Hetzner

History

Hetzner Online GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) began operations in Germany in 1997 under the name Hetzner Online Services and became Hetzner Online AG in 2000. In 2015, it changed its legal status to GmbH.

The company is named after its founder Martin Hetzner. Hetzner Online owns and operates two data center parks in Nuremberg and Falkenstein/Vogtland (Germany).

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

Services

Hetzner Online provides dedicated hosting, shared web hosting, virtual private servers, managed servers, domain names, SSL certificates and colocation services. The company operates a server auction site online where older servers are auctioned off in the form of a Dutch auction.

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

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 200 Gbit/s to DE-CIX and fiber optic links to Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Colocation facilities are sited.at both data center parks in Nuremberg and Falkenstein/Vogtland in Germany.

Energy usage

Energy at the data center parks is used exclusively from renewable sources (hydropower); use of direct free cooling, double-height raised floor, components selected on the basis of energy-consumption, waste heat recycling, and intelligent lighting solutions. In 2011, TÜV SÜD certified Hetzner's data centers as an "Energy Efficient Enterprise".

Charity

Hetzner Online is a sponsor of Habitat for Humanity Germany building projects in Africa. In 2010, Hetzner Online donated setup fees received from new orders during the football World Cup 2010 to the Youth Build Project 2010. In 2012 Habitat for Humanity Germany patron, actress Alexandra Neldel travelled to Mozambique and South Africa to learn more about Hetzner Online's projects. The company received the Habitat for Humanity Corporate Partnership Award in 2012.

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.

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. A number of such messages were sent to Ukraine, which was in the midst of undeclared war with Russian paramilitary in Donetsk region. 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."

This story was widely reprinted in news sources. 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. Also, a German chapter of Reporters Without Borders issued a statement condemning Roskomnadzor.

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. However, by that time the story was widely published in German mass-media, and Glavcom.ua already migrated from Hetzner Online to another hosting provider.

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.

blocking "Novaya Gazeta"

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

Awards