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What's holding back providers from offering hourly VMs?
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What's holding back providers from offering hourly VMs?

raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

Is it...

  • software? (their billing panels don't support it)
  • margin's so thin they need to lock in people for at least a month
  • transaction processing costs

or...?

Ten years ago, few providers were doing block volume storage and now some are, yet hourly instances don't seem to be something low-end providers are rushing out to do.

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Comments

  • @raindog308 said: margin's so thin they need to lock in people for at least a month

    This. In fact providers are now getting long terms pre-paid and then buying the hardware

    Thanked by 1szymonp
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    You have to keep a lot of gear on online for bursts of mass provisions from some work load that might only last an hour or two.

    Control panels will be another issue too.

    Francisco

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Though handling of abuse probably isn’t a reason most think of first, it probably should be. Always catches you by surprise later.

  • ChuckChuck Member

    3 years plan or bust.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

  • @Nekki said: What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

    Short term experiments. Or, if you're a big enterprise, running massively parallizeable data processing tasks across multiple servers, each of which take a short time to complete.

  • eriseris Member

    @Nekki said:
    What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

    Not for idiling but for testing / short task that doesn't require 24/7 availability

  • NekkiNekki Veteran
    edited June 2022

    Fuck me, you are a bunch of soft twats, aren’t you.

    Thanked by 1kait
  • @Nekki said:
    What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

    The same type who rents a escort for an hour just to stare at them.

  • defaultdefault Veteran

    @CheepCluck said:

    @Nekki said:
    What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

    The same type who rents a escort for an hour just to stare at them.

    Wait, you don't do conversations, flowers, and memories of life for a couple of hours, just to know each other better?

  • varwwwvarwww Member

    I am guessing

    • dirty vendor lockin
    • lack of confidence in their own product
  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @default said:

    @CheepCluck said:

    @Nekki said:
    What sort of cunt just wants to idle resources for an hour?

    The same type who rents a escort for an hour just to stare at them.

    Wait, you don't do conversations, flowers, and memories of life for a couple of hours, just to know each other better?

    I usually just stare at their puckered arsehole for 40 minutes and cry for the last 20.

  • jbilohjbiloh Administrator, Veteran

    Comes down to economics primarily. Most hosts make their margin selling services with the expectation that for a majority of monthly hours work load level is low.

    If you look at the majors who sell by the hour (excluding azzure and aws, etc) no one is actually making money.

  • @Nekki said:
    I usually just stare at their puckered arsehole for 40 minutes and cry for the last 20.

    Do you at least complement their brown balloon knot?

    @default said:
    Wait, you don't do conversations, flowers, and memories of life for a couple of hours, just to know each other better?

    I can barely hold a conversation let alone a single memory for more than 5 minutes without it devolving into me sobbing for 20 minutes like @Nekki

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @CheepCluck said:

    @Nekki said:
    I usually just stare at their puckered arsehole for 40 minutes and cry for the last 20.

    Do you at least complement their brown balloon knot?

    If a splatter of baby-batter is considered a complement, not often, as the crying usually takes hold before I get anywhere near the vinegar strokes.

  • LordSpockLordSpock Member, Host Rep

    I think in the LE space it is simply lack of scale, you can't justify on margins these small potentially having your servers empty then having a rush at a peak time and then suddenly being out of stock for the busy period. It's okay if you are Hetzner, if you own the building that is already profitable, having a few servers sit idle for a few hours is no huge problem.

    Instability too - a ton of LE* providers from what I can see tend to encourage/prefer longer billing terms - probably to help them have a bit more financial security.

  • whats holding them back? paying customers.

  • selling hourly you have much less overselling ratio of your resources (customers fire such VMs only when they really have job to do), so whole idling (resources paid but not used) is on provider side/cost

    and crucial part of low prices of LET offers is based on high oversell of VMs for idlers (impulse buy when they see magically low numbers...)

    Thanked by 1mrTom
  • defaultdefault Veteran
    edited June 2022

    To me, as a customer, the idea of hourly billing sounds great. If the price is low, when someone does not need resources, someone else will need it and deploy a server. So I don't quite see it as a problem. Besides, if a stable customer loves the service, they will continue paying hourly for a year, or even more.

    The biggest advantage is for a customer who has some automated script to deploy a server and use the resources to an expanding or flexible project, all with just a few commands; then delete it after a few hours or days when server is no longer needed. I don't have such project, but I do believe some experts around here might have such a thing; therefore such hourly flexibility is extremely useful for them.

    From my personal experience:

    • I somewhat like Scaleway with hourly billing; but I consider it completely unreliable due to pricing which always increases.
    • I like LunaNode [ @perennate ] with hourly billing; it's quite spicy in price, but server performance is absolutely outstanding.
    • I liked AboveClouds in the past, even though company got closed. I still wonder what @Jacob is doing nowadays.

    So far I loved providers with hourly billing. If the price is low, the resources might not end up unused.

    Problem might be abusers, paying just enough to send spam messages for a couple of hours, then cancel the server to leave the provider with a blacklisted IP, repeating the process every few hours. But this is a different discussion, I guess.

    Thanked by 2Ympker BasToTheMax
  • YmpkerYmpker Member
    edited June 2022

    @default said:
    To me, as a customer, the idea of hourly billing sounds great. If the price is low, when someone does not need resources, someone else will need it and deploy a server. So I don't quite see it as a problem. Besides, if a stable customer loves the service, they will continue paying hourly for a year, or even more.

    The biggest advantage is for a customer who has some automated script to deploy a server and use the resources to an expanding or flexible project, all with just a few commands; then delete it after a few hours or days when server is no longer needed. I don't have such project, but I do believe some experts around here might have such a thing; therefore such hourly flexibility is extremely useful for them.

    From my personal experience:

    • I somewhat like Scaleway with hourly billing; but I consider it completely unreliable due to pricing which always increases.
    • I like LunaNode [ @perennate ] with hourly billing; it's quite spicy in price, but server performance is absolutely outstanding.
    • I liked AboveClouds in the past, even though company got closed. I still wonder what @Jacob is doing nowadays.

    So far I loved providers with hourly billing. If the price is low, the resources might not end up unused.

    Problem might be abusers, paying just enough to send spam messages for a couple of hours, then cancel the server to leave the provider with a blacklisted IP, repeating the process every few hours. But this is a different discussion, I guess.

    Damn, I still have like 80$ of Lunanode credit lying around. Thanks for the mention lol :D
    It's always been solid for me. Just didn't use it in a loong while.

    Thanked by 1default
  • KassemKassem Member

    Because not many have the resources to deploy OpenStack?

  • Abuse, unless its GPU based, there's no legit use case. You always go monthly otherwise.

    Hourly is easy to abuse and use as much IPs as possible while doing so.

    Thanked by 1hostdare
  • defaultdefault Veteran
    edited June 2022

    @stefeman said:
    Abuse, unless its GPU based, there's no legit use case. You always go monthly otherwise.

    Hourly is easy to abuse and use as much IPs as possible while doing so.

    I guess another option would be hourly cloud with IPv6 only. For provider would be a solution to just give each customer their own /48 (or /64), and let customers manage their address space for each server. This would also provide a huge price drop for consumers, because IPv4 is not used.

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
  • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2022

    @stefeman said: Hourly is easy to abuse and use as much IPs as possible while doing so.

    Tracking abuse in hourly vpses can be pain if you do not have enough technical staff available and needs lots of extra man power to track and validating complaints . I used to get lots of spam from DO.

  • stefemanstefeman Member
    edited June 2022

    @hostdare said:

    @stefeman said: Hourly is easy to abuse and use as much IPs as possible while doing so.

    Tracking abuse in hourly vpses can be pain if you do not have enough technical staff available and needs lots of extra man power to track and validating complaints . I used to get lots of spam from DO.

    Maybe with KYC if hourly billing is mandatory. dedicated.com for example requires full passport verification.

    OVH/Hetzner may ask for proof of address but thats about it.

    If you are from high risk country, they might ask for passport too.

  • titustitus Member

    I usually order a VPS ('server') for a long term and 'classic' usage, and the monthly (sometimes for a cheap offers a yearly) billing period is transparent and easier for me. I usually not need a 'server' for only 1-2 hour or day.:) I'm able to do this 'short time' and 'small' tasks on my local "instances", computers. So I prefer the monthly billing.

    The "hourly billing" mean for a lot of provider only: they calculate the cost hourly, but you must pay monthly for the used resources. Often the "pricing-resources table" complicated, and sometimes unclean what will be the ''grand total' at the end of the month (for example: depend of the used bandwidth, etc). If you turn off the VM for 1-2 days you must pay the same fee, because you 'keep the resources' (IP address etc) while the VPS is offline. The monthly billing is "clean". I get 'X' resources for 'Y' USD/EUR. And I'm sure, what I will see on the invoice 'grand total' column.

    The hourly billing probably good for the 'big companies' which need very often a different quantity resources (computing time capacity, etc), and pay only what they use at 'real time'.

  • Alex_LeoAlex_Leo Member
    edited June 2022

    Not to be that guy, but some providers do allow that, it's usually under a different label though. If you search for openstack cloud or on-demand computing you'll most likely find it.
    Some instead do it a daily calculation instead: G-Core labs do daily billing for their VPS as an example.

  • fedorfedor Member

    when you paying 5 bucks per month for LE vps, why do you even bother about hourly billing? let's do some math: $5 / 720h = 0.006. go take that $0.006 from your wallet and pay in cash

  • @fedor said:
    when you paying 5 bucks per month for LE vps, why do you even bother about hourly billing? let's do some math: $5 / 720h = 0.006. go take that $0.006 from your wallet and pay in cash

    Sounds fair to me. Can i get 128c dedicated with that?

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
  • 4Server4Server Member, Host Rep

    For example, we do not introduce daily payment due to the large number of complaints, spam, etc.

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