I agree with you that this distinction could be made more prominently.
Disclaimer: I am the founder of Nodion.
Personally I use Hetzner exclusively for their cheap and unmetered dedicated servers, as I don't like paying per GB used or similar, I want one static cost per month regardless of anything.
In fact, when I think about it, most other Hetzner users I've met have similar objectives and I don't think I've met anyone around me in real-life that was using the IaaS part of Hetzner.
So while you can build your own IaaS by using dokku, Kubernetes or whatever on top of dedicated servers, dedicated servers (or VPS) by themselves aren't part of IaaS.
> Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model where a cloud services vendor provides computing resources such as storage, network, servers, and virtualization (which emulates computer hardware). This service frees users from maintaining their own data center, but they must install and maintain the operating system and application software.
That's literally openstack, which is basically the definition of IaaS
We actually started out in 2019 by colocating our own network/server equipment in a colo facility in Frankfurt (InterXion). We are bootstrapped and since our USP is the software, not the infrastructure, we decided to partner with a reliable infrastructure company that is available globally, flexible enough and for data privacy reasons is an EU based company (there are not many!) so we could roll out our platform faster. Since we still own our own IP space and are a RIPE member, we can migrate to our own infrastructure down the road.
In this business the focus shouldn't be to own the whole "supply chain", but to deliver a reliable solution to customers. Everyone is a reseller of someone.
Nodion -> Leaseweb. Leaseweb -> Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain -> electricity companies, dark fiber, etc.
Heroku/Vercel -> AWS. AWS also uses colo facilities like Equinix, InterXion, NTT or e-shelter in Frankfurt.
I quite like the low-end offering, €5 can get you a managed ValKey, a managed Postgres and a 512MB RAM Linux VM. In most other PaaS offerings you start at $10 just for a managed database.
If you don't mind answering, how do you handle those low-memory databases? For i.e. DS-G2-256MB, you get a 256MB VM with a dedicated Postgres installation, or you get an user/db in a shared Postgres server?
Some examples:
Tilaa (NL) - https://www.tilaa.com/en/
Offering compute, storage, databases, containers, you name it. And having personal experience with these guys I can tell you they are awesome. Want to host your stuff specifically in a CO2 neutral DC? They can do that too.
Leafcloud (NL) - https://leaf.cloud/
Green OpenStack based cloud provider
Stuxhost (NL/DE) - https://stuxhost.com
Focused on managed NextCloud hosting, managed webhosting and VPN
And there are hundreds more, actually.
You're missing all the providers based in the UK who frankly provide at least as many good options as the whole of the EU combined.
"has some Draconian surveillance laws", sure and what EU countries don't - you must be joking?
"I very much doubt it can be GDPR compliant" The GDPR is retained in domestic law, it's literally the exact same situation as before brexit.
> "I very much doubt it can be GDPR compliant" The GDPR is retained in domestic law, it's literally the exact same situation as before brexit.
That's not the stance of legal scholars and judges in the EU, for the same reasons as there are doubts that US companies can be GDPR compliant. Let's just say that the alleged GDPR compliance hasn't been tested in court yet and is a legal gamble. Whether a EU company is willing to take that gamble or not depends on many factors and is up to them, of course.
Here European clearly means "outside of the legal reach of the USA".
notrealyme123•10h ago
oytis•10h ago
dangus•9h ago
This is for when you need to guarantee that your services cannot possibly escape boundaries of a specific country.
dherls•9h ago
_ZeD_•9h ago
speedgoose•9h ago
seszett•9h ago
> A sovereign US cloud does not address or mitigate the strategic reliance of European businesses and governments on US-based cloud providers.
> Some commentators are therefore calling those attempts “Sovereign-Cloud-Washing” or “EUWashing”.
codedokode•9h ago
You should not host the critical data on other country's servers.
dangus•3h ago
grumpy-de-sre•9h ago
Does absolutely jack shit about the blocs trade deficit in the cloud services space though. Hundreds of billions of euros being sent abroad every year.
Without some kind of collective trade policy [1] sovereign cloud initiatives will continue to be a waste of time for everyone involved (including engineers). Also if you see the phrase Gaia-X ... run.
1. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/now-how-to-get-that-europe...
jamesblonde•9h ago
dangus•9h ago
esperent•9h ago
pinkgolem•9h ago
There is still a lot missing, and tbh the s3 did not work great when I tested it.
graemep•9h ago
dangus•3h ago
AWS has way more managed business logic. Directory services, authentication, serverless PaaS, virtual workstations, data lakes, code deployment, the list goes on and on.
Load balancers and firewalls are extremely basic in comparison.
Thaxll•9h ago
encom•9h ago
eknkc•9h ago
I mean it is not really "cloud" compared to larger ones, just a toy but they are building things now.
wongarsu•9h ago
Whether it has enough features to satisfy your needs is another question, but it is more than just bare metal or vps
Thaxll•9h ago
The most basic thing with a load balancer and scale instances behind that.
They don't have any of that.
wongarsu•9h ago
As compared to a "traditional" offering where there's only a manual order form and getting a new server might take hours, making auto-scaling unfeasible
Thaxll•9h ago
Hetzner_OL•8h ago
lovelearning•9h ago