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Amazon EC2 vs Hetzner Online AG: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this markdown code, we will discuss and provide key differences between Amazon EC2 and Hetzner Online AG. Both are providers of cloud computing services, but they have distinct features and offerings. Let's explore the differences below:
Scalability and Flexibility: Amazon EC2 offers a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure allowing users to dynamically resize their compute capacity to meet changing requirements. It provides various instance types and sizes across multiple regions, allowing users to deploy and scale their applications globally. On the other hand, Hetzner Online AG offers less scalability and flexibility compared to Amazon EC2, as it has a limited number of data centers and predefined hardware configurations.
Pricing and Cost: Amazon EC2 has a flexible and complex pricing model, where users pay for the actual compute resources they consume, including instances, storage, data transfer, and other services. This model can be cost-effective for businesses with dynamic workloads and enables the "pay as you go" model. Hetzner Online AG, on the other hand, offers fixed pricing models for their hosted servers, which can be beneficial for businesses with predictable workloads and budget limitations.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Amazon EC2 provides robust SLAs that guarantee high availability and reliability, ensuring service credits in case of any disruptions. The SLAs cover areas such as instance uptime, network connectivity, and data transfer rates. In contrast, Hetzner Online AG offers less comprehensive SLAs, which might not be suitable for businesses with strict uptime requirements.
Cloud Management Features: As a major player in the cloud computing industry, Amazon EC2 provides a wide range of cloud management features, including auto-scaling, load balancing, managed databases, and serverless computing. These features enable users to focus on their applications rather than infrastructure management. Hetzner Online AG, being a smaller provider, may have limited cloud management features, which may require users to implement custom solutions for scalability and high availability.
Global Infrastructure: Amazon EC2 has a global presence with multiple availability zones across different regions, enabling users to deploy applications closer to their target audience and ensure high availability. Hetzner Online AG, although expanding its data center locations, has a more limited global infrastructure, which might not suit businesses with global operations or latency-sensitive applications.
Integration with Other AWS Services: Amazon EC2 seamlessly integrates with other AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon VPC, and many more. This integration facilitates the building of complex cloud architectures and leveraging additional AWS features. Hetzner Online AG, being a standalone provider, may lack such integrations and may require additional manual configuration or third-party tools for similar functionalities.
In summary, Amazon EC2 offers superior scalability, flexible pricing, extensive cloud management features, global infrastructure, and seamless integration with other AWS services. Hetzner Online AG, on the other hand, may be more suitable for businesses with predictable workloads, fixed budgets, and specific geographic requirements.
DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.
However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.
One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.
Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.
We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.
Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.
Pros of Amazon EC2
- Quick and reliable cloud servers647
- Scalability515
- Easy management393
- Low cost277
- Auto-scaling271
- Market leader89
- Backed by amazon80
- Reliable79
- Free tier67
- Easy management, scalability58
- Flexible13
- Easy to Start10
- Widely used9
- Web-scale9
- Elastic9
- Node.js API7
- Industry Standard5
- Lots of configuration options4
- GPU instances2
- Simpler to understand and learn1
- Extremely simple to use1
- Amazing for individuals1
- All the Open Source CLI tools you could want.1
Pros of Hetzner Online AG
- Perfect for all needs7
- Great performance / $5
- Quick support5
- German Data-Center location4
- Ssh & vnc access4
- Hcloud3
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Cons of Amazon EC2
- Ui could use a lot of work13
- High learning curve when compared to PaaS6
- Extremely poor CPU performance3
Cons of Hetzner Online AG
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What is Amazon EC2?
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What tools integrate with Amazon EC2?
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