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Our main server is offline and Wewak is unreachable (r)
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| bubu | Date: Sunday, 2018-11-11, 2:45 PM | Message # 141 |
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Colonel
Group: Admins
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| Will read and comment, I was happy to play 1 map yday, bear with me
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| RADIOSMERSH | Date: Tuesday, 2018-11-13, 10:08 PM | Message # 142 |
 FHSW Wikia Co-Admin
Group: Bronze Donator
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| Quote starking018 (  ) What exactly is LowEndTalk though? The server we want is not exactly low-end in terms of quality.
No, that's just a forum where hosting providers offer custom plans or one can ask for an offer with reasonable price. I actually made a request there and it seems there are already some replies: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discuss....#latest
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| starking018 | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-14, 4:46 PM | Message # 143 |
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Colonel
Group: Friends
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| TL;DR for non-technical people reading this: we are looking at possibilities to save a few more euros per month and/or shave a few seconds of loading time, but it doesn't look promising.
@RADIO thanks. I looked through the offers:
https://extravm.com/billing/cart.php?gid=29 - offers look good, but I assume that the CPU core performance isn't guaranteed and I guess performance could go down during peak demand hours (which is when we play). The same guy who offered this later said about this "any host that doesn't oversell a ton will be fine". That is the crux of the matter. Who is overselling and to what extent.
https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ - (2 CPU/4 GB plan) same as above. Their Dedicated Instances are pricier.
https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices/ - Currently says "Out of stock". Unknown CPU. The price of $30.00 excl. VAT may be more than the €24.37 excl. VAT/€29 incl. VAT for what we use now (not sure how VAT works or can be avoided if they are outside of the EU and an European citizen pays).
Kimsufi KS-10 - slower CPU
https://skb-enterprise.com/ssd-vps/ - Unknown CPU frequency ("Xeon E5") and presumably not dedicated cores.
hetzner.com - Unknown CPU frequency ("Skylake Xeon") for their "DEDICATED vCPU" CCX11 plan. €19.9 excl. VAT is slightly cheaper.
Maybe I too should register there and comment to clarify a few things and ask if we should expect a VPS/VDS with dedicated CPU cores to perform about the same as a dedicated server, as a game server? The guy who mentioned that our single threaded performance (3.9GHz) would be hard to find in VPS/VDS with dedicated cores is right though. Only in the last year are such 6 and 8 core CPUs appearing on the market. And the 4 core CPUs are probably not well suited for hosting VPS/VDS with dedicated cores (because out of 1 such machine they can only sell 3 or maybe 4 dedicated cores, because they need some resources for the host (hypervisor); but if they offer regular VPS they probably sell something like 15-30 or more virtual cores all competing for the same resources). Therefore it seems unlikely to find someone offering this. However, this high core performance is also easily achievable through overclocking of CPUs with many cores, so I was hoping more providers do this.
BTW, there could also be dedicated servers with cheaper but faster hardware, such as Core i3-7350K, Core i3-7300, Core i3-7100, Core i3-8350K and similar. So you should include dedicated servers as an option.
Edit: added some clarifications.
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
Message edited by starking018 - Wednesday, 2018-11-14, 6:13 PM |
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| RADIOSMERSH | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-14, 10:27 PM | Message # 144 |
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FHSW Wikia Co-Admin
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| Quote starking018 ( ) And the 4 core CPUs are probably not well suited for hosting VPS/VDS with dedicated cores (because out of 1 such machine they can only sell 3 or maybe 4 dedicated cores, because they need some resources for the host (hypervisor); but if they offer regular VPS they probably sell something like 15-30 or more virtual cores all competing for the same resources). Therefore it seems unlikely to find someone offering this.
Quote starking018 ( ) hetzner.com - Unknown CPU frequency ("Skylake Xeon") for their "DEDICATED vCPU" CCX11 plan. €19.9 excl. VAT is slightly cheaper.
Well, Hetzner cores has quite decent perfomance (link from this comment), from what I can deduce, at least on the level of i3-8100.
Quote starking018 ( ) Maybe I too should register there and comment to clarify a few things and ask if we should expect a VPS/VDS with dedicated CPU cores to perform about the same as a dedicated server, as a game server?
Yeah, that would be nice.
Btw, I have received a couple of offers through PM, though I don't think we should even consider them:
Quote Hi,
Do you still require a VPS for your game server? We are a UK based company with our office in Central London and datacentre in London Docklands.
We can offer the following package, which matches or exceeds your requirements:
50 GB SSD Disk Space
5000 GB Bandwidth
5 GB RAM
3 vCores
1 Gbps Port Speed
1 IPv4 (additional available)
Daily Backups
100 Gbps DDoS Protection
Instant Activation
London Docklands
£22.99 per month
If this is something you'd be interested in, please do let me know.
Thanks,
Mason
https://uk1.host/virtual-private-servers.php
And another one:
https://my.zadeservers.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=5
That site looks a bit phishy, and, tbh, I haven't found many reviews about that hoster either.
Added (2018-11-14, 9:28 PM)
---------------------------------------------
Quote starking018 ( ) BTW, there could also be dedicated servers with cheaper but faster hardware, such as Core i3-7350K, Core i3-7300, Core i3-7100, Core i3-8350K and similar. So you should include dedicated servers as an option.
Sure, will do that.
Message edited by RADIOSMERSH - Wednesday, 2018-11-14, 10:35 PM |
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| starking018 | Date: Thursday, 2018-11-15, 1:33 PM | Message # 145 |
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Colonel
Group: Friends
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| OK, there's one very important thing which I didn't know (only suspected), which I learned from that thread about the Hetzner cloud offers. That is that what Hetzner calls a dedicated "vCPU" is not a whole core but is actually just a simultaneous thread in a CPU with simultaneous multithreading (hyperthreading), and that most other providers are doing the same. This is pretty deceptive, because the two simultaneous threads that can run within the physical core of a CPU actually share a lot of resources and affect each other's performance a lot. So, if we utilize one such thread (e.g. loading a map) and at the same time others are utilizing most of their dedicated threads on the same physical machine it would slow down ours. This may happen even if we have 1 or 2 more idle threads in our VPS, because (as far as I know) there's no guarantee that each pair of threads that we get will always be on the same physical core.
Moreover, the frequencies don't seem high, and can vary a lot depending on overall physical CPU load due to turbo boost (assuming Hetzner hasn't done any overclocking of their own). From the information available there it seems that the CPU they use is one of these models with a 2.1GHz base frequency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....ormance Therefore the frequency under load can probably vary between 2.4GHz and 3.0GHz or between 2.8GHz and 3.7GHz (the best case is about the same as what we use now).
Overall, we'd need more of these "vCPUs" - at least 4, and even then the performance can go down a lot when they fill a whole machine with VPSes. So, at this point I think that we can almost write off VPSes, at least until providers become more transparent and also make more competitively priced offers. We better focus on dedicated servers again.
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
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| bubu | Date: Saturday, 2018-11-17, 11:20 AM | Message # 146 |
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Colonel
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| Quote marduk ( ) An idea I had was to rent the server, in the UK or Ireland for example, closer to our friends in America so they have a better ping. Although a server in the UK/Ireland might be more expensive and if it would mean only a limited improvement of the ping it wouldn't be worth it. But something we should consider.
The difference in ping we would get from basing the server in UK (aka closer to US) is really small to make a difference, it is smaller I agree, but still not very noticeable in the game I'd say. But yeah, we can base it anywhere (UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium).
Quote starking018 ( ) I think that we shouldn't go lower than what we use now (and can have again for about 29€ incl. VAT right now at https://www.hetzner.com/sb?country=de ). Our current i7-3770 can boost up to 3.9GHz on one core, and this is probably the speed at which it is loading maps. So, I'd say 2 or 3 Intel cores with at least one guaranteed at 3.9+GHz at full speed, with no slowdown due to other things running on the same physical machine. Then I agree with 3-4 GB RAM, min. 50 GB of storage (SSD preferably), located in UK or Netherlands (preferably, but other western and central European places would be OK IMO). The bandwidth usage should be pretty low, so I don't think we even need 1 Gbps. 100Mbps should be enough.
Good finding about the vCPUs - I didn't know about that. The current server's CPU, the i7-3770, has 4 cores. So we want 1 full CPU unit with its 4 cores available to us. I checked all offers in replies above and they indeed seem to be vCPUs, so yes, we should think of getting a dedicated server instead of a VPS but we have to take in mind it will be more expensive (as usual for better service).
I am not sure about 1 thing though - if we get 4 vCPUs, would that be 1 core? For example on the page Radio mentioned before: https://uk1.host/virtual-private-servers.php, if we select the VPS6 option, they offer 4 vCPUs?
I like Hetzner though - if you look on this offer: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex41-ssd If we were to use linux instead of windows, then we would save 21 Euros and would have a server for half of what we pay now.
What do you think?
Message edited by bubu - Saturday, 2018-11-17, 12:00 PM |
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| starking018 | Date: Saturday, 2018-11-17, 1:56 PM | Message # 147 |
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Colonel
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| Quote bubu ( ) we should think of getting a dedicated server instead of a VPS but we have to take in mind it will be more expensive (as usual for better service).
The thing is, it turns out that dedicated servers such as those from the Hetzner auctions are not even more expensive, whether you compare them to VPS of a roughly equivalent amount of resources (8 dedicated threads), or even to VPS of a reduced amount of resources that would probably have about the same speed for our needs on average (3-4 dedicated threads). And none of the VPS options even have good guarantees for consistent speed all the time. At least that is what I have seen from the offers that are actually at least somewhat comparable because there is enough information about them (CPU type and speed, what do they really mean by "dedicated").
Quote bubu ( )
I was trying to explain this, but it is complicated and uncertain, because providers don't publish enough information. The short version is that I have not yet seen a VPS provider that guarantees that out of a given plan you get the full resources of 1 core, at all times (it should be technically possible, but probably impractical). I was making a comparison specifically between Hetzner's two "dedicated" "vCPUs" (actually dedicated simultaneous threads) to 1 core, but even that has caveats which make the 1 core superior. Your example doesn't even mention what they mean by a "vCore" - I would assume just one of a number of threads that run on a CPU with a smaller number of simultaneous threads, i.e. even worse than Hetzner's "dedicated" "vCPUs".
Quote bubu ( )
RADIOSMERSH and me came to the conclusion that we can use his Windows 2016 server license by installing the OS ourselves through Hetznet's free (for 3 hours) KVM Console:
http://fhsw-europ.ucoz.de/forum/2-884-15307-16-1541605386
Hetzner's current best offers can be seen here, filter "CPU benchmark" to over 9000 and you'll see our current i7-3770, which is just a little slower than 6700 but much cheaper when you take into account VAT when comparing: https://www.hetzner.com/sb?country=us
(i.e. €24.37/month excl. VAT vs. €34.00/month+€79.00 once-off setup fee excl. VAT)
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
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| RADIOSMERSH | Date: Tuesday, 2018-11-20, 7:10 PM | Message # 148 |
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FHSW Wikia Co-Admin
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| I was looking through the dedicated servers offers on lowendtalk and came across this (namely GAME-1 plan): https://www.soyoustart.com/ie/game-servers/
The configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel i7-4790K
RAM: 16 GB RAM
Storage: 120 GB SSD
Bandwidth: 250 Mbps
Price: €34.99 montly + €20.00 once-off setup fee excl. VAT
According to various benchmarks, 4790K has 15-20% better single-threaded perfomance then 3770K.
Plus, it seems that, as OVH subsidiary, they tend to ignore Russian VAT (the link leads to Russian Linux forum), unlike Hetzner, which means I can order server from them and apply for VAT removal.
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| starking018 | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 1:00 AM | Message # 149 |
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Colonel
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| Yeah, I saw the same offer (actually the one priced in British pounds was displayed, and now I see that when you choose to display the website version for another country the prices are significantly different because they seem to have fixed prices in multiple currencies but they haven't updated them in months at least).
So when I saw it (https://www.soyoustart.com/en/offers/1801sysgame04.xml) it worked out to about €37 excl. VAT/€44 incl. VAT, so I considered it over 50% more expensive than Hetzner's. I thought that it was not worth it to have only a 15-20% speedup for over 50% more money, so I didn't mention it. But now that you've found this offer slightly cheaper when priced in EUR, and more importantly, the thing about VAT treatment (I hope that it is true and that it would apply in this case) it looks appealing. So, unless we find and agree on a way to avoid VAT with Hetzner (e.g. invoice someone trusted from outside EU/Russia, or invoice someone's VAT registered company  ) to get their €29 offer down to €24.37, this €35 for i7-4790K (plus, it has an SSD) looks good compared to €29 for i7-3770. This would be 21% more money per month (ignoring the one-off costs) for about 15-20% speedup.
We should also consider OS installation. It looks like they don't offer Windows installation, but we may be able to install our own Windows through their KVM over IP (https://www.soyoustart.com/ie/kvm-ip.xml) for a fee of €25 ex. VAT (one off).
We'd also need to check their reputation (as always) but OVH (their owner company?) seems to be a major and highly regarded provider.
Now, if people here want this speed (like i7-4790K's) I think that it is unlikely that we'd find it for cheaper than that (€35). But I don't know if people here prefer to have that, or something at a lower price.
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
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| marduk | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 8:54 AM | Message # 150 |
 General
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| I read all your posts but, sorry, most technical details mean nothing to me. I think Radiosmersh, starking and Bubu, you three should decide what the best solution is.
This is a gaming community. People come here to relax. If you start an argument you will get kicked.
Quid pro quo.
Marduk aka Postduk
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| Born-1942 | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 11:12 AM | Message # 151 |
 Colonel
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| I also think that you guys know the best solution for our community because you know how to do it and that's important to keep the server running. 
Nicknames BornDarkness and Soldado da Wehrmacht
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| starking018 | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 10:03 PM | Message # 152 |
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Colonel
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| @ALL: We are down to a couple of options with minor, gradual (not fundamental) differences in performance. Now the question is how much money do people here want to spend on a server, and who would we choose to have the contract in their name:
* We have the old option of about €29/month (with the contract being in the name of whoever we want; This price includes 19% VAT which is typical in Europe, including Russia) for a new server like the one we use now;
* We have this option of €35/month + one off initial fee of €45 €20 (with the contract being in the name of someone outside the EU, such as RADIOSMERSH; VAT would not be paid) for a server proportionally faster than the one we use now. It is also located in France, so there would be a small change in ping latency;
* We can look some more or ask for offers at lower prices for a server that would be somewhere around these two options in terms of loading speed.
About the ping difference: it would be felt the most in combat against infantry. As far as I remember, last time we discussed this there was some opposition from players from Poland or Russia. In my opinion we'd better ask players about their opinion on this again and consider it. Players can adapt, but still the easier way is to not change the server location.
Another technical thing about the second option: they have this information about Windows installation in their FAQ:
Quote Is it possible to install a Windows Server operating systemm on a Game server?
No. Windows Server operating systems are not available for Game servers. However, you can currently choose the Windows 8.1 system among our installation templates. You will need to have your own Windows 8.1 licence in order to activate the system.
So, perhaps we can save the €25 for KVM over IP by using a Windows 8.1 licence that someone probably has?
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
Message edited by starking018 - Thursday, 2018-11-22, 0:47 AM |
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| RADIOSMERSH | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 10:14 PM | Message # 153 |
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FHSW Wikia Co-Admin
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| Quote starking018 ( ) So, perhaps we can save the €25 for KVM over IP by using a Windows 8.1 licence that someone probably has?
There is a way to install Windows Server for free through the rescue mode: https://joodle.nl/install....omments Don't know if those templates can be trusted, but we create our own with that guide: https://joodle.nl/how-to-create-your-own-windows-template-for-kimsufi/
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| bubu | Date: Wednesday, 2018-11-21, 11:39 PM | Message # 154 |
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Colonel
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| Quote starking018 ( ) So, perhaps we can save the €25 for KVM over IP by using a Windows 8.1 licence that someone probably has? |
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| Born-1942 | Date: Thursday, 2018-11-22, 0:36 AM | Message # 155 |
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Colonel
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| good I have a ping between 200 to 230, my location and in south america, maybe change the location of the server to further away I could stay with a ping between 300 to 330 I do not really know, but when I play on the Japanese server the times I get between this ping value.
but I think the second option would be better, but it would also be more expensive, well if everyone helps a little, it's possible to do that.
Nicknames BornDarkness and Soldado da Wehrmacht
Message edited by luiscarlosred - Thursday, 2018-11-22, 0:41 AM |
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| starking018 | Date: Thursday, 2018-11-22, 0:43 AM | Message # 156 |
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Colonel
Group: Friends
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| I'm not experienced with these things, but it looks like RADIOSMERSH has found a solution to install Windows Server without using KVM over IP, so I guess Windows Server would be the way to go.
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
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| RADIOSMERSH | Date: Thursday, 2018-11-22, 11:44 PM | Message # 157 |
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FHSW Wikia Co-Admin
Group: Bronze Donator
Messages: 664
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| Quote starking018 ( ) We can look some more or ask for offers at lower prices for a server that would be somewhere around these two options in terms of loading speed.
I think I've found even better option:
https://servdiscount.com/en.html
Configuration is somewhat similar to SoYouStart:
CPU: Intel i7-4790K
RAM: 32 GB RAM
Storage: 120 GB SSD (software RAID) or 1TB HDD (software RAID) or 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD or 240 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD
Network: 1Gbps with 300Mbps guaranty
Price: €34.99 montly excl. VAT (no setup fees) + 15% Black Friday discount for the first month
From their FAQ:
Quote If you own a business abroad and have a VAT number, you don’t pay German sales tax. To ensure that a sales tax is not charged, you must notify billing@servdiscount.com the VAT number before receipt of the first invoice.
The reviews are mixed though.
Message edited by RADIOSMERSH - Thursday, 2018-11-22, 11:47 PM |
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| bubu | Date: Saturday, 2018-11-24, 5:06 PM | Message # 158 |
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Colonel
Group: Admins
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| In case we find the hosting, we need to do couple of things:
= Create an account on a hosting page that we would select
= Distribute the ownership of the server among multiple people - share the login details to the account on the hosting and create admin accounts on the server itself (keeping it down to 4 people): I would nominate Radio, Air Troll, me, and Marduk - reasoning being the technical and administrator distribution of work
= Setup the paypal - We mentioned this numerous amount of times, many people agreed, it never got created, reason being the VAT.
= Secure the access to the server by VPN / block incoming RDP connections unless on VPN (I can do this )
Please, whatever we do, let's act quickly because of Lampo needs us to find the solution asap.
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| starking018 | Date: Sunday, 2018-11-25, 3:03 AM | Message # 159 |
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Colonel
Group: Friends
Messages: 395
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| Quote bubu ( ) = Setup the paypal - We mentioned this numerous amount of times, many people agreed, it never got created, reason being the VAT.
I guess by that you mean that we haven't decided who is going to control this PayPal account, because we may want it to be someone who doesn't have to pay VAT when paying for the server. So, it would be the same person in whose name the server contract would be, let's call this role "account owner". So, yeah, I guess that PayPal will happen after the choice of provider and account owner is final.
Quote RADIOSMERSH ( ) The reviews are mixed though.
Looking at servdiscount.com's Trustpilot page now it looks better than SoYouStart's and even Hetzner's.
Quote RADIOSMERSH ( ) If you own a business abroad and have a VAT number, you don’t pay German sales tax. To ensure that a sales tax is not charged, you must notify billing@servdiscount.com the VAT number before receipt of the first invoice.
This can also be done with Hetzner and probably most providers, so this alone doesn't make this offer competitive (for us) compared to Hetzner's or SoYouStart's (where you showed that they don't take VAT at all from Russian persons). Are you offering to do this thing though, with a VAT number? If someone is going to do this thing they better first talk to someone in the company's accounting (the VAT-registered one) and know what they are doing. Also about SoYouStart - it sounded like (correct me if I'm wrong) you are offering to have the account in your name there so that they don't take any VAT. And again, I hope you know what you are doing.
Indeed we should finish this discussion and I intend to open a new thread about choosing a server provider and whose name the contract should be in (account owner), because I don't want to have players who did not have a chance to know what's going on and to participate.
Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
Message edited by starking018 - Sunday, 2018-11-25, 5:23 AM |
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| bubu | Date: Sunday, 2018-11-25, 5:01 PM | Message # 160 |
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Colonel
Group: Admins
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| Quote starking018 ( ) I guess by that you mean that we haven't decided who is going to control this PayPal account, because we may want it to be someone who doesn't have to pay VAT when paying for the server. So, it would be the same person in whose name the server contract would be, let's call this role "account owner". So, yeah, I guess that PayPal will happen after the choice of provider and account owner is final.
The person who will have the paypal account opened DOES NOT need to be the one who will open the contract with the hosting company. For many reasons ^^
I also disagree having only one person responsible for paypal/server this time. The paypal can be under the name of someone but it should be perceived as a generic account (e.g. FHSW Paypal account) with generic password. This account then should be available to be accessed by people who will also be responsible for the server. We can therefore skip the "who will do what" debate.
Moreover, a person who will "own" the paypal will need to share their telephone number and an email address to prevent the exact situation we reached with Wewak. I do not like making the same mistake twice.
Following the http://fhsw-europ.ucoz.de/forum/2-931-1 : If I remember well, the Hetzner has an option for having multiple contractors or option to give multiple people the access to the Web Interface of the server and request the Hetzner support. I am very unsure if other hostings provide this as well?
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