Hetzner - great for hosting. Terrible for support

[phenomlab]

Any fellow Hetzner users here ? I’ve been using Hetzner for the VPS that this platform runs on for some time now. Performance-wise, it’s perfect. I have a 4 x CPU, 160Gb SSD disk, and 16Gb RAM server running and it’s pretty stable - apart from the server suddenly going offline every x days due to a bug in the IPv6 DHCP package. The workaround for this was to set a static IP instead - see this

https://docs.hetzner.com/de/cloud/servers/static-configuration/

Essentially, it means I had to configure this server as below

Existing netplan

# This file is generated from information provided by the datasource.  Changes
# to it will not persist across an instance reboot.  To disable cloud-init's
# network configuration capabilities, write a file
# /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg with the following:
# network: {config: disabled}
network:
    version: 2
    ethernets:
        eth0:
            dhcp4: true
            addresses: ['ipv6 address']
            gateway6: fe80::1
            nameservers:
                addresses: [127.0.0.53, 127.0.0.1]
            match:
                macaddress: macaddress
            set-name: eth0

Proposed change

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    eth0:
      addresses:
      - ip address/32
      - ipv6 address/64
      routes:
      - to: 0.0.0.0/0
        via: gateway
        on-link: true
      gateway6: fe80::1
      match:
        macaddress:  macaddress
      set-name: eth0

Then create file /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg

Add the below

network:
  config: disabled

Save, and then reboot (or at the very least, stop and restart netplan)

The point here is that those unfamiliar with the inner workings of Linux will have absolutely NO CLUE what to modify here. This is one of the downsides of having an unmanaged VPS - there is ZERO support (I’m going to be writing an independant blog article about this soon). For me, this isn’t the end of the world, but it could well mean disaster for anyone else just starting out. Then, there’s the total lack of support when I asked them about unexpectedly high TTFB (Time To First Byte), which is around 200ms for a flat HTML file - it should ideally be less than 50. In addition, this platform hits anywhere between 400-600ms for TTFB. This isn’t great, but there isn’t much I can do to reduce it (there’s another article I’m going to write about that as well). Hetzner’s response ?

First, they asked me to use mtr to conduct 1000 traces from my PC to the VPS and vice-versa. Not only does each run take around 18 minutes to complete, but you have to copy the results, and email them back to the support desk. Once these were “reviewed” (I’m using quotes here as there really isn’t any useful information as such), they reverted with

Dear Client,
the MTR does not show any issue, so we can’t see any network issue on our side. Also we’ve checked the hostsystem and can’t see any issue with it as well. Please check your server logs.

No sh*t, Sherlock. I could have told you that myself. Check my server logs ? You don’t think I’ve already done that ?

And so here’s the lesson. Hetzner absolutely EXCEL when it comes to a stable machine, cost to run, backups, and everything else - until you need support, and that’s where it all falls apart sadly.

You’re on your own there… Be warned

[phenomlab]

Just coming back here to post an update for this thread. Since setting a static IP address, the VPS I’m running has been ROCK solid with absolutely no downtime whatsoever.

[cagatay]

@phenomlab I’m using VPS on Hetzner over 2 years. Great provider and very cheap then competitors

[phenomlab]

@cagatay same here. Was previously an IONOS user, but moved to Hetzner to realise both savings and performance increase and have never looked back.