Affordable cloud folding / mining / rendering? Hostkey GPU servers review and promocode

[ShortRouter]

Tired of  heat, noise and don't know how to explain the power bill to your waifu? Folding in the cloud could be the solution.

During the COVID-19 folding event I looked into cloud GPU servers and tested Hostkey among Cherryservers and the big boy (and expensive af tbh) Google Cloud.

Contact via email has been uncomplicated and I introduced what LTT, this forum and this event is all about. The owner of the company showed great interest and kindly agreed to lend me a Windows 10 VM with dual GTX 1080 Ti to test out.

While it worked right off the bat and having a GUI and convenient RDP access is nice, the performance on the second GPU was suffering even after deleting the CPU folding slot. I blame virtualization on windows to be the bottoleneck in this case. Having switched to a dedicated quad GTX 1080 + beefy Xeon Ubuntu server and after some configuring all issues were gone. Performance as expected even with active CPU slot. Don't be afraid of the terminal, it's not that complicated.

What's great about Hostkey is the availability of GTX servers at reasonable prices and they explicitly allow folding and mining workloads. RTX servers (Turing) are there but you need to closely watch out as they are gone FAST.  You can pay per month / 3 months / 6 months or annually, lengthy contracts give you discounts.

Why fold in the cloud? Zero noise or heat in your room and high flexibility. Say, you want to boost COVID-19 research (and your PPD) for a couple weeks but don't have a rig with a powerful GPU? Rent a GPU server for a month. You can also use GPUs in the cloud for rendering or mining. As stated, folding on Hostkey is legal and even endorsed by the company. (Some companies will ban you if you actually use such heavy workloads.) They were already running FAH on some of their servers as I contacted them.

 

<referral link removed by moderators>

 

Hostkey GPU servers: https://www.hostkey.com/gpu-servers#/

10 % promocode (apply at checkout)

UDFN4967UJ

 

IMO, the 4x GTX 1080 server for 270 € / month is the best deal currently available (0,375 € / hour) as of 16 April 2020.

But there may also be RTX 2080 Ti server available.

Screenshots and configuration guide:

 

Request Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

If you don't have an SSH client yet, install https://www.bitvise.com/ssh-client-download

Use the SSH client and your credentials to log into the server (host, username and password).

 

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-435

sudo apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev

sudo reboot

wget https://download.foldingathome.org/releases/public/release/fahclient/debian-stable-64bit/v7.5/fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i --force-depends fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb

sudo nano /etc/fahclient/config.xml

	edit the config file as following: 

config>
  <!-- Client Control -->
  <fold-anon v='false'/>
  <!-- Folding Slot Configuration -->
  <gpu v='true'/>
  <client-type v='advanced'/>
  <!-- Slot Control -->
  <power v='full'/>
  <!-- Work Unit Control -->
  <next-unit-percentage v='90'/>
  <!-- User Information -->
  <passkey v='yourpasskey_should_already_be_here'/>
  <team v='223518'/>
  <user v='YourUsername'/>
  <!-- Folding Slots -->
  <slot id='0' type='CPU'/>
  <slot id='1' type='GPU'/>
</config>

	save the config file under same name and location (confirm changes with Y).

sudo reboot

Allow some time for reboot, reconnect and do

watch -n 0.5 nvidia-smi

to check if GPU folding is active. You should see all GPUs listed and something like FAH core 22 under processes for each active GPU slot.
You can exit with ctrl+c. Other useful commands are:

 

Show last lines if the log file, updating real time:    tail -F /var/lib/fahclient/log.txt
Check PPD:   FAHClient --send-command ppd
Restart FAH client:   sudo /etc/init.d/FAHClient restart

 

Have fun!

[Alex Atkin UK]

That's pretty sweet, still outside my budget but nice none the less.  So much cheaper than Google for much more horsepower.

[Metallus97]

Damn nice! Thanks for the work and the promo code!

 

[SansVarnic]

On 4/16/2020 at 6:10 AM, ShortRouter said:

IMO, the 4x GTX 1080 server for 270 € / month is the best deal currently available (0,375 € / hour) as of 16 April 2020.

That is stupid expensive. I fold for $30usd per month at home. Adding 3 more cards would only increase my power bill to $80-$90. (70.61-79.43Euro)

When I get my server online that will be 8 additional cards at $20 each and still will be cheaper.

Cloud F@H is not a money saving solution. IMO.

 

This is obviously not for me but if someone finds it useful.

[ShortRouter]

On 6/4/2020 at 6:34 PM, SansVarnic said:

That is stupid expensive. I fold for $30usd per month at home. Adding 3 more cards would only increase my power bill to $80-$90. (70.61-79.43Euro)

When I get my server online that will be 8 additional cards at $20 each and still will be cheaper.

Cloud F@H is not a money saving solution. IMO.

 

This is obviously not for me but if someone finds it useful.

Well counting only power consumption is not the true cost. You have to factor in the purchase cost of your hardware. 4x GTX 1080 cost 2000 $ new, at least when they came to market. Compared to other cloud server solutions auch as Google Cloud or AWS it's quite inexpensive. I highly doubt a 20 $ GPU can produce any amount even close to the PPD of a GTX 1080. It's a niche within a niche to buy external resources for folding but some people here are doing it already.

[SansVarnic]

1 hour ago, ShortRouter said:

Well counting only power consumption is not the true cost. You have to factor in the purchase cost of your hardware. 4x GTX 1080 cost 2000 $ new, at least when they came to market. Compared to other cloud server solutions auch as Google Cloud or AWS it's quite inexpensive.

I understand the cost of equipment but that cost still fades rather quickly over 6months or 1 year.

 

1 hour ago, ShortRouter said:

I highly doubt a 20 $ GPU can produce any amount even close to the PPD of a GTX 1080. It's a niche within a niche to buy external resources for folding but some people here are doing it already.

I wasn't referencing $20 cards I referring to the $20/month cost of electrical use per card.

 

Figures for 1 year of folding; (of course I could do this for 6 months of folding instead but I fold 24x7x365)

 

$2000 for 4 cards (one time purchase) + monthly power bill  = $2960usd per year (2619euro)

vs

cloud F@H @ 270 eros/months = $3672usd per year (3249.79)

 

Of course that cost reduces exponentially every year after for owning, the price doesn't drop it will increase with each year.

[Favebook]

4 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

I understand the cost of equipment but that cost still fades rather quickly over 6months or 1 year.

 

I wasn't referencing $20 cards I referring to the $20/month cost of electrical use per card.

 

Figures for 1 year of folding; (of course I could do this for 6 months of folding instead but I fold 24x7x365)

 

$2000 for 4 cards (one time purchase) + monthly power bill  = $2960usd per year (2619euro)

vs

cloud F@H @ 270 eros/months = $3672usd per year (3249.79)

 

Of course that cost reduces exponentially every year after for owning, the price doesn't drop it will increase with each year.

Not sure who and where debated about this already, but you can search the forum and find it, no point in debating about this again IMO.

 

TLDR

Renting GPUs benefits some and some wouldn't dare to spend a dime on it as it is not worth to them.

Big companies can benefit in some situations from renting servers, but it's usually* better for them to have their own.

[ShortRouter]

@SansVarnicah, I forgot to say that electricity cost can vary extremely across countries. Of course at 9 cents per kWh somewhere in US it's stupidly cheap, here in Germany I pay 30 cents per kWh and my monthly power bill for 24/7 folding with only 1 card is 60 Euros which is 3x your power bill... That's 720 Euros p.a. With a quad 1080 rig folding 24/7 I'd be paying around 2073 € per year for electricity only. Added 2000 € purchase cost (let's say 1000 € because used 1080s are half price) it makes 3073 € in the first year vs. 270*12*0,88*0,90 = 2566,08 € with HostKey. (12 % discount on 1 year payment term and 10 % promocode on top.) The european folders (and other countries with high power prices) should really think of cloud folding as alternative if they intend to do it 24/7. No noise, no heat, no risk of damaging your hardware + flexibility.

[SansVarnic]

17 hours ago, Favebook said:

Not sure who and where debated about this already, but you can search the forum and find it, no point in debating about this again IMO.

 

Your probably correct on this.

2 hours ago, ShortRouter said:

No noise, no heat, no risk of damaging your hardware + flexibility.

I guess I will to agree to disagree with you on this, not sure why I felt the need to debate the semantics on this particular subject, just got caught in the thought I guess.

[ShortRouter]

@SansVarnicI understand that many people here like to tinker with own hardware and the building process itself, myself included. If that's what you mean.

[SansVarnic]

3 hours ago, ShortRouter said:

@SansVarnicI understand that many people here like to tinker with own hardware and the building process itself, myself included. If that's what you mean.

Pretty much yes.