetzner.com www.hetzner.com Dear Mr Albert Einstein Thank you for creating an account with Hetzner Online GmbH. As a new customer, we kindly request that you provide us with a copy (scan/photo) of your passport or ID card for authentication purposes. You can blur or block out information that is not necessary for authentication. Please would you send the document by fax or as an email attachment to this email address. The document submitted will be deleted in our system with immediate effect after checking it. Best regards Your Hetzner Online Team
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However, there is no reason to be alarmed about the demand by Hetzner for the identity proof.
They are only seeking to screen out scammers and conmen.
The fact that an applicant sends some form of identification is sufficient to show that he is a genuine and serious customer and not a scammer or a spammer.
Another trick that Hetzner Online uses to discourage spammers is to send the first bill within the first week of setting up the VPS.
It is obvious that only serious customers will honour the bill. Spammers will default and their services will be terminated.
Creating the VPS
Hetzner has set up its systems in such an efficient manner that creating a VPS literally takes only a few seconds.
There are three locations to choose from.
These are Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki.
While Nuremberg and Falkenstein are in Germany, Helsinki is in Finland.
One can choose the operating system for the VPS.
There is a choice of Ubuntu, Centos, Fedora and Debian.
There is also a choice of the storage disks for the VPS.
One can choose from ‘Local Storage (NVME SSD), Network Storage (CEPH) and Dedicated VCPU (NVME SSD).
I chose a Hetzner VPS with the following specifications:
CX11
€2.49/mo
€0.004 /h
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1 |
vCPU |
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2 GB |
RAM |
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20 GB |
SSD |
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20 TB |
TRAFFIC |
Within a few seconds of clicking the ‘Create and Buy Now’ button, the VPS was created.
I received a mail which stated the following:
Server ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2 created
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11 May |
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Review of Hetzner VPS
Now, let us get down to the task of conducting a serious review of the Hetzner VPS.
To check the load on the VPS and whether it is oversold:
top - 19:28:20 up 118 days, 22:43, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.10, 0.03
Tasks: 120 total, 1 running, 119 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 9.7 us, 0.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 90.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 1998960 total, 166488 free, 574708 used, 1257764 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 free, 0 used. 1130440 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
7624 www-data 20 0 522116 76748 57532 S 8.6 3.8 0:01.22 php-fpm5.6
30026 mysql 20 0 1045144 439332 8184 S 0.7 22.0 193:07.63 mysqld
1 root 20 0 185508 5436 3304 S 0.0 0.3 18:35.87 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.66 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 1:55.55 ksoftirqd/0
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 9:49.80 rcu_sched
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_bh
9 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
10 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 1:34.97 watchdog/0
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs
12 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
13 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 perf
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:05.05 khungtaskd
15 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 writeback
16 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd
17 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khugepaged
18 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto
19 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd
20 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
21 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd
22 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_sff
RAM usage:
root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:/var/www# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1952 530 193 84 1228 1134
Swap: 0 0 0
CPU processor:
root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:/var/www# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 85
model name : Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake)
stepping : 4
microcode : 0x1
cpu MHz : 2099.998
cache size : 16384 KB
Speed of disk (I/O):
root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:/var/www# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 1.48736 s, 722 MB/s root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:/var/www#
download speed of the VPS using wget:
root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:~# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test --2018-09-06 19:39:49-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)... 205.234.175.175 Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)|205.234.175.175|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: ‘100mb.test’ 100mb.test 100%[==================================>] 100.00M 78.5MB/s in 1.3s 2018-09-06 19:39:51 (78.5 MB/s) - ‘100mb.test’ saved [104857600/104857600] root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:~#
Upload & Download Speeds using the script:
root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:~# bash bench.sh CPU model : Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake) Number of cores : 1 CPU frequency : 2099.998 MHz Total amount of ram : 1952 MB Total amount of swap : MB System uptime : 118 days, 23:01, Download speed : (72.9MB/s) I/O speed : 279MB/s root@ubuntu-2gb-hel1-2:~#
Review of Hetzner support
Hetzner offers support by email.
The support replies to queries once in 24 hours.
The replies are given in English and German.
This is quite acceptable given the rock-bottom price of the VPS.
Hetzner also has a comprehensive wiki which answers most frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Conclusion
My review of the Hetzner VPS is that I am very happy with it.
The VPS is indeed fast and responsive.
One can see this when feeding in commands on the SSH (putty).
The commands are executed fast and in the blink of an eye.
One can also see the responsiveness of the VPS when accessing the webpages.
The webpages, especially if cached with WP Super Cache, are fast and responsive.
Actually, the Hetzner VPS is a very good option, especially considering that the price is the lowest as compared to other unmanaged VPS providers such as Linode, Vultr, OVH and Scaleway.