Hetzner

Hetzner Online GmbH is an Internet hosting company and data center operator based in Gunzenhausen, Germany.

Hetzner Online GmbH
Type of businessGesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
Founded1997
HeadquartersGunzenhausen, Bavaria, Germany
Founder(s)Martin Hetzner
IndustryWeb hosting, SSL certificates, Colocation, Domain registration
Revenue148 mio (2016)
Net income48 mio (2016)
Employeesca. 290 (2018), 220 (2017), 184 (2016)
URLwww.hetzner.com

It should not be confused with its former South African namesake and partner company xneelo (formerly Hetzner (Pty) Ltd)[1] — the two are separate companies registered and incorporated in their own rights under the applicable country laws. They do not have the same shareholders.

History

Hetzner Online GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) began operations in Germany in 1997[2] under the name Hetzner Online Services. Between 2000 and 2015, Hetzner Online in Germany operated under the legal status AG ("Aktiengesellschaft"). In 2015, it changed its legal status to GmbH. In addition, Hetzner Online expanded its chief executive team with Stephan Konvickova and Günther Müller at the beginning of the year 2019.[3]

The company is named after its founder Martin Hetzner. Hetzner Online owns and operates three data center parks in Nuremberg[4] and Falkenstein/Vogtland (Germany), and Tuusula (Finland).[5][6][7][8] In addition, Hetzner Online is a co-investor in the Cinia C-Lion1 project, which connected Helsinki and Rostock, Germany together with a 1,100 km long submarine fiberglass cable. The cable provides a high-speed connection between Hetzner's German and Finnish data centers.[9][10]

In 2017, Hetzner Online celebrated its 20th anniversary with a multi-day event at its data center park in Falkenstein. The event, "Willkommen im Internet", included technical workshops, a tour of the facility, and a public, open-air concert by Austrian singer, Christina Stürmer.[11]

The head office of Hetzner Online is based in Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, in Germany. It has a partner company in South Africa: xneelo (formerly Hetzner (Pty.) Ltd. which operates data centers in Midrand[12][13] and Cape Town (South Africa).[14][15]

Services

Hetzner Online provides dedicated hosting, shared web hosting, virtual private servers, managed servers, domain names, SSL certificates, storage boxes,[16] and cloud solutions. At the data center parks located in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Tuusula/Finland, customers can also connect their hardware to Hetzner Online's infrastructure and network with the company's colocation services.[17] The company operates a server auction site online where the chance to rent older dedicated servers (not purchase or colocate) are auctioned off in the form of a Dutch auction.[18]

Hetzner Online has a domain name registrar arrangement with ICANN (for registering domains under .com, .net and .org and others),[19] DENIC (for .de),[20] and nic.at (for .at).[21]

Infrastructure

Hetzner Online's datacenter projects are coordinated and implemented in-house with as little outsourcing as possible. Data center units served by multiple redundant uplinks, including 1300 Gbit/s to DE-CIX and fiber optic links to Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Colocation facilities are sited at all data center parks in Nuremberg, Falkenstein/Vogtland in Germany and Helsinki in Finland.[22]

Network

The backbone is set up in the form of a ring network between the datacenter locations Nuremberg and Falkenstein as well as the most important Internet location, Frankfurt. All locations are connected to central exchange nodes such as DE-CIX, AMS-IX, DATA-IX and V-IX via the company's own fiber optic network.[23] All Hetzner's dedicated servers had a minimum 20TB monthly cap for full speed on their servers with the option for an extra fee for full speed past that point, however, have lifted the bandwidth cap on 1Gbit/s connection speeds as of October 1, 2018.[24][25][26]

Incidents

Hacking

In June 2013, Hetzner Online suffered from a security breach where customer information was exposed to attackers who had compromised Hetzner Online's monitoring systems.[27][28]

Russian complaints about Glavcom.ua

In early August 2014, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) sent a demand to many news agencies, including BBC, prohibiting any mention of the demonstration that was being arranged in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk in support of the federalization of Siberia.[29][30] A number of such messages were sent to Ukraine, which was in the midst of undeclared war with Russian paramilitary in Donetsk region.[31] Since the Ukrainian online newspapers did not remove the article, Roskomnadzor sent letters to their Internet providers demanding removal of the news item. Hetzner Online complied with the demands and sent a notice to glavcom.ua, saying "Please solve the problem and reply within the next 24 hours to avoid suspension. This is the final deadline."[32]

This story was widely reprinted in news sources.[33] Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement expressing solidarity with glavcom.ua owners and journalists. Vassily Zvarych, vice-head of Communications Department of Foreign Ministry, gave a press conference saying that he was surprised by Hetzner Online's compliance with the Russian complaint.[34] Also, a German chapter of Reporters Without Borders issued a statement condemning Roskomnadzor.[35]

The notices to suspend Glavcom.ua were issued by Hetzner Online August 6, 2014; on August 10 Hetzner Online issued apologies, denying that any censorship was planned and that their technical support made a wrong decision, which they regret.[36] However, by that time the story was widely published in German mass-media,[37] and Glavcom.ua already migrated from Hetzner Online to another hosting provider.[38][39]

no.spam.ee lawsuit

In 2013, an Estonian anti-spam activist Tõnu Samuel posted a blog entry about an alleged spammer Silver Teede on his website no.spam.ee. In retaliation, Teede wrote a complaint to the blog's service provider, Hetzner Online, who decided to terminate services for the blog. In an ensuing court case, Estonian courts found the complaints to be baseless and awarded Samuel damages for the loss of his servers.[40][41][42]

Duplicate Ed25519 SSH keys

From April 2015 to December 2015, many of the OS images used by Hetzner's installation program installimage had used duplicate Ed25519 SSH keys. This could potentially mean that an attacker could use a Man-in-the-middle attack to compromise an SSH connection that was using Ed25519 keys. Hetzner sent an email to all affected customers with any potentially affected servers on information about the issue, and how to fix it. [43][44]

Blocking "Novaya Gazeta"

On January 11, 2016, Hetzner blocked the St. Petersburg site of Novaya Gazeta, the leading oppositional, non-governmental newspaper in Russia.[45] The newspaper marked the act as political censorship without any legal procedure.[46]

Awards
  • 2007 eco Internet Award, "Verband der deutschen Internetwirtschaft" (Association of the Internet Industry)[47]
  • 2011 Green IT Best Practice Award[48]
  • 2011 eco Internet Award, Association of German Internet Industry[49]
  • 2012 funkschau journal Carrier & Provider Award[50]
  • 2012 PC WELT trade press Technology Winner Brand Awareness International[51]
  • 2012 Bavaria's Best 50 fastest growing businesses in Bavaria[52]
  • 2012 Shortlisted for 5th Data Centres Europe 2012 Awards[53]
  • 2012 Finalist Datacenterdynamics EMEA Awards 2012[54]
  • 2013 Funkschau Journal "Carrier & Provider Award[55]
  • 2013 Shortlised for International Datacentre & Cloud Awards 2013[56]
  • 2014 PC WELT Brand of the Year and Technology Winner Brand Awareness International[57]
  • 2015 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award; "Sustained Excellence Award"[58]
  • 2015 Bayerns Best 50 Award[59]
  • 2016 Hosting Awards[60]
  • 2016 European Business Award[61]
  • 2017 Hosting Award in the "VPS/vServer" category[62]

References
  1. https://www.mediaupdate.co.za/marketing/146826/hetzner-south-africa-rebrands-to-xneelo
  2. "Company Overview of Hetzner Online AG". Businessweek. Retrieved 19 June 2014.
  3. {{cite web|title=Hetzner Online expands management team|publisher=Hetzner Online GmbH |accessdate=6 May 2019 |url=https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2019/01/12258
  4. Beatrix Taggart (17 May 2013). "Hetzner Online shortlisted as "New Datacentre of the Year" at the 6th International Datacentre Awards". Daily Host News.
  5. Nicole Henderson (1 February 2013). "Web Host Hetzner Online Adds Colocation Services to Two German Data Centers". Web Host Industry Review.
  6. "Hetzner sets foot in Finland". Good News from Finland/Finnfacts. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  7. "Hetzner constructs a data center park in Tuusula, Finland". Finpro. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  8. "Data centers - Hetzner Online GmbH". www.hetzner.com. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  9. "Submarine Data Cable to Link Germany and Finland". eco. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  10. "Cinia Completes Submarine Data Cable to Link Germany and Finland". Cinea. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  11. "Welcome To The Internet - 20 years Hetzner Online 2017". YouTube. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  12. "Hetzner starts on massive new data center". BusinessTech. 2 July 2013.
  13. "Hetzner's new data centre taking shape: photos". MyBroadband. 15 August 2013.
  14. "Hetzner opens its second data centre in Cape Town". Datacenter Dynamics. 3 September 2006.
  15. "Hetzner grows Cape Town DC". MyBroadband. 5 September 2011.
  16. "Storage Boxes".
  17. "About us".
  18. "Server auction - Hetzner Online GmbH". www.hetzner.com. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  19. "ICANN-Accredited Registrars".
  20. "List of DENIC Members".
  21. "Registrar-Liste". nic.at.
  22. "Data centers". 2017-11-21.
  23. "Secure Modern Network Infrastructure". 21 November 2017.
  24. "ALL HETZNER DEDICATED SERVERS NOW HAVE REAL UNLIMITED TRAFFIC". PlexGuide.com. 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2018-12-24.
  25. "Hetzner Dedicated Servers now with real unlimited traffic". LowEndTalk. 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2018-12-24.
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  29. BBC: "Блог редактора: Артем Лоскутов и "федерализация Сибири"
  30. BBC World Service statement regarding interview with Artem Loskutov
  31. Bloomberg: Ukraine in ‘Undeclared War’ With Russia as Rebels Unite
  32. Немцы заблокируют «Главком» за то, что он не удалил статью по требованию Роскомнадзора
  33. Webhoster Hetzner: Deutsche Firma hilft russischer Medienaufsicht bei Zensur
  34. "МИД Украины удивлен позицией немецкого хостера, согласившегося с Роскомнадзором". Archived from the original on 2014-08-09. Retrieved 2014-08-09.
  35. Russische Zensurversuche im Ausland
  36. Human rights in Ukraine: Russian censor will not be allowed to block Glavkom
  37. "The Truth About Hetzner Censoring Glavcom". root-services.net. 9 August 2014.
  38. Роскомсвобода: Немецкий хостер хотел заблокировать украинский сайт по требованию Роскомнадзора, но извинился
  39. Glavcom.ua: Немецкий хостер отказался блокировать «Главком» и извинился перед редакцией
  40. Hans Lõugas (29 October 2013). "Laimaja peab sotsiaalmeedias vabandust paluma". Eesti Päevaleht.
  41. Sander Silm (28 October 2013). "Netilaimaja peab maksma Tõnu Samuelile 11 150 eurot". Õhtuleht.
  42. Silver Meikar (17 June 2013). "Silver Meikar: avatus ja läbipaistvus taastaks usalduse". Postimees.
  43. "Ed25519/en – Hetzner DokuWiki". wiki.hetzner.de. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  44. "Duplicate ED25519 SSH Host Keys at Hetzner". blogs.intevation.de. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  45. Немецкий провайдер заблокировал сайт «Новой газеты в Петербурге»
  46. Осторожно, цензура!
  47. "eco Gala 2007", eco - Verband der Internetwirtschaft e.V. (in German), archived from the original on 2017-12-01, retrieved 2017-11-14
  48. Zeleni Hosting (24 January 2012). "GreenIT Best Practice Award 2011". Zeleni Hosting.
  49. Zeleni Hosting (16 January 2012). "Top eco Internet award for best German hosting provider". Zeleni Hosting.
  50. HostSearch (28 August 2012). "German IT Journal Names Hetzner Online Top Internet Provider for 2012". HostSearch.
  51. HostSearch (29 October 2012). "PC-WELT Readers Vote Hetzner Online Technology Winner 2012". HostSearch.
  52. Carsten Bernhard (8 July 2012). "Wirtschaftsminister: Hetzner als "Bayerns Best 50" ausgezeichnet". webhostlist.de.
  53. Datacentres.com (23 May 2012). "Data Centres Europe announce 5th annual awards shortlist". Datacentres.com.
  54. Ambrose McNevin (26 November 2012). "DatacenterDynamics EMEA Awards 2012 Finalists". Datacentre Dynamics.
  55. Zeleni Hosting (18 January 2013). "Hetzner Online gewinnt erneut bei Deutschlands größter Leserumfrage". Zeleni Hosting.
  56. Beatrix Taggart (17 May 2013). "Hetzner Online shortlisted as "New Datacentre of the Year" at the 6th International Datacentre Awards". Zeleni Hosting.
  57. HostSearch (8 July 2014). "Web Hosting Provider Hetzner Online is PC-WELT's "Brand of the Year 2014"". HostSearch.
  58. Deloitte (30 March 2016). "Preisträger Technology Fast 50". Deloitte.
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