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Poll: How many hosts have you used in 5 years?

General Discussion by PetraSuper 35 replies 3.5K views
PetraSuper

Member OP

network boot believer

#1

Hej all, I am curious. I count my own history and find 23 providers since 2021. Into every category: shared hosting, VPS, dedicated, colocation malý server. No staying long anywhere, always chasing better deal.

Is this normal? No? I feel like nomad on internet. My friend he uses one host entire time and laughs at me.

Please vote and say why you move or stay. Want to know if I have problem or if market is just like this.

My list if anyone cares: [too long, cut for post, but includes 4 dead providers and one that exit-scammed]

boot anything, anywhere, anytime
SingaporeRep

Member

Benchmark Addict

#2 
Provider         | Disk      | Net Up | Net Down | Price
---------------|-----------|--------|----------|------
Contabo      | 1.2 GB/s  | 890    | 940      | €6
OVHcloud      | 180 MB/s  | 420    | 380      | €4
Vultr       | 890 MB/s  | 750    | 720      | $8
Hetzner     | 2.1 GB/s  | 920    | 910      | €12

Decent disk IO, meh network on OVHcloud. Moved 3 times for disk, 2 for routing. Total 7 hosts in 5 years.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.
kate3

Member

#3

7 is reasonable. I've used 6, but consolidated to 2 now — one KVM for production, one LXC for experiments. OpenVZ was a mistake I made twice; the virtualization tax on oversold kernels is real.

Key insight: cgroups v2 finally made container limits enforceable. Providers still on v1 or no proper nesting? That's your signal to leave. I stayed longest with Leaseweb https://www.leaseweb.com because they upstream their kernel patches and don't hide behind "custom optimized" nonsense.

virsh list --all | wc -l: 47
liam_funky

Member

Vancouver

#4

1. I've used exactly 5 hosts in 5 years
A) 2 were for work projects
B) 3 personal
2. Consolidation strategy:
I. One bare metal for compute
Ii. One VPS for offsite DNS and mail
3. Reasons I left previous hosts:
A) Price hike without notice
B) Network degradation
C) Support quality drop
4. Current count: 2 active, 3 dead to me

beto60

Member

#5

Caramba, I think... maybe 9? Nossa, could be 10 kkkk

I dont keep list like liam, no, I just remember the feelings. One host bad support, another one the price he go up, one he just disappear with my backup caramba! That one I learn the lesson kkkkk

Now I stay with two, no more chasing. Warm feeling to know where my things live, you know?

haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

4 #6

23 is absurd. Back when I started, you picked one colo provider and married them. Kids these days treat infrastructure like disposable razors.

I've used 4 hosts in 20 years in this business. Two died — one acquisition, one bankruptcy. The other two I still have. Mark my words: this churn culture will bite you when you need historical data and find it scattered across dead control panels.

Consolidate now, before the next wave of market contraction. I've seen three already. The fourth is coming.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
YU

Member

1 #7

23 is high but I understand the impulse. In Istanbul we get hit with currency swings every few months, so a host that was cheap in lira terms becomes expensive overnight. I've used 11 hosts in 4 years, mostly chasing EUR-denominated contracts to escape the volatility. OVHcloud's EUR pricing saved me more than once when the lira crashed.

PetraSuper

Member OP

network boot believer

#8
haroldgsm said:
This churn culture will bite you when you need historical data

You are right about dead control panels, I have one server I cannot reach because provider he used custom panel and now domain is parked by squatter. But I boot from network, my data is on my NAS at home, I do not trust any host with anything I cannot lose. This is why I can move fast.

boot anything, anywhere, anytime
prague1983

Member

btw I use Arch

4 #9

12 hosts in 5 years, but 8 of those were just me compiling kernels on cheap VPS to test scheduler patches. Hetzner's ARM cloud instances are perfect for this now, EUR 4.51 for 4 cores. I consolidated everything to Hetzner and one Contabo storage box for backups — https://contabo.com. The rest were learning experiences.

Gentoo on a 512 MB VPS is not a learning experience, it is a punishment. I did it twice.

oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
hankels

Member

52 VPS and counting

#10

52 VPS and counting. It's not hoarding if it's infrastructure.

I have a spreadsheet. Would you like to see the spreadsheet? The spreadsheet has 47 rows of former hosts. Reasons for departure:

  • Black Friday deal expired and renewal was 4x
  • IPv6 prefix suddenly "not guaranteed"
  • Support ticket answered by ChatGPT with wrong facts
  • Network to China Telecom degraded
  • "Unlimited" bandwidth had invisible 95th percentile cap

I stay now with whoever has working BGP communities and does not lie about transit.

seedbox, NAS, tape, and three offsite

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