To my friend FlorinMarian!
Good day, and welcome to Mexico! Interview With FlorinMarian CEO of Hazi.ro Anonymous Hosting
What’s it like to have fame already here in the Low End? Where did it first begin?
Good day, sweeties!
In the spring of our first year of computer science, Florin, Radu, and Teodor, three close friends and classmates, decided it would be worthwhile to focus on a business in the IT sector, with each of us having expertise in a different area: Florin with DevOps, Radu with the design and source code in C++/Python, and Teodor as a big fan of web technology development.
When we finally located the ideal server for LET—1U in size, powerful processors, and numerous 3.5′′ HDDs—everything took off (12).
We were able to get in front of LET users on Black Friday by providing an unbeatable deal on our enterprise-grade hardware, which included plenty of RAID10 storage space, third-generation processors, and DDR4 ECC memory. There’s the epicenter of the blast! During the wee hours of the morning, we counted over eighty paid orders.
FlorinMarian CEO of Hazi.ro may wish to inform us of your company’s recent activities and future plans.
Our company’s early success and subsequent growth can be attributed to two guiding principles: we always told our customers when we didn’t know something, and we always kept them updated when issues arose that prevented us from providing the services for which they had already paid.
Although we are in discussions with three other internet providers to determine which bandwidth is guaranteed to move servers to our own location, our current focus is on purchasing new servers (both from the performance range and from the storage range) to add to the Cloud in the existing datacenter.
The biggest benefit would be to remove the limitations on using Torrent on our network, but that won’t happen for at least three months, at the earliest.
I’m afraid I’m not clear on what you mean by “which bandwidth is guaranteed to move servers to our own location.”
At the moment, the three internet service providers are offering up to 1Gbps without a guaranteed bandwidth tier, but we are curious to see what they have to offer in this area.
We won’t risk bringing the servers in-house unless we have access to at least 3 Gbps of guaranteed bandwidth.
Is there a discount we can extend to our readers?
Yes, unquestionably so. However, in order to get people to prepare their wallets, we like to have our stocks ready before announcing future offers.
As we have repeatedly demonstrated, one of our primary objectives is to quickly eliminate unused server resources so that we can purchase additional servers and expand our operations.
Does @Wicked ring a bell? 🙂
I honestly can’t recall the last time we spoke or the context in which we did so, but I do recall that he was one of the customers who appreciated our Black Friday deal and that he was eager to collaborate with us and was just waiting for us to show that we share his goals. He has our deepest gratitude; the monetary reward is secondary to the satisfaction of knowing that someone is interested in and prepared to capitalize on our undoubted potential.
Have you got a picture FlorinMarian CEO of Hazi.ro?
Portrait of Florin
In what ways do you spend your weekdays, evenings, and weekends?
The physical faculty, the 40 hours a week I have to put in as a consultant as a DevOp at another IT company, and the tickets from HAZI.ro customers all add up to a very busy schedule.
On weekdays, I spend 8 hours a day working remotely while also attending traditional classes, and on Fridays, I don’t have any classes but instead work at the office.
My routine entails going to bed between 11:50 and 2:50 am every night and waking up at 5:35 every morning, Monday through Friday. Weekends are when I get my schoolwork done, hang out with friends, and research the market to see what I can create for HAZI.ro.
Wow! Intense activity and exertion!:)
Truth be told, I never would have guessed that it was possible to run your own business, work an 8-hour day, and attend college all while being happy and enjoying your life. People who worked full-time and went to school at the same time inspired me, let alone those who did both while building a successful business. For me, the adage, “something is impossible until someone comes who doesn’t know it’s impossible and does it,” rings true.
I was wondering if you had any words of wisdom for aspiring service providers.
Really, it’s not that complicated. In addition to extensive industry knowledge, having a large sum of money available for investment is essential. If you lack both features, success is inevitable, but if you have just one, growth prospects improve but remain constrained.
Those looking to lease a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server, what recommendations do you have?
Get in touch with the vendor and ask any pertinent questions you have about the service you plan to buy. Keep in mind that if the vendor is unhelpful even when you’re trying to give him money, he’ll be just as unhelpful, if not more so, when you’re having trouble.
The impact of Oracle’s free servers on the low end of the market is unclear.
This is not going to occur, no way. To begin, Oracle does not provide an option for the large number of users who prefer to maintain their anonymity. However, the facts show that we are expanding and are not on the verge of extinction every time the big companies release a new product.
It’s a lot to ask of a brand new team to process 80 paid orders in under an hour. Just how did you manage to keep up with the demand?
In terms of receiving payments and providing services, everything was fully automated. As our site had come to require the resolution of the Captcha including the callback which validated the payment status, we only had issues with the surge in traffic at that time, leading to the need for manual validation of some of the payments.
What could your customers do to make your life easier?
To prevent VMs from inadvertently scanning the IPs of other IT companies, I’d like to see all of my clients switch to SSH keys for authentication or use more complex passwords. On the other hand, we do have customers who try to abuse our services and are promptly denied access, leaving them not only penniless but also without any of our services.
You have mentioned that there have been attempts to take advantage of your generosity. Are you comfortable talking about the kinds of abuse you’ve been subjected to? Do these attempts at abuse follow a specific pattern?
I won’t be able to talk at length about all the abuses that have occurred, but I can talk about some of them. It’s not uncommon for some service users, either immediately after activation or months later, to begin launching brute-force SSH attacks against other major ISPs.
The last two abuses were resounding because someone paid for a one-year service and soon began scanning the ports of other servers.
Another raised so much that he deposited several hundred euros into his account, being very excited about our services, receiving quite a few Cloud resources.
Even before honoring his order, I insistently asked him to tell me if he wanted to do something illegal, that I would catch him anyway and I would not return the money in case of abuse.
The man thanked me for being honest but said that I would have no problem with his activities. 3 days later I received a notification from the datacenter that the XYZ (of this client) IPs were actually IP spoofing.
Any chance you have handy a link to the LET ad that brought 80 paid customers in an hour? I’d love to take a look back at that ad, and I bet our readers also would be very interested to look.
Proof of orders (a graph is much more intuitive, I guess):
Hazi.ro Order Graph
Sorry, it’s not that I wanted proof. I believe you! I was just wondering what specs were so attractive that you got such a flood of orders? If you don’t have the ad’s link handy, maybe I can search for the ad. . . .
The attractive offer was this:
1 vCPU 3.50 – 3.70GHz (shared) (shared)
1GB DDR4 ECC 2133MHz\s20GB SSD RAID10 or 160GB SAS\s5TB / mo @ 1Gbps\s6 euro / year
Wow! 80 x €6 = €480. That’s for a year. So, break even for a server would be €480 / 12 = €40 per month.
Looks like either you got that server for less that €40/month. Or else there was more on the server than the 80 VPSes. Or else it wasn’t profitable, but it got you started.
Want to share about that original server? About the costs and customer loads on your new, upcoming servers?
Our server has initially 128GB RAM and 16TB storage but in about 2 months (I don’t remember) we upgraded our node to 256GB RAM and 44TB SAS + 2TB NVMe 🙂
We pay about 83 eur/mo.
A new server will be around 2-4.5K we’re still thinking about next steps but we have 12 K eur to invest. Taking into account the latest data proves fruitful.
FlorinMarian CEO of Hazi.ro mentioned that “there are many users who want to remain anonymous.” How does hazi.ro help users remain anonymous?
Yes, we help them remain anonymous as long as they do not become suspicious on what our monitoring systems report.
Yes, but may I please ask how you help with anonymity? I am guessing not requiring government ID verification for opening accounts, not requiring cell number, allowing orders via VPN, accepting crypto? All of these? Something more? 🙂
There is a connection to anonymity, for sure. We do not verify phone numbers, and the fact that a client is named “Hazi User” and claims to be located in Beijing, Canada does not raise any red flags for us. We are able to deal with cryptocurrency as well.
As an aside, what does “hazi” mean? Ask to FlorinMarian CEO of Hazi.ro
The Hazi part of my name is simply my family’s.
I’m at a loss for what to ask you next. Do you have anything else in mind that you’d like to relay to our readers?
Actually, that’s more than enough for a decent article, in my opinion. Many thanks! I appreciate it, Florin. The interview process has been very enjoyable thanks to you. Thank you so much for being so kind and quick to respond to my inquiries. Here’s hoping you find endless success with your company.
