servers migrations.md --------------------- 1. What you actually pay for today Hetzner (46.62.228.173 — “hetzner_dokploy”) From your console and our checks: ┌────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Item │ Approx │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Plan │ CPX42-class: 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM / ~320 GB NVMe │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ List price │ ~€29.99/mo (~$33) before VAT/taxes │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Your felt cost │ ~$40/mo (VAT + Storage Box / extras is a realistic total) │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Disk use (when online) │ ~48 GB / 301 GB (~17%) — disk is not your bottleneck │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ RAM use (when online) │ ~5.6 GB used / ~15 GB — headroom exists, but TTS spikes matter │ ├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Network event │ IP null-routed for unpaid invoice — whole public site went dark until paid │ └────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ What lives here (high value): • ielts.fast stack: Docker webapp, PocketBase, TTS (~multi‑GB RSS), speaking analysis, telegram notifier • Promedic: coach / diet / clinical / drugs / female (+ Caddy) • dom.promedic1.com domains hub, credentials hub (credo), other promedic subdomains Contabo (149.102.150.185 — main Contabo) ┌─────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Item │ What we know from ops │ ├─────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Role │ Large multi-site host: Master1, education banks, dentist, tourism, many *.addict.best │ ├─────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Pricing │ Typically cheaper €/$ per GB RAM than Hetzner Cloud for similar “fat” VPS SKUs (exact price depends on your Contabo invoice — check panel) │ ├─────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Style │ More “budget cloud”; support/network reputation is mixed in the industry; still can lock for abuse/non-payment │ └─────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ You also have ai-developer (213.199.36.17) — separate machine (prompts hub, etc.). Migration “to Contabo” usually means 149 (and maybe 213), not “one magical server.” ─── 2. Is Hetzner “too expensive”? For a generic static site: yes, $40 is high. For your IELTS + TTS + multi-app production node: $40 is in the normal band for 16 GB EU cloud, not luxury. What you’re buying on Hetzner Cloud specifically: ┌───────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Strength │ Why it matters to you │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Predictable EU networking │ Public apps + Let’s Encrypt reliability │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Clean ops (Caddy, systemd, Docker worked) │ Less mystery debugging │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Performance consistency │ Better than many ultra-budget hypervisors under load │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Storage Box + restic already wired │ Offsite backups exist │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Strict billing enforcement │ Painful when unpaid, but you know the failure mode │ └───────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ What hurts: ┌─────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Pain │ Reality │ ├─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Price vs Contabo │ Contabo often undercuts for similar RAM │ ├─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Null-route on unpaid │ Total outage of all domains on that IP │ ├─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ “One fat server for everything” │ Single point of failure │ └─────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘ Bottom line on price alone: If you only need static Promedic pages, Hetzner is overkill. If you need IELTS TTS + concurrent PB + Docker with headroom, 16 GB is the real requirement, not the brand. Whoever gives you stable 16 GB + good disk I/O wins. ─── 3. Contabo-only — is that the recommendation? Short answer Not “Contabo only” as a blind default. Yes “consider Contabo (or similar budget 16 GB) as primary if price is the #1 constraint” — if you migrate carefully and keep backups. Longer answer ┌─────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Recommendation tier │ Meaning │ ├─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Best pure cost cut │ Move compatible apps to Contabo; downsize or cancel Hetzner only after cutover proven │ ├─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Best risk balance │ Keep Hetzner for IELTS/TTS (or any heavy ML) + Contabo for Master1/static — two bills, lower blast radius │ ├─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Worst idea │ “Dump everything on Contabo tomorrow” without inventory, RAM test, DNS TTL plan, backup restore drill │ └─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Contabo is fine as a host for much of what you run (Caddy, static sites, PocketBase, Node, Docker light stacks). Contabo is riskier as the only home for a memory-hungry TTS stack unless you buy an equivalently fat plan and load-test it. ─── 4. Can you migrate apps to Contabo correctly? Yes — if you treat migration as a project, not a copy-paste. Your estate is multi-domain, multi-service. “Correct” means: 1. Inventory 2. Capacity check 3. Staging on Contabo 4. Parallel run 5. DNS cutover 6. Decommission Hetzner only after soak time 4.1 What migrates easily ┌────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ App type │ Examples │ Why easy │ ├────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Static / SPA │ clinical, drugs, female, many Promedic HTML, domains-hub, credo │ rsync /var/www + Caddy site blocks + TLS │ ├────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Simple Node/static │ landing pages, catalogs │ low RAM │ ├────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ PocketBase (if not huge media) │ diet/coach PB patterns │ copy pb_data carefully + same version binary │ ├────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Caddy reverse proxies │ if backends move with them │ config is portable │ └────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘ 4.2 What migrates with care ┌──────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ App type │ Examples │ Risks │ ├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Docker apps │ webapp_ielts, the-ielts │ image load, volume mounts, env secrets │ ├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Multiple PocketBases │ ielts/diet/coach │ ports, users, hooks, backups, SQLite locks │ ├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Cron + systemd │ restic, health watchdogs, telegram-notifier │ paths, secrets, timers must be recreated │ └──────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘ 4.3 What migrates hard / expensive ┌─────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ App type │ Examples │ Why │ ├─────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ IELTS TTS │ ielts-tts (XTTS-class, multi‑GB) │ RAM, disk for models, cold-start time, CPU/GPU expectations │ ├─────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Heavy Python analysis │ speaking analysis workers │ concurrent load with TTS │ ├─────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Anything assuming Hetzner paths/IPs │ hard-coded IPs in docs/apps │ DNS + config sweep │ └─────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Rule: If Contabo plan is <12–16 GB, do not park TTS there without a redesign (external TTS API, smaller model, or separate box). ─── 5. Full comparison matrix (your use case) ┌───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐ │ Dimension │ Hetzner (current ~$40) │ Contabo (typical cheaper fat VPS) │ Winner for you │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ € per GB RAM │ Higher │ Usually lower │ Contabo (cost) │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Suitability for TTS+IELTS │ Proven on your box │ Unknown until tested on your SKU │ Hetzner (proven) │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Static multi-site │ Excellent │ Excellent │ Tie │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Support / process │ Structured Cloud + Robot │ Variable │ Hetzner slightly │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Abuse/billing lock │ Strict null-route │ Can lock too; less “polished” process │ Neither “nice” │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Network reputation │ Strong EU cloud │ Mixed budget reputation │ Hetzner slightly │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ You already invested │ Full IELTS+Promedic live │ Full Master1/education live │ Split brain today │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Single-vendor simplicity │ One IP for many promedic/ielts domains │ One IP for many addict/master1 domains │ Depends on consolidation goal │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Backup story │ restic → Storage Box already │ Need equal offsite (restic/S3/Storage Box still usable from Contabo) │ Hetzner today │ ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Migration effort │ N/A (source of truth now) │ Days–weeks careful work │ Contabo costs time │ └───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘ 6. “Only Contabo” scenarios — when it makes sense Only Contabo is reasonable if all of these are true: 1. Contabo invoice for ≥16 GB RAM (ideally more if TTS + analysis + PB concurrent) is meaningfully cheaper than ~$40 after VAT. 2. You run a restore drill: restic/app-stack-exports → Contabo → ielts.fast health checks pass. 3. You accept one weekend of risk and possible TTS slower/OOM until tuned. 4. You update all DNS A records that currently point at 46.62.228.173. 5. You keep offsite backups independent of Contabo disk (Storage Box or other). Only Contabo is a bad idea if: • You pick an 8 GB Contabo “deal” to save money → IELTS TTS will thrash/OOM. • You migrate DNS first, fix later. • You have no tested backup restore. • You need zero downtime (you’d need parallel run + low TTL). ─── 7. Recommended strategic visions (choose one philosophy) Vision A — Cost cutter (Contabo primary) • Contabo becomes home for almost everything. • Hetzner canceled after 2–4 weeks of stable dual-run. • Savings: possibly €10–25/mo depending on Contabo plan. • Cost in risk: one platform outage / performance regression hits all. • Best if: money is tight and you’ll buy a true 16 GB+ Contabo. Vision B — Split by workload (best engineering balance) ★ often best ┌──────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Host │ Keep / put │ ├──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Hetzner │ IELTS + TTS + analysis only (or Hetzner downsized later) │ ├──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Contabo │ Static Promedic, hubs, Master1, education, addict landings │ ├──────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Storage Box / restic │ Offsite forever │ └──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────── • Savings: less than full cancel, but you can downsize Hetzner later if only TTS remains. • Risk: lower blast radius (what already bit you: one unpaid IP = everything dark). • Best if: IELTS revenue/reputation matters more than max savings. Vision C — Stay Hetzner, stop bleeding money on process • Keep Hetzner. • Fix auto-pay + invoice alerts (the $40 outage was billing, not hardware). • Optionally move only static sites to Contabo to free RAM/CPU on Hetzner. • Best if: you value stability and hate migration weekends. Vision D — Hetzner only • Migrate Contabo → Hetzner: usually more expensive, only makes sense if Contabo is unreliable for you. • Not recommended purely for cost. ─── 8. Migration “correct way” (mental checklist — still no action) If you later migrate Hetzner → Contabo, the correct order is: Phase 0 — Inventory (1 evening) List every domain on 46.62.228.173, every systemd unit, every Docker container, every cron, every secret path (/etc/default/*, PB data, Caddyfile). Phase 1 — Capacity proof on Contabo (before DNS) • Free RAM after current Contabo apps • Peak: start TTS + analysis + 3 PB + Docker • Watch OOM, swap, load for 24–48h Phase 2 — Staging hostnames • ielts-staging.… or hosts-file tests • Restore from app-stack-exports + restic • Caddy + TLS on staging names Phase 3 — Data freeze window • Final PB sqlite backup • Final rsync of /var/www and configs • Telegram/notifier secrets Phase 4 — DNS • Lower TTL 24–48h before • Flip A records in batches (static first, IELTS last) • Keep Hetzner running until metrics green Phase 5 — Decommission • Only after soak: disable Hetzner billing • Keep last snapshot/export offline Apps that should move first (low risk): static Promedic, credo, domains-hub, landings. Apps that should move last (high risk): ielts.fast TTS + analysis. ─── 9. Cost realism ┌──────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────┬────────────┬──────────────────────────┐ │ Path │ Money │ Time │ Risk │ ├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────┤ │ Stay Hetzner + auto-pay │ ~$40/mo │ 0 │ Low │ ├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────┤ │ Contabo 16GB+ everything │ Often lower $/mo │ High setup │ Medium–high until proven │ ├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────┤ │ Split Hetzner TTS + Contabo rest │ Medium │ Medium │ Lowest operational risk │ ├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────┤ │ Contabo 8GB “cheap” │ Lowest $ │ High pain │ High (OOM) │ └──────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────────┘ Also count your time: a botched IELTS migration costs more than 3–6 months of the Hetzner premium. ─── 10. Direct answers to your questions “Which is best to subscribe?” • Best for proven IELTS/TTS stability: Hetzner (what you already validated). • Best for $/RAM and bulk static/multi-site: Contabo (if SKU is fat enough). • Best overall for you given both already exist: split workloads or Contabo-primary only after a capacity test — not emotion-based “Hetzner is expensive.” “Is Hetzner too expensive?” • Expensive vs Contabo: often yes. • Expensive vs what it runs: no — 16 GB EU + your stack is not a $10 VPS job. • Your recent outage was billing process, not “Hetzner compute is bad.” “Do you recommend only Contabo?” • Only Contabo: acceptable if you buy ≥16 GB, migrate in phases, and accept risk. • I would not recommend “only Contabo + small RAM” for IELTS TTS. • I would not recommend staying on Hetzner without auto-pay — that $40 null-route already taught the expensive lesson. “Can I migrate apps correctly to Contabo?” • Yes, for most sites. • Yes with hard work, for IELTS Docker/PB. • Conditional, for TTS — only with enough RAM and a restore drill. • Correct way = inventory → capacity proof → staging → batch DNS → soak → cancel Hetzner. • Incorrect way = point DNS at Contabo and hope. ─── 11. What you should compare before any action (your trial plan) Do this yourself when ready — still no production cutover: 1. Open Contabo panel: exact RAM/CPU/disk price for a plan ≥ current Hetzner. 2. On Contabo: free RAM now vs after hypothetical IELTS stack. 3. Restore one static site from export (practice). 4. Restore PocketBase sample to a side port (practice). 5. Time a TTS cold start and one inference on Contabo hardware if you trial it. 6. List domains still on 46.62.228.173 (length of DNS work). 7. Decide: Vision A / B / C above. ─── 12. Bottom-line recommendation (opinion, not an order) ┌───────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Priority │ Recommendation │ ├───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ If goal = save money hard │ Plan Contabo as primary only on a 16 GB+ plan; migrate static first; IELTS last; keep Hetzner until soak. │ ├───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ If goal = sleep at night │ Keep Hetzner for IELTS/TTS; use Contabo for Master1/static; enable Hetzner auto-pay. │ ├───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ If goal = simplicity one bill │ Contabo-only is possible but is a project, not a toggle — budget days and a rollback. │ ├───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Do not │ Cancel Hetzner before a successful restore+smoke test on Contabo. │ └───────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────