The rise of Virtual Private Server with Ryzen CPUs has gained prominence acceptance and increasing adoption over last several months.Web hosting forums, tech blogs, and websites of hosting companies mention multiple offers for Ryzen based VPS’es. These days, you are more likely to find a Ryzen powered VPS offer in the United States or Europe. In more recent weeks many such VPS plans have emerged from Asia.
Desktop Processors: Second Fiddlers in the Server World
Before the advent of these CPUs, desktop CPUs played a second fiddle in the server market. In the server world, Intel based CPUs, particularly the Xeon series have ruled the roost in recent years. Over 90 percent of the providers in the VPS space, from resellers to even cloud computing behemoths, rely on these trusty Xeons.
There were some offers for VPS using “Desktop CPUs”. But these offers mostly designed for the low spec, low price market. The server enthusiasts and system administrators typically treated them like a poor cousin.
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Market acceptance of Ryzen Processors
Advanced Microelectric Devices (AMD) launched the Ryzen 3700 series of processors and later the 3900 series in 2019. The arrival of the Ryzen processors led to a new phenomenon in the server world. Which is, more and more providers are offering server hosting plans using virtual private server with Ryzen.
What makes the Ryzen processors so special?
When we consider the resource demands from a server grade CPU, some requirements are:
- Reliability and low cost
- Robustness over a long term period of time
- Ability to handle peak loads
- Number of threads and cores that are available
- Finally, energy consumption: at the end of the day, operating costs have to be within reasonable limits.
For the majority of use cases, AMD Ryzen checks the above boxes. Another factor is price: The Ryzen CPUs cost much less compared to the Intel Server CPUs. This is true in even in case of their own cousin, the AMD Epyc processors. These processors may feel under powered for servers that perform CPU intensive operations, like modelling or high frequency trading. The Ryzens are no match for intense graphical or mathematical computing needs. A server that uses GPUs (Graphical Processor Units) might be a better fit for such tasks.
AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor is known for its powerhouse performance. With up to 16 cores and 32 threads, it is capable of handling heavy workloads without breaking a sweat. This is particularly crucial for web hosts, as they need to ensure that their servers can handle multiple websites and applications simultaneously. Another benefit of AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor is its energy efficiency. It uses less power compared to its Intel counterparts, which translates to lower operating costs for web hosts. This is important for web hosts who have to run their servers 24/7, as it can save them a significant amount of money in the long run. Furthermore, AMD Ryzen Processor is known for its affordability.
Early Adopters of Ryzen Processor Powered Servers
As far as I am aware, Nexusbytes was probably one of the first web hosts to offer Virtual Private Servers using Ryzen CPUs. When I had tested their servers back in October 2018, the hardware only consisted of Intel powered CPUs and associated systems. But towards late 2019 and early 2020, they upgraded their Virtual Private Server hardware.
In 2019, when AMD Ryzen desktop processors were gaining acceptance in the low-end hosting community, several providers emerged as early adopters of this technology. Some of the providers known to have offered Ryzen-based hosting options during that time include OVH, Linode, as well as Vultr.
- Hetzner: Hetzner, a prominent hosting provider based in Germany, introduced AMD Ryzen processors to their product lineup, providing customers with affordable hosting options.
- HostHatch: HostHatch, a provider known for its low-cost VPS hosting, was among the early adopters of Ryzen processors.
- RackNerd: RackNerd introduced Ryzen processors in their lineup, offering customers the benefits of AMD’s performance and cost efficiency.
These web hosts were able to offer Ryzen pVPS servers at a lower price than Intel-based servers. This was because Ryzen processors were more affordable than Intel processors at the time.
Impact of using Ryzen Desktop CPUs in Datacenters
The adoption of Ryzen VPS servers by these web hosts helped to make Ryzen processors more popular in the datacenter. This, in turn, helped to drive down the price of Ryzen processors and made them more accessible to a wider range of businesses. The adoption of Ryzen processors by hosting providers has evolved since 2019, and new providers have joined the Ryzen hosting community.
This post was last updated on 13 June 2023