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I seemed to have missed the point about the IPs. This cannot reasonably be expected to be locked in price.
IPv4 depletion is a real thing. Do you expect your landlord to lock in your rent in perpetuity without a contract? I don't think so.
You have some point when it comes to hardware, but when it comes to IP and other real world expenses, its really a dream to have locked in pricing. These things tend to increase over time.
Besides the obvious fact that a provider can't predict the future and hence might sometimes simply need to change some details (like IP prices) there is also another factor that has been largely overlooked, namely the relationship one has.
@Prometeus (are they still here?), for instance, seems to keep some KVM node alive pretty much for myself only (if I'm not mistaken, they don't sell that product anymore since some years). That's outstanding but it might also help to understand that they never had trouble with me and that I'm perfectly ready to give up my kvm vps and have it changed to xen or whatever they run nowadays. So it's kind of "they are nice to me and I am nice to them".
Similarly @cociu never changed anything for years. I still enjoy that very old special and, in fact, iirc he (some years ago) even upgraded some detail (I think I got some more disk space iirc). And again, I treat them decently and they treat me decently.
I don't know about that @speedykvm / @sureiam story and I'm certainly not interested in increasing toxicity but from what I read here (and know about sureiam) I am under the impression that he treated them decently and they failed to respond in kind. But then, oh well, we're talking about speedykvm ...
No I have no qualms about the price of IPs fluctuating. If anything they've gone done in price ($5 for one or $15 for 5). My point was that all my hosts have agreed to grandfather my account. Unlike incero or speedykvm whom offer attractive 36 month term pricing but with no assurance of it being renewed at the same rate or even capping the potential increase to a percentage. There is literally nothing stopping them from coming back after your term and requesting a 100% increase for your second term. (I had specifically asked if they could at least agree to a percentage increase cap)
@bsdguy
Yes as any of my hosts can contest I'm an extremely reasonable and considerate customer. I make sure my resource usage is kept minimal through caching and optimization efforts. I prepay and setup automated pay schedules and I buy services relative to my needs and keep all conversations professional in manner and rresponse. Even with incero and speedykvm i remained nothing but professional while they responded like a 16 year old running a hosting company out of their basement.
In either case it was good to know that they wouldn't be a company I could work with. Perhaps once they change their management i would give them another look but not before they agreed on a cap on their renewal prices. Bait and switch is a real thing in the hosting industry and you gotta be careful about that. Less you want your business held hostage by a bunch of kids.
Like Inceros price raises in 2014? Think it was up to 70% increases that were being quoted.
Yea, I have yet to see anything similar since 2014. The tone here is that it's a daily trend set to a cron
Certainly fine for the tin foil hat crowd. However, it's just common sense that it's not a good idea to raise prices for the fun of it. They did a very detailed e-mail about why prices were raised in 2014. Those in the real world know that prices don't just magically increase for the fun of it. Agreed it's a mute point here. Enjoy your gossip and jabs. It's only free advertising with every mention.
Heh I'm not on either side of this one. OP just mentioned raises so I gave an historical example.
However you seem to be getting exceptionally defensive and striking out. Sit back and relax. I'll even agree with most of your points.
Hardware prices going down? Well I’d Love to see these DDR4 prices go to the level hey we’re year or two before. Huh....
Wasn’t directed towards you or to be defensive, just quoted your prime example of history to clarify further. Apologies if it seemed that way, the comment about jabs was intended at OP who made the first strike.
Asking for a price lock without creating a contract is nothing more than empty promises and can be broken at any time.
I thought that was common knowledge.
@deank
You here? The end is nigh.
That along with GPUs is currently a fluke and you know it. It's not the norm, if hardware prices generally increased we wouldn't be getting more hardware for less with every passing year on KVM solutions.
No the tone is here that we could end up loading up a setup, spending literally years getting it perfect then have a host Jack up rates by 70%.
Any provider/host that doesn't hold up to their presale agreement made via email, PM, other written form isn't worth dealing with. Say what you will a host jacking up prices permanently after an initial term by 50%+ is either playing the "trial term" game or very poorly managing their business and expected expenditures. No matter how you look at it though it's bad for the consumer.
In any case I believe I've made my point: providers and hosts that agree to lock in pricing or to increase pricing within a set % are always better than those like incero and speedykvm that refuse to even agree to a set percentage increase cap (probably because they might Jack it up by 70% !)
It’s not really. Yes you get more powerful hardware for the comparable amount of money every some time, but it’s not going down in price overall.
Storage prices have fallen dramatically, per core cpu pricing has fallen dramatically. Power costs in many places have decreased since 2009. Software costs have fallen considerably. Ram pricing has temporally gone up because of shortage.
Without the current inventory shortage you can get 32gb of ddr4 for much less than you could have gotten 32gb of ddr2 When new. There is no denying that.
In addition older hardware is much more useful now than it has been before. DDR3, and Xeon CPUs from 5 years ago (2012) are still very useful today. But back in 2010 ddr1 ram from 2015 was all but useless as were the single core processors from 2005 (dual core Athlon was just released in 2005 But not widely adopted yet).
So say what you will. Datacenter costs on hardware for the budget realm are not more expensive than they were 5 years ago and if trends continue like they have for the past 20 years they won't be 5 years from now.
Well RAM prices are not likely to fall any time soon, and RAM is one of the biggest cost in any server.
Storage is indeed cheaper, be it spinning disk or SSDs, but there is a trend towards moving everything to SSDs, which means cost per GB is likely to rise slightly as the storage mediums are more expensive. The trade-off being performance. But if you're strictly comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges, then you're generally correct in thinking that storage prices are falling.
The per core price is not as relevant as overall performance. New CPUs are only marginally better than previous generation CPUs. As you have mentioned, even CPUs from 2012 are still good and useful today. But the price of new CPUs are not coming down. They tend to remain broadly flat.
Power costs have NOT come down on average. Some places yes, but most places no.
Labour costs have also not come down on average. Most places will see inflation.
By and large, I do agree with your thinking. For new servers, the hardware is the largest factor in the rental cost. Bandwidth is also makes up a considerable chunk, and that tends to get cheaper over time too. So for the most part, there is very little upward pressure on the price of an existing dedicated server.
But let us consider the following. If you have a budget provider, perhaps using 2nd hand (or possibly free) hardware, the pricing structure may be entirely based on operating costs. Such companies would be far more susceptible to increases in rent, power and labour costs. This is more likely to be true for providers leasing out older gear at cheap prices. It only make sense.
So if you start renting a server that's already 5 years old, the host probably has it already paid off. They won't be able to command a premium that you see on brand-new hardware, and so the server may be very cheap.
We sometimes lease out old hardware for the same price we do collocation. Essentially that means the server is free, and you're paying for space, power and bandwidth. In such circumstances, how could we guarantee the price for you in perpetuity? HK rent and power prices just keep rising. So I think it really depends on the circumstances. Try to think about it from all the angles.
price rise is reasonable as long as it justifies the current inflation and demand/supply of hardware . However sudden price rise to 300 to 1000% is not reasonable . I am sure OP means that only . HK and Texas are very different place .
Well, as you say, price rises that reflect demand and supply are reasonable. It's unlikely that would ever be 300-1000%, but if the demand were very high then such prices may be justified. Just look at GPUs in the mining space
Well with all due respect more than half the providers here are still running on ddr3. Which has been rock bottom pricing for a while especially registered ram. And ddr4 ram prices will decrease again that's assured.
Well that depends. If you want ssd you can pay the premium for it. I see the pricing structure here frequently. Premium ssd or budget spindle HD. It's a reasonable consideration. Frankly though ssd storage in my opinion is only useful in large database situations. Smaller database should always be cached to ram larger file storage and download will generally be limited by 1gbps bandwidth limitations in raid 10 configurations. But yes if you want SSD you should pay the premium for it. But that has also decreased in price.
In your analysis price per core is very important. As you said performance hasn't changed much over past few generations. As such the more cores you have the longer they'll be useful hence increasing shelf life. Additionally i could argue that AMD Eypc has dramatically lowered price per core pricing but I'll wait till people wake up to how great those chips actually are.
Well that depends. If you've enjoyed cheap electricity at the cost of massive pollution than yes your likely to take a hit on this moving forward. However recent analysis have shown that with the lower power storage and reusable energy device ability there will be a surplus of energy moving forward in the next 10-20 year's as power can be stored for long periods of time and sold/traded across big spaces. But this isn't proven so I'll go back to what i said about in some places It has gone down. Texas in particular it has.
Labour prices have also not gone up much either. Additionally every generation sees a bigger influx of IT people as generations are growing up wired. The supply of IT techs is more likely to grow in the coming years keeping price for Labour somewhat stagnant in the datacenter and hosting industry.
I'm not unreasonable I understand hosting in Australia an island nation isn't going to cost the same as hosting in Texas or HK. Each geographic area has different pricing, demand, and pressures. But in this example with incero and speedykvm I don't expect their pricing to change so much that they can't even be willing to offer me a percentage increase cap. 5% a year? 20% every 3 years? Anything? No They wouldn't even consider it! Tell me that doesn't raise red flags when your discussing signing up for 36 month prepaid terms.
Yes precisely. Which is why I was careful to say for the life of the hardware for dedicated server and at least capped increase percentage for the 36 month kvm terms of grandfathered is out of the question. With that said i doubt someone wants 1gb of ram and 1core cpu for the next 10 year's and if they do it'll be like asking for 1/8 cpu and 128mb ram 10 years from now.
A brand new Ford mustang in 1969 was $3,000 and a new home was $15,000... Obviously i don't expect prices to remain flat forever.
As I said, I do generally agree with you. You are probably right that power, labour and property costs will not significantly increase over the next few years. And the value of your hardware is very likely to fall over the same period.
My point was simply that you never know what the future may bring, and you cannot expect commitments from people without either A.) You making a commitment in return, or B.) The company can know for a fact with near 100% certainty that they can live up to those commitments.
It would surprise me greatly if the value of the hardware were to rise at all, or if demand were to outsrtrip supply, or if power prices go up, or labor costs go up much, or land/building/rack rental also goes up (Texas is huge after all). But really you never know.
It is not inconceivable that a boom in a particular area can affect local pricing greatly. You see this in many mining towns. Or if the host doesn't own their own DC or space, they may be priced out of their own racks, as was the case with many hosting providers in HK back in the mid to late 2000s. It was certainly the case that in the period of just 5 years, rack space in HK more than tippled in price. Unless the host owns their own DC, making such a guarantee would become a liability.
Again, I'm not saying that it's likely to happen. In texas I think it's highly unlikely that would happen, but it's not inconceivable, and making long term guarantees would be a liability, and so people might not want to do that in order to cover their own arses.
Expecting a random promise to be kept (forever in this case) from a random sales rep is asking too much. If it were a one-man op, he will probably hold onto his dear promises until he goes under. But, for a company that has sizable employees, what you are asking is unreasonable.
@sureiam
Pardon me but we can discuss all day long and still the universe doesn't change. We can't know the future - and hence nobody in his right mind will sign off on "prices won't change for 5 years".
I think we can all agree though that prepaying for 36 months is a commitment on the users side and requesting a percentage Cap increase on renewal of another 3 years is well within what would be considered reasonable. Definitely not justifying a childish angered response from the provider. A response to negotiate would be more appropriate.
Yes. Except for the "percentage Cap increase on renewal of another 3 years", simply for 2 reasons: a) how can the provider grant that, not knowing what the future in 3-6 years will be? Keep in mind that IT and particularly hosting is a quickly and sometimes surprisingly changing market. b) Why would a provider grant anything that is outside the contract period?
(Plus, of course, speedykvm and reasonable? Come on, be realistic *g)
To be fair to the op, he is actually realistic in thinking prices will not likely rise. The point is there is no gaurantee they won't.
I think the best a host can do is guarantee prices won't rise more than a reasonable amount. Reasonable being determined by the market, not there client or host.
For IPv4, there are probably 3 IPs of the /29 subnet appropriated for broadcast, gateway, and private network. This explains the 5 IPs vs 8 IPs in subnet. These prices are fairly standard for smaller providers.
That makes sense. I can understand why they would want to set this minimum amount than. Just frustrating for end user to have to spend extra on something they don't need.
Question. Couldn't they just use the same gateway, subnet mask, etc as the primary IP i already have allocated to me? Than leave them on the same vlan? Or am I missing something?
Yea sure I can agree with that. To be completely blunt all I wanted was some assurance they weren't going to suddenly increase it by 50+%. After all when dealing with incero and speedykvm anything is possible. I don't want to move everything over have it running for 3 years budget for another 36 month prepaid term than find out I was way off budget. And this is for just one service, what if I had expanded and suddenly had multiple services with them all much higher than I had budgeted.
I think it's reasonable for a host to say they can't guarantee the same rate throughout perpetuity. You guys have conceived me. But without any cap we consumers can't appropriately budget.. Especially when prepaying for 36 month terms.
Nope, because a) dealing out single IPs from, say, a /24 is quite different (network-wise) from handing out a, say, /29 (as in your case). With the former you are just like one system in a LAN, with the latter you are a subnet. b) chances are that there are no more IPs from your original network available.
There you have it, said it yourself. Just look at the recent scandal (gordon). It's known that they play "funny" games.
You don't like that? Well then don't buy there in the first place. Or you want to be with them but then don't complain about speedykvm being speedykvm or discuss why they shouldn't be what they are or ask for guarantees from them to not be the way they are.
Thanks for taking the time to explain that. It makes sense it's probably all gone from my subnet. Oh well.