C-Servers 99-year plan, do you dare?

yoursunny

@cservers CentralVPS-II 2560

• 3 vCore Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00 GHz (60% Fair Share)
• 2560 MB RAM DDR4 ECC
• 60GB NVMe High Speed Disk - 7 GB/s
• 1 IPv6/64 + 1 IPv4 NAT (10+5 Ports)
• NAT46/NAT64/DNS64 Included
• C-Servers ExtraNAT Included
• Unmetered Bandwidth @ 1 Gbps
• Owned Professional Server - HP ProLiant Gen9
• ONI Premier Tier3 Datacenter in Lisbon, Portugal

Price: $399.99 for 99 years
Order link: https://web.c-servers.co.uk/order-steps/server/208

davide

Okay that prompted me to check the reliable flag for C-Servers on PonyHost. It was already false so I took no initiative.

But I wish to see progress on all fronts.

DrNutella

But isn’t the point to swap out services every few years for upgraded infrastructure?

I mean it sounds like a great deal for something simple IMHO. Too good to be true.

How long in business?

davide

@DrNutella said:
I mean it sounds like a great deal for something simple IMHO. Too good to be true.

It sounds like installing Windows on a 99-year-old 50 ĸHz valve computer.

Neoon

@cservers since when do you got fkn LISBON PORTUGAL? You need tell us THIS GOT DAMIT.
I FUCKING LOVE LISBON.

havoc

Imagine sitting in the year 2124 and having 2.5 GB of RAM

ralf

Every VPS product they sell (as far as I could tell, maybe I missed one) only has IPv6 and NAT with a handful of ports forwarded. They don't even mention providing a reverse proxy, which massively limits it usefulness.

Also a company with NAT only products... I'm not sure I'd be surprised if they were running everything from 1 IP address shared across a handful of machines by splitting it up by ranges (e.g. ports 10000-19999 server 1, 20000-29999 server 2, etc). Maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas.

Jab

@havoc said:
Imagine sitting in the year 2124 and having 2.5 GB of RAM

'Vintage' by then, probably popular.

legendary

No. It is ridiculous. In 99 years deep atlantic storage may end, not only some portugal host.

grasple

@ralf said:
Every VPS product they sell (as far as I could tell, maybe I missed one) only has IPv6

maybe in 2124 you'll be able to email your mum over ipv6!

skorous

@grasple said:

@ralf said:
Every VPS product they sell (as far as I could tell, maybe I missed one) only has IPv6

maybe in 2124 you'll be able to email your mum over ipv6!

I can do that now! ( She doesn't know it's over ipv6 of course )

yoursunny

@DrNutella said: I mean it sounds like a great deal for something simple IMHO. Too good to be true.

The yearly price for this plan is $9.99/year.
If we deposit $399.99 into the bank and withdraw $9.99 every year, assuming 1% interest rate and 20% tax on interest income, it would take 47 years to drain the bank account.
See interest calculator for a chart.
Thus, you should purchase if you think @cservers would not deadpool in next 47 years.

@havoc said:
Imagine sitting in the year 2124 and having 2.5 GB of RAM

Imagine sitting in the year 2124 and having E5-2660V2 processor, while everyone else are using Quantum computers.
This plan guarantees a specific CPU model so that it ought to be this model for all of 99 years.
It's just like driving a Ford Model T in 2025.

ralf

@yoursunny said: Thus, you should purchase if you think @cservers would not deadpool in next 47 years.

With that same calculator, any interest above 3% would result in spare money in the account even if no deadpooling for 99 years. 3% is easily achievable for savings.

With an interest rate of 8% (a low-ball of the average for the S&P) then after 99 years you'd have $100k left.

ralf

@ralf said:

@yoursunny said: Thus, you should purchase if you think @cservers would not deadpool in next 47 years.

With that same calculator, any interest above 3% would result in spare money in the account even if no deadpooling for 99 years. 3% is easily achievable for savings.

With an interest rate of 8% (a low-ball of the average for the S&P) then after 99 years you'd have $100k left.

Of course, the calculation isn't actually this simple, because the annual price would increase with inflation each year.

yoursunny

@ralf said:
Of course, the calculation isn't actually this simple, because the annual price would increase with inflation each year.

That's why you buy the recurring offer.
Annual price cannot increase, at all, forever.

cybertech

$7/-

admax

How about the one-year plan? The supplier seems a bit new? Uh...

sonic

lmfao

Newyawker

@yoursunny said:
@cservers CentralVPS-II 2560

• 3 vCore Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00 GHz (60% Fair Share)
• 2560 MB RAM DDR4 ECC
• 60GB NVMe High Speed Disk - 7 GB/s
• 1 IPv6/64 + 1 IPv4 NAT (10+5 Ports)
• NAT46/NAT64/DNS64 Included
• C-Servers ExtraNAT Included
• Unmetered Bandwidth @ 1 Gbps
• Owned Professional Server - HP ProLiant Gen9
• ONI Premier Tier3 Datacenter in Lisbon, Portugal

Price: $399.99 for 99 years
Order link: https://web.c-servers.co.uk/order-steps/server/208

What if they had framed it as $399.99 for "lifetime VPS service"? Would anyone think it would last anywhere near 99 years?

KeqingWangy

Is the connection from Portugal good? Because I rarely hear of servers located in Portugal.

admax

Relatively niche, there are Portugal's VPS providers on LES as well, but the prices are quite expensive!

MikeA

wow.. no offense.. but this is stupid.

Blembim

I mean how does this diffirent from typical lifetime vps? Expect its portugal and new?? Will this host even survive 2025 anyway?

root

yoursunny

@Newyawker said:
What if they had framed it as $399.99 for "lifetime VPS service"? Would anyone think it would last anywhere near 99 years?

Lifetime means until the day we are dead.
99-year means until the year 2124.

As predicted, in the year 2069, we will be hit by a bus and die instantly, at an age of NaN.
We are unmarried and do not have children, so that nobody would attend our funeral, and there would be no flowers in front of the funeral hall.
As the funeral director reads our stories into the empty hall, heavy rain suddenly starts.
It suggests that the whole world is crying for our passing.
We would, of course, give each rain drop an IPv6 address.

If we bought a lifetime VPS, its contract terminates that day.
If we bought a 99-year VPS, it would be a part of our estate and can be inherited, most likely to a charity of our choosing.

bitshub

I have ordered one for 3 years, now waiting for the delivery.

Newyawker

@yoursunny said:

@Newyawker said:
What if they had framed it as $399.99 for "lifetime VPS service"? Would anyone think it would last anywhere near 99 years?

Lifetime means until the day we are dead.
99-year means until the year 2124.

As predicted, in the year 2069, we will be hit by a bus and die instantly, at an age of NaN.
We are unmarried and do not have children, so that nobody would attend our funeral, and there would be no flowers in front of the funeral hall.
As the funeral director reads our stories into the empty hall, heavy rain suddenly starts.
It suggests that the whole world is crying for our passing.
We would, of course, give each rain drop an IPv6 address.

If we bought a lifetime VPS, its contract terminates that day.
If we bought a 99-year VPS, it would be a part of our estate and can be inherited, most likely to a charity of our choosing.

No necessarily, you would need to read the "fineprint" to actually know the limitation of "lifetime". If you think "lifetime" means termination at owner's death always you don't know the vacation timeshare industry.

davide

@yoursunny said:

@Newyawker said:
What if they had framed it as $399.99 for "lifetime VPS service"? Would anyone think it would last anywhere near 99 years?

Lifetime means until the day we are dead.
99-year means until the year 2124.

As predicted, in the year 2069, we will be hit by a bus and die instantly, at an age of NaN.
We are unmarried and do not have children, so that nobody would attend our funeral, and there would be no flowers in front of the funeral hall.
As the funeral director reads our stories into the empty hall, heavy rain suddenly starts.
It suggests that the whole world is crying for our passing.
We would, of course, give each rain drop an IPv6 address.

If we bought a lifetime VPS, its contract terminates that day.
If we bought a 99-year VPS, it would be a part of our estate and can be inherited, most likely to a charity of our choosing.

You could hire actors for the funeral, paid to sob in tears in apparent despair. Great kings used to do it.

Or get deep-frozen in one of those nitrogen tubes. Food for Soylent thought.

cservers

Hello everyone,

This is the sysadmin speaking, my name is Tiago. Sorry in advance for the large post, some relevant details there.

This service (as described, but omitted by OP in the first post) are part of a pre-sale, with deployment announced since early December as scheduled until the 14th of January 2025.

I must address several aspects here:

• This is still pre-deployment (actually our first fully owned server, non-upstreamed to Hetzner and 100% pure metal, it's an HPE server);
• The main reasoning behind the offer for 99 years is actually twofold: it's both to support our current expansion, and to have a deal we can honestly commit and fulfill throughout the times (making it a "lifetime"), regardless of how the wind changes and the world evolves, we are saying clearly: we will fulfill it.

Obviously a "lifetime" VPS is no joke of a deal, we take these very seriously, and therefore it could never be priced low, but the money will go both to current and future use of the VPS and to help fund new servers, new services and everything else associated, as current purchases already are and will still be for quite some time, which is normal and an usual business practice basically everywhere.

This is not that new of a company anymore, in fact we are already year and a half in since foundation, although only started trading some months later. We are not here to go anywhere, we are here to stay, for as many years as they come, and so am I in this business. And sustainability is key for C-Servers; in fact, this company is self-sustainable since the 2nd month after it started trading, and we have no debt. It's all as organic as possible. This is also why we are cautious when putting prices, deployment and everything involved. It must be sustainable and a question of responsibility to our customers.

---

Let me also detail one final thing regarding the unusual location and the deployment: this will be changed, in fact it will actually be improved. To Central Europe, no less. I am handling this and in talks with multiple datacenters as we speak (so, no basements) for a long-term relationship, and I'll personally fly myself, and the server, to the destination datacenter; if I can I won't send no post or mail of a thing this heavy and this important. Flights exist for a reason, and I don't care paying more.

To break it in short: we had a contact in Portugal that was offering us a low-enough colocation price that we actually were looking forward to, hence our location being communicated and decided as Portugal since December, and the deployment interval was defined after these talks occurred; but after Christmas and the New Year things have made quite a U turn (pun intended), as final pricing doubled to higher-than-mainland Europe levels, and I found it unreasonable to deploy in Portugal for something that is (as we all know) objectively second-best in terms of connectivity to mainland Europe. And if I can have the real deal at an even better price, why would I settle for less, right?

As we speak, I am negotiating with datacenters in France, Germany and the UK, and working very hard to fulfill the deadline (14 January 2025), which is on a Tuesday.

I can also advance the following information: if I find it not possible to reasonably deploy the servers in-person until that day, everyone will be formally notified via e-mail with the best advance I can possibly give, and the deployment day will have an exceptional adjustment of a couple days at most (to e.g. January 17th or January 21st at most). If I for some reason fail that second deployment date, everyone on the pre-sale gets a refund. Direct.

As you see, no, no deadpooling, no nothing. Only someone that works hard for their customers.
Any further questions, I'm available.

Tiago

Neoon

Sad, so no Portugal... meh

admax

@Neoon said:
Sad, so no Portugal... meh

+1

ralf

@cservers said: The main reasoning behind the offer for 99 years is actually twofold: it's both to support our current expansion, and to have a deal we can honestly commit and fulfill throughout the times (making it a "lifetime"), regardless of how the wind changes and the world evolves, we are saying clearly: we will fulfill it.

Why do you specify the specific type of chip, one that is already several years past it's EOL.

I doubt these chips will be economically viable to run compared to "current gen" chips in another 10-20 years time, and I don't you'll even have a large enough of chips to even keep running that processor beyond 30-40 years even if the running cost wasn't the issue.

What happens when it's simply impractical to even run these CPUs any more?

Obviously, you know and I know that you don't really want to target this specific chip after all. It's going to be easier and cheaper to move everyone to a new node. Are you planning on upgrading the specs of this new node as time goes on? Otherwise, in 10 years time this deal will be probably useless for almost any tasks of that era, and in 20 years time probably there will be literally no point in keeping it.

Would your plan be to always emulate at similar spec level to the original, or maintain a moving target like every 10 years we'll update to a 10 year-old tech?

Given that the projections between investing the money yourself and buying a $10 per year server (adjusted to today's value in real terms) from the savings would leave cash behind over 30 years, it doesn't seem to make any sense for anyone to consider a server lease this long if there isn't a plan to increase the specs every N years.

rockinmusicgv

@cservers said: The main reasoning behind the offer for 99 years is actually twofold: it's both to support our current expansion, and to have a deal we can honestly commit and fulfill throughout the times (making it a "lifetime"), regardless of how the wind changes and the world evolves, we are saying clearly: we will fulfill it.

This is an honorable goal, but considering the lifespan of the average human, it isn't something you can guarantee.

But I do like to think that 100 years from now people will be treating vintage servers the same way we treat original Model Ts in our time.

cybertech

no sad no dedicated ipv4

bitshub

@cservers said:
Hello everyone,

This is the sysadmin speaking, my name is Tiago. Sorry in advance for the large post, some relevant details there.

This service (as described, but omitted by OP in the first post) are part of a pre-sale, with deployment announced since early December as scheduled until the 14th of January 2025.

I must address several aspects here:

• This is still pre-deployment (actually our first fully owned server, non-upstreamed to Hetzner and 100% pure metal, it's an HPE server);
• The main reasoning behind the offer for 99 years is actually twofold: it's both to support our current expansion, and to have a deal we can honestly commit and fulfill throughout the times (making it a "lifetime"), regardless of how the wind changes and the world evolves, we are saying clearly: we will fulfill it.

Obviously a "lifetime" VPS is no joke of a deal, we take these very seriously, and therefore it could never be priced low, but the money will go both to current and future use of the VPS and to help fund new servers, new services and everything else associated, as current purchases already are and will still be for quite some time, which is normal and an usual business practice basically everywhere.

This is not that new of a company anymore, in fact we are already year and a half in since foundation, although only started trading some months later. We are not here to go anywhere, we are here to stay, for as many years as they come, and so am I in this business. And sustainability is key for C-Servers; in fact, this company is self-sustainable since the 2nd month after it started trading, and we have no debt. It's all as organic as possible. This is also why we are cautious when putting prices, deployment and everything involved. It must be sustainable and a question of responsibility to our customers.

---

Let me also detail one final thing regarding the unusual location and the deployment: this will be changed, in fact it will actually be improved. To Central Europe, no less. I am handling this and in talks with multiple datacenters as we speak (so, no basements) for a long-term relationship, and I'll personally fly myself, and the server, to the destination datacenter; if I can I won't send no post or mail of a thing this heavy and this important. Flights exist for a reason, and I don't care paying more.

To break it in short: we had a contact in Portugal that was offering us a low-enough colocation price that we actually were looking forward to, hence our location being communicated and decided as Portugal since December, and the deployment interval was defined after these talks occurred; but after Christmas and the New Year things have made quite a U turn (pun intended), as final pricing doubled to higher-than-mainland Europe levels, and I found it unreasonable to deploy in Portugal for something that is (as we all know) objectively second-best in terms of connectivity to mainland Europe. And if I can have the real deal at an even better price, why would I settle for less, right?

As we speak, I am negotiating with datacenters in France, Germany and the UK, and working very hard to fulfill the deadline (14 January 2025), which is on a Tuesday.

I can also advance the following information: if I find it not possible to reasonably deploy the servers in-person until that day, everyone will be formally notified via e-mail with the best advance I can possibly give, and the deployment day will have an exceptional adjustment of a couple days at most (to e.g. January 17th or January 21st at most). If I for some reason fail that second deployment date, everyone on the pre-sale gets a refund. Direct.

As you see, no, no deadpooling, no nothing. Only someone that works hard for their customers.
Any further questions, I'm available.

Tiago

My primary reason for ordering the VPS was its location in Portugal, so this news is quite disappointing. There are many low-cost VPS options available, but not specifically from Portugal.

cservers

@ralf said:

@cservers said: The main reasoning behind the offer for 99 years is actually twofold: it's both to support our current expansion, and to have a deal we can honestly commit and fulfill throughout the times (making it a "lifetime"), regardless of how the wind changes and the world evolves, we are saying clearly: we will fulfill it.

Why do you specify the specific type of chip, one that is already several years past it's EOL.

I doubt these chips will be economically viable to run compared to "current gen" chips in another 10-20 years time, and I don't you'll even have a large enough of chips to even keep running that processor beyond 30-40 years even if the running cost wasn't the issue.

What happens when it's simply impractical to even run these CPUs any more?

Obviously, you know and I know that you don't really want to target this specific chip after all. It's going to be easier and cheaper to move everyone to a new node. Are you planning on upgrading the specs of this new node as time goes on? Otherwise, in 10 years time this deal will be probably useless for almost any tasks of that era, and in 20 years time probably there will be literally no point in keeping it.

Would your plan be to always emulate at similar spec level to the original, or maintain a moving target like every 10 years we'll update to a 10 year-old tech?

Given that the projections between investing the money yourself and buying a $10 per year server (adjusted to today's value in real terms) from the savings would leave cash behind over 30 years, it doesn't seem to make any sense for anyone to consider a server lease this long if there isn't a plan to increase the specs every N years.

When the time comes for that chip to be sunset, it will happen as it has happenned already for the previous NAT customers on the Zeta2 server (MultiNAT servers that we offered between August and November): the CPU is directly upgraded between changes. That's what happenned to them - we moved the NAT customers from a Core i7-7700T to a Core i7-8700.

Another example: we had a customer ordering multiple servers (some 8 servers) on the Outlet offer, which predicted a Core i7-8700. In order to evenly split load accross nodes (and to go around a temporary IPv6 shortage), we went ahead and deployed around half of the VPS purchases he had done between both servers, let around 3 or 4 of them marked as "In Progress", and deduplicated this exact plan on the other server we have (Zeta 3), which has a much more powerful CPU (Ryzen 9 3900), at the exact same cost. (This was around Christmas, so you can imagine the extra work.)

We added very recently a full-backup to all customers (C-Servers GoBack) as well, and that was entirely for free as well, with optional paid plans (GoBack Plus) for the most self-conscious customers.

When we introduce DDR5, which we plan to do quite soon for example, if we close the Hetzner-upstreamed servers, we'll migrate the customers to our own servers and they win the better CPU and the better DDR5 compared to their original plan, for example. And when the Zeta1 server no longer delivers and the CPU starts not to be reasonable enough for current usage (possibly in 2-4 years?), we'll migrate these customers as well to something better and with a better CPU. And so on, and so on.

It's really a question of keeping paying customers and keeping them happy as well, as technology evolves. We do prefer to change customers between servers and update the dedicated server's main CPUs/RAM whenever convenient or necessary, at the same cost, than disrupting everything else. Technology rates have been decreasing the cost and increasing the performance, it's not hard for us to do it. It also helps to establish an userbase and keep it as well, which as you may understand, we want.

It doesn't mean we always keep the CPUs 10 years delayed, but it always means, whenever we change, it's an improvement.

It would be too much work to attempt to emulate the CPUs, we would need a platform within the platform, the added performance loss and all the hassle just doesn't justify it. It's simpler to adjust the VPS to the server it's into and let the share occur from the pool. For us, the reasoning behind the purchase must stay (e.g. if it's something with little RAM or lots of RAM, if it's something with less vCores or more vCores), and that's what we attempt to keep, adjusted to each reality at any given moment.

Any customer can request a written declaration on what we just said and we'll gladly give it. After all, a purchase is always a binding contract for both parties.

@bitshub said:
My primary reason for ordering the VPS was its location in Portugal, so this news is quite disappointing. There are many low-cost VPS options available, but not specifically from Portugal.

We understand, no problem at all. It's one of the exception use-cases. Send us a ticket and we'll refund, you naturally have no responsibility on any location change, it's our responsibility.

It is expected for some customers to request one, and that's okay.

root

In 100 years 60 GB of NVMe space might turn out to become something like what a floppy disk is nowadays.

Neoon

Put your NAT into locations that nobody else has and it will sell like hotcakes.
But no, again, France, Netherlands and fucking Germany, meh.

bitshub

@Neoon said:
Put your NAT into locations that nobody else has and it will sell like hotcakes.
But no, again, France, Netherlands and fucking Germany, meh.

100%

cservers

@Neoon said:
Put your NAT into locations that nobody else has and it will sell like hotcakes.
But no, again, France, Netherlands and fucking Germany, meh.

Noted.

admax

It turns out the Portugal VPS location is already gone! Then there's no need to buy it.

techdragon

@cybertech said:
no sad no dedicated ipv4

Thirty four cents per month averaged over ninety nine years...

cybertech

@techdragon said:

@cybertech said:
no sad no dedicated ipv4

Thirty four cents per month averaged over ninety nine years...

99years is a very adventurous assumption and optimism

admax

@cybertech said:

@techdragon said:

@cybertech said:
no sad no dedicated ipv4

Thirty four cents per month averaged over ninety nine years...

99years is a very adventurous assumption and optimism

@cybertech said:

@techdragon said:

@cybertech said:
no sad no dedicated ipv4

Thirty four cents per month averaged over ninety nine years...

99years is a very adventurous assumption and optimism

If it’s still around in three or four years, that would already be the greatest luck.

admax

I'm quite puzzled about the unknown image files of the Shapes that appear in the top left and bottom right corners on the homepage of https://c-servers.co.uk/.

hobenzun

got a email, it will be delayed

KeqingWangy

@admax said:
I'm quite puzzled about the unknown image files of the Shapes that appear in the top left and bottom right corners on the homepage of https://c-servers.co.uk/.

Fill with Tart sister

whoami

Offering a 99-year VPS is an absurd notion and if these guys sincerely think they can fulfill the obligation, they're deluded. Even ignoring specs and the questionable utility of a VPS in 99 years, there's also an intense amount of regulatory uncertainty on such a long timescale.

I think the most any company can reasonably offer is a 1 year commitment. You need to have a sensible time limit on any service you're providing since you can't be certain of the costs of providing the service in the distant future. The only way to make it sort of work is to have future customers subsidize the 99-year customers in a manner similar to a ponzi scheme.

ralf

@whoami said:
Offering a 99-year VPS is an absurd notion and if these guys sincerely think they can fulfill the obligation, they're deluded. Even ignoring specs and the questionable utility of a VPS in 99 years, there's also an intense amount of regulatory uncertainty on such a long timescale.

I think the most any company can reasonably offer is a 1 year commitment. You need to have a sensible time limit on any service you're providing since you can't be certain of the costs of providing the service in the distant future. The only way to make it sort of work is to have future customers subsidize the 99-year customers in a manner similar to a ponzi scheme.

Actually, there doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme. If the company invests the money in an S&P ETF, they would earn enough to cover the annual $10 fee for 99 years. They could likely afford to keep providing the service ad infinitum.

The real problem (and hence my question) is that the service is for a specific spec. They said as much that they'll completely ignore the promised spec and just upgrade it as and when to ("just trust me bro") something better. However, if you've entered into the agreement as described on their website they're under no obligation to do so at all.

The much smarter choice for any rational person is to just invest the money themselves and buy it annually. That way they have complete flexibility to upgrade to something else or cancel as and when the service no longer meets your needs.

techdragon

@cybertech said:

@techdragon said:

@cybertech said:
no sad no dedicated ipv4

Thirty four cents per month averaged over ninety nine years...

99years is a very adventurous assumption and optimism

No assumptions here. It is completely unsustainable.

cold

@yoursunny said:
@cservers CentralVPS-II 2560

• 3 vCore Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00 GHz (60% Fair Share)
• 2560 MB RAM DDR4 ECC
• 60GB NVMe High Speed Disk - 7 GB/s
• 1 IPv6/64 + 1 IPv4 NAT (10+5 Ports)
• NAT46/NAT64/DNS64 Included
• C-Servers ExtraNAT Included
• Unmetered Bandwidth @ 1 Gbps
• Owned Professional Server - HP ProLiant Gen9
• ONI Premier Tier3 Datacenter in Lisbon, Portugal

Price: $399.99 for 99 years
Order link: https://web.c-servers.co.uk/order-steps/server/208

do you plan to live that long ? or u want that ur business still runs after you pass away ?