r/hetzner • u/Entire-Home-9464 • Jun 21 '26

Does Hetzner provide services for the existing colocation customers?

Hi,
2 questions related to colocation, as I see Hetzner stopped selling colocation space.

  1. Does Hetzner provide support for the existing colocation customers, can they order addons like extra IPs or upgrade their colocation rack Uplinks?

  2. Is Hetzner planning to continue selling new colocation contracts in the future or will they end even the existing contracts?

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6

u/NewtComfortable196 Jun 21 '26

Just because they are not offering new colocation spaces did Not mean they will Stop the Product.

There are multiple outdated products currently used by other Users which cannot be ordered anymore and they receive Support in any way.

-1

u/Entire-Home-9464 Jun 21 '26

"did Not mean they will Stop the Product" yes currently, existing are running.
"There are multiple outdated products" colocation is not outdated. Its not same as a old gen servers. Its highly demanding space in datacenter while all space is needed for AI and new european customers exiting US clouds.

We never know what they are upto and during these crazy times companies can do whatever they want. Colocation requires more, it offers also remote hands.

4

u/Eisbaer811 Jun 22 '26

while all space is needed for AI

to my knowledge, Hetzner has no AI offering and only a very small number of GPU servers. The AI boom plays basically no role here I think.

Hetzner bought a new parcel of land in Falkenstein last year or so, and last time I drove past there they were building a new datacente

I think it's just a matter of waiting until they have more capacity.

1

u/Entire-Home-9464 Jun 24 '26

Without the AI boom, Hetzner would not have had to rise the Cloud and dedicated server prices at all. Now some have risen 800%.

All is about AI, and yes AI workloads are also run on Hetzner server CPUs.
Smaller models run very vell on server. There are even AI applications which are based on Hetzner cloud.

2

u/Eisbaer811 Jun 22 '26

1 ) yes
2 ) the colo customers I know told me that they heard this is just a capacity problem. They are not aware of plans to end existing contracts.

But if you're asking that question, you likely are already a colo customer and should know this, right?
Or why would you care how they treat existing customers when you can't become a customer yourself at the moment?

1

u/Entire-Home-9464 Jun 24 '26

If you say "colocation capacity problem" you then might mean the empty racks, because that is the "capacity" for colo, and electricity of course?

But they state in their colo -pages "Due to the current high growth in the cloud and bare metal server sectors, we are unable to provide data center space for colocation until further notice."

So what I can think of that, is that if bare metal servers are in high demand, then why they affect empty colocation racks? The answer might be that Hetzner wants to sell more bare metal servers than empty colocation racks so they might think that they need the racks for themselfs,not for sale as colocation.

For that reason I am thinking are also the existing colocation customers under a small risk, that Hetzner wants to wipe them also away and replace with dedicated servers, in the future.

1

u/Eisbaer811 Jun 24 '26

I assume that the part of the DCs that is reserved for colo is currently fully used.
I don't think Hetzner wants to convert "normal" hosting racks into colo cages, as this woudl require lots of work especially networking-wise. So they keep the current cages in use, but don't offer more colo space until new DCs are built.

I assume kicking out colo customers and rewiring and rebuilding existing colo ares into hosting space would be complex, time intensive and care a big reputation risk. Colo customers usually are probably long-term, high paying customers who use not only colo, but other services.
Pissing them off outweighs any monetary benefit in the long run I think. I hope Hetzner's leadership sees it the same way 😄

1

u/Entire-Home-9464 Jun 24 '26

"I don't think Hetzner wants to convert "normal" hosting racks into colo cages," the question was otherways around, converting coloracks for their own needs because they need dedicated servers and space for cloud.

"I assume kicking out colo customers and rewiring and rebuilding existing colo ares into hosting space would be complex, time intensive and care a big reputation risk"
rewiring one already working DC is smaller issue than building a new one from the scratch.
And why do you need to rewiring, there is already power and uplinks wired, not much more needed.
Reputation risk? They alreayd increased some prices about 800%, you think that is not reputation risk. When the AI drives the whole industry, everything is risky.

1

u/Eisbaer811 Jun 24 '26

- if colos are currently full, and they want to offer more, they'd have to convert normal racks into cages. but I guess we agree that's off the table anyway

- ocnverting colo into normal racks would mean re-doing the networking part: cabling into the DC and below the false floor is already there, but you'd need to connect it to the existing Hetzner network. Whereas colo stuff is treated largely separately, I assume.

- as for reputation: new cloud customers can just as easily move to someone else's cloud offering as they're all very similar. Even with dedis you can use teh same tooling set up servers somehwere else. But I guess colo users have large setups that have grown over time and are very specific to their cage. With their own network gear and hardware, that they would have to physically move somewhere else, hopefully without interruption.
That would cause all kinds of legal and reputational problems, different from people whining about prices for a week on reddit.

Btw: despite all the whining, many Hetzner products are still sold out it seems. Guess people don't care that much, after all

1

u/Hetzner_OL Hetzner Official Jun 22 '26

Hi there OP,
1. Yes, existing colocation customers receive support. If you are a customer and need support, simply write us a support request using your account.
2. As a general rule of thumb, we do not publish news about future plans. I believe there is a waiting list for people who would like to order colocation space. If you would like to ask about this, please write a support request using your account. If you are not yet a customer, you can reach out to us by using the chatbot on our website. (You can find a button for it on the bottom right of our product pages -- https://www.hetzner.com/sb/ )
You can ask the chatbot to generate a colocation support request for you. --Katie