Which VPS provider will survive the coming winter?
Hi,
I live in France and the government is preparing a law to be able to cut electricity this winter, so I guess my OVH VPS in Gravelines isn't assured to run 24/7.
On it I run a small website with about 1000 visits per day. It's not vital that it remains up at all times (it doesn't bring money) but if I can do it for cheap I'm looking to relocate this VPS in a country where electricity won't be a problem.
Anything in Europe seems as bleak as France. Not sure about the US. Even Finland that has its own nuclear power plants is preparing to ration electricity.
The only country that has cheap energy seems to be Russia, but I can't get a VPS there for obvious reasons.
Any suggestions?
There will always be electricity available, but it'll come at a cost. I expect businesses running duplicate capacity for redundancy (ie AWS) to spike in price first.
The French grid is mostly powered by nuclear and has been for years. I don't expect much of a problem there even with rising gas prices. The total energy consumption graphs online that show a significant amount of fossil fuels seem to also include other types of energy consumption such as heating.
I wouldn't worry about this for now. Make sure your offsite backups are working and prepare a plan for migration to any other host if you're worried, but with OVH I'd be more worried about the data center catching on fire than electricity being cut for more than a maintenance window.
> On it I run a small website with about 1000 visits per day. It's not
vital that it remains up at all times (it doesn't bring money) but
if I can do it for cheap I'm looking to relocate this VPS in a
country where electricity won't be a problem.
Your house.
A site like that would run on a Raspberry Pi from a small solar panel
and/or small (tiny) marine wind generator depending on your climate.
Self-hosting is a learning curve, but don't listen to the pessimists
who tell you it's "impossible". There are many examples, but my
favourite it this one [1].
[1] https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
I can't imagine that these big hosting providers will shutdown parts of their infrastructure because of this.
They will probably buy additional fuel before winter to prepare to run their generators in the times where electricity could be cut off.
If electricity becomes really scarce, they'll take some large industrial processes offline. Data centers won't be shut down. You'll be fine with OVH.
Wat?
Where are you getting this from? Europe is completely fine from electricity standpoint. Most are doing deals with countries that have nuclear plants. Finland isn’t rationing anything either.
From where do you get this info about a law to cut electricity ?
I don't see anything like that on French newspapers (Le Monde/Mediapart/BFM) nor on Google
OVH host government websites and services, if anything their DCs will have priority for electricity.
OVH is one of if not the most trustworthy you can get in Europe. Stick with it.
I imagine most datacenters will be jumping through many hoops to make sure they have power through any cuts. Things like paying premiums for electricity, backup diesel generators, etc. This is their bread and butter. There is of course a chance that the worst case will occur, but honestly I wouldn't spend too much energy focusing on it.
For some context, the question is probably motivated by discussions such as [0]:
> "Let's prepare for a total cut-off of Russian gas. This is now the most likely option," [said French Minister of Economy, Bruno le Maire].
> Some companies could therefore be asked to "slow down their energy consumption, or even stop their energy consumption for a certain period of time" while it would be "totally impossible" for others to do so without triggering wider industrial repercussions," he explained.
[0] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/07/11/electricity-su...
If what you are saying is true, then won't the ISPs turn off their equipment too, so you won't be able to reach your server no matter where it is.
The country I live in, Germany, is arguably even worse off than France.
But: there is a price to be paid for human life, freedoms, democracy and decency. We've been preaching for over 50 years about never letting a genocide happen again on the European soil. Now it's time to walk the talk and pay the price. Still, for us, it's a very modest price, when compared to what the Ukrainians are paying. We pay with discomfort, Ukrainians pay with their lives, limbs and all the horrors the human destruction can bring. Fuck Russia. Sorry for the offtopic and being melodramatic - I hope you will manage to keep your VPS running.
Hetzner has a US VPS location. Linode and Vultr are good, too.
Anyway, I’d be surprised if things like OVH went down over this. I imagine they run some critical stuff and that France wouldn’t want their tech darlings to look so unstable.
Dont worry, rationing will affect large electric consumers (industry, EV cars, heating...). VPS are too small.
Iceland should be fine, they have plenty of renewable energy.
If you are seriously worried about the electrical power situation in Europe this winter, I would assume your priorities would focus on the well being of your family first?
free tier aws ec2 t2.micro should be able to handle that load