Reviews — LowEndSpirit DEV

Servarica or Alphavps storage vps?

chip — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 09:40:58 +0000

As in the title if you had to choose one, which one and why? .... they both get good reviews here but looking for people's actual experiences

MDDHosting reseller review

bikegremlin — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 20:33:17 +0000

I think that good hosting providers need all the praise they can get, so it's worth a mention, even if it isn't really "low-end."

Long, boring intro
After HostMantis changed ownership, I decided to move ASAP.
And, I wanted to find a provider with good 24/7 support to avoid any tricky questions from clients in case of any problems (even though @MikePT's MyW is running just fine).

I liked the "flexible" resource limits provided by HostMantis.
It's not the best option for literally re-selling hosting, but a great option for developers and similar (so a perfect match for me, since I manage all the websites I host).

And I saw MDDHosting offering just that. Had them on my shortlist for quite some time, so decided to give it a shot, before (instead of) Veerotech.

The essence

Relatively affordable price ($10 per month) - especially considering the service quality. I.e. I couldn't find anything cheaper with a similar service and, especially, technical support quality.

Very good stability and security, as far as I could test over the past few months.

The best technical support I've experienced. Willing to dive into WordPress-related problems even when they clearly have nothing to do with the hosting server/software. Very fast responses - with solutions, not "thanks for letting us know, we'll get back to you..."

OK performance - not what I'd call slow, but not among the fastest I've seen. I really wish they offered the performance of their Plaid shared hosting platform - I'd be happy to pay 3x the price and call it a day as far as hosting is concerned. But it's also nice to see them offering a (relatively) budget option (just wished they offered a more high-end reseller alternative along with that).

The above two bolded sentences combined probably don't make this a very good fit for the LES philosophy - and that's fine (and worth stressing, don't want to see anyone being misled).

My overall impression is they try really hard to provide the best possible service, and they seem quite knowledgeable, experienced and trustworthy. It's nice doing business with such folks.

For even more details: my rather long MDDHosting review - with all the benchmarks and other boring, tedious stuff, as usual.

Of course, I must not forget to place my affiliate link (yachts and all):
https://www.mddhosting.com/support/aff.php?aff=1454

Dacentec or oneprovider?

chip — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:42:33 +0000

Looking at dedicated servers from dacantec and oneprovider.. which one is better and why?

I think oneproviders support is terrible (had a small atom with them sometime ago)
Dacentec usually reply within the hour when I've needed them

What about network? .... I think oneprovider resell ovh and others (not sure who)
Hardware?

Thanks chip

Grammarly Premium - a decent AI "editor"

bikegremlin — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 04:33:56 +0000

I've given Grammarly Premium service a try.

It may help any "content writers" or anyone who writes a lot in English.
( @Ympker @Vyas and any other content writers I may have missed )
My native is not supported, and I don't write articles in other languages.

Not very cheap - about $150 per year.
However, even if you don't create more than one article per month, it costs less than a good editor.

What it does:
Urges you to write shorter and simpler sentences if your English is not very good.
Helps you create more "natural," "native-sounding" sentences if your English is good.

For the longer, more complex sentences, you must know when to disregard its suggestions. It doesn't handle the complex stuff perfectly every time. Nonetheless, even when it gets stuff wrong, it warns you to reconsider the wording and the structure. I found this very helpful.

For any sponsored (paid for) articles, I still consider it unprofessional to not hire an editor. But for most other articles - I think it improves quality at a fraction of a cost and speeds up my workflow (not going back-and-forth with an editor for the "small stuff").

More long-winded, with all the pros, cons, examples, and bugs:
My Grammarly Premium "review"

I've reported all the bugs and problems to the Grammarly team, and we'll see if they'll do anything about those. I'm not an optimist, but the bugs aren't too bad, it's still quite workable.

DirectAdmin rocks! :)

bikegremlin — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 20:15:35 +0000

There, I've said it. Sane and sober.

As a shared/reseller hosting user/customer, I've been reserved towards DirectAdmin.
With a lot of, hopefully constructive, criticism towards it.

Started playing with it, just to learn the ropes in case it becomes prevalent, but it had more than a few downsides compared to cPanel.

Now, I'd say it has matured. Almost a year since I had completely stopped using any cPanel hosting.

These days, upon hearing the news of my current provider being sold/merged/partnered/something, I started migrating websites to a tried&tested "backup" provider, just in case, before I see how the new system runs after the merge and the server/staff changes are done.

DirectAdmin to DirectAdmin migrations are a breeze!
Even as an ordinary shared/reseller hosting user (i.e. low user privileges).

It's just brilliant. Export backup, import it to the new account and it all works out of the box, right away.
Every file, database, .htaccess setting etc.

Without having to bother provider's technical support, wait or similar.

Now, I'm a bit weary of using cPanel hosting in the future, since it takes more time to do manual migrations, even when it's cPanel-to-cPanel.

I consider having backups and being able to move in case of any problems to be of crucial importance.
Hence, in my opinion, this is a huge plus for DirectAdmin.

Hoping to see cPanel pull something similar, or to see some of the highly renowned (and reliable) hosting providers start offering DirectAdmin reseller hosting, in addition, if not instead of cPanel.

P.S.
I understand that a provider can easily do this in cPanel from the WHM, but I can't do it as a customer.
It's a lot better to be able to do this on one's own, when it's most convenient (for live websites with lots of activity).

P.P.S.
For full disclosure, I've started using a cPanel provider, for reliability and reputation reasons, hoping to concentrate on making content, instead of doing migrations.
But it's been a tough call, for the reason discussed in this post.

P.P.P.S.
Even longer drivel in my DirectAdmin control panel review

Anyone tried MC inbound?

sanvit — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 14:03:28 +0000

Hi there!

Have any of you tried MailChannels inbound filtering?
I would love to hear experience with them (or any other inbound filtering service).
Any reviews (both good or bad) will be really appreciated

Thank you in advance!

Hostcram KVM i9 VPS short review

cybertech — Fri, 13 May 2022 02:06:12 +0000

Disclaimer: this is not a paid review and no free service extension either.

Killer Core: KVM-3C
3 vCPU Core (i9-11900K)
3 GB DDR4 RAM (Dedicated)
70 GB NVMe SSD Storage
3 TB INAP Bandwidth
1 Dedicated IPv4

This plan comes with Limited Support and our brand new Cloud Portal access with self OS Rebuild, Start, Stop, Restart, TUN/TAP, Console, etc. management options.

Did not get this KVM deal previously because there was no self manage panel which I prefer. Now that Hostcram has gotten this onboard then its all good now.

Similarly to the LXC panel, KVM uses Proxmox on ProxCP and just so easy to use:

List of all your VMs:

Main page has the basic functions Start / Shutdown / Restart functions which is huge and easy to see:

If your into some manual network settings, easy reference as well:

and finally in the Rebuild tab, self serve reinstall. While it would be nice to have Manual ISO support, its not available but not a deal breaker either, as Proxmox can easily boot from iPXE at boot. Not to mention well working VNC and fast reboot time:

But the real reason for getting this VPS is the raw power:

[root@cybertech ~]# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -9
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2022-05-06                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri May 13 09:58:11 +08 2022

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Uptime     : 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes
Processor  : 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz
CPU cores  : 3 @ 3504.000 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 2.9 GiB
Swap       : 32.0 MiB
Disk       : 69.9 GiB
Distro     : AlmaLinux 8.5 (Arctic Sphynx)
Kernel     : 5.17.5-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 584.69 MB/s (146.1k) | 1.99 GB/s    (31.1k)
Write      | 586.24 MB/s (146.5k) | 2.00 GB/s    (31.3k)
Total      | 1.17 GB/s   (292.7k) | 4.00 GB/s    (62.5k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 2.49 GB/s     (4.8k) | 2.61 GB/s     (2.5k)
Write      | 2.62 GB/s     (5.1k) | 2.78 GB/s     (2.7k)
Total      | 5.12 GB/s    (10.0k) | 5.40 GB/s     (5.2k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 865 Mbits/sec   | 105 Mbits/sec  
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 872 Mbits/sec   | 106 Mbits/sec  
Hybula          | The Netherlands (40G)     | 861 Mbits/sec   | 659 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 917 Mbits/sec   | 340 Mbits/sec  
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 154 Mbits/sec   | 706 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 921 Mbits/sec   | 573 Mbits/sec  

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 8022                          
Multi Core      | 19646                         
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16550724

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 1897                          
Multi Core      | 4736                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14870558

w3space.net，This server has no aftermarket

caodaye — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 07:09:04 +0000

After I bought the machine, the machine did not write on it, so it cannot be refunded. I applied for a refund, but this service provider did not give me a refund, and no one replied to me on the work order. They left an email address or phone number that no one could call.

Public Shout out to ExtraVM for excellent service

Chalipa — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 23:39:29 +0000

Been using service from ExtraVM for a few months now, the service has been great and @MikeA goes the extra mile to provide excellent support.

A+ provider, highly recommended!

And **NOBODY **asked me to write a review here, I just wanted to appreciate the great service ExtraVM provides and help others who are looking for a great provider.

Hostcram LXC VPS short review

cybertech — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 03:50:49 +0000

Disclaimer: I do not receive any benefits from this review.

Used it for a month just for some tests, generally works well and fast.

Pros:
5950X WOWWW
$25 for 2C2G20GB WOWWW
Working IPv6 WOWWW
LXC 4.0 (Proxmox 7)
Node Kernal 5.11
ProxCP has simple and user friendly interface, its like SolusVM with colours
Appears to be not oversold
rebuild is fast
staging site is blazing fast

Cons:
Debian 11 template was not fully working (intermittent network), did not follow up on this, might be fixed already
ProxCP does not automatically start VM after reinstall
Its LXC so obviously not everything works like KVM, however that leaves more available memory to the services instead of kernal.

Conclusion: Go for it

root@cybertech:~# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -9
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2021-12-28                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri Jan 28 03:19:21 UTC 2022

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 2 @ 3400.000 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 2.0 GiB
Swap       : 2.5 GiB
Disk       : 19.5 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 398.77 MB/s  (99.6k) | 531.81 MB/s   (8.3k)
Write      | 399.83 MB/s  (99.9k) | 534.61 MB/s   (8.3k)
Total      | 798.61 MB/s (199.6k) | 1.06 GB/s    (16.6k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 606.73 MB/s   (1.1k) | 701.54 MB/s    (685)
Write      | 638.97 MB/s   (1.2k) | 748.26 MB/s    (730)
Total      | 1.24 GB/s     (2.4k) | 1.44 GB/s     (1.4k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 876 Mbits/sec   | 852 Mbits/sec  
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | busy            | 742 Mbits/sec  
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 859 Mbits/sec   | 135 Mbits/sec  
WebHorizon      | Singapore (400M)          | 345 Mbits/sec   | 382 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | busy            | 898 Mbits/sec  
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | busy            | 910 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 936 Mbits/sec   | 927 Mbits/sec  
Iveloz Telecom  | Sao Paulo, BR (2G)        | busy            | 836 Mbits/sec  

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 866 Mbits/sec   | 5.24 Mbits/sec 
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | busy            | 801 Mbits/sec  
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | busy            | 852 Mbits/sec  
WebHorizon      | Singapore (400M)          | busy            | 192 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 919 Mbits/sec   | 891 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | busy            | 900 Mbits/sec  

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 6179                          
Multi Core      | 10969                         
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16475328

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 1388                          
Multi Core      | 2543                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/12440014

Webhorizon NAT - a little dissapointed, but it's still pretty good.

skorupion — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 15:17:55 +0000

So I recently bought the NAT x5 Bundle. Got to choose the locations and got the following: WAW-EU NL-EU SGP-ASIA ZAF-AFRICA NY-US.
I'm a little disappointed with the disk performance, as in some locations it seems like they just have HDDs in RAID 10 instead of the advertised NvME, and in others SSD. In reality on none of those VPS, I have found something similar to NvME speeds at all. I have asked them in a ticket about the HDD speeds and got a response of :

I'm very much annoyed at the lies, as clearly there are no limits that are visible (hard IOPS, or MB/s limit). And the other speeds (like 1m block) are similar to the performance of the kind of disks 4k block size indicates.

Also on some VPS VM-x/AMD-V is enabled but on some disabled.

In the end, this is an a-okay deal, but false advertising is pretty obvious, from which I'm very disappointed.

Here is YABS:

Netherlands - HDD speeds in RAID

BFCM 2021 - Post your highest clocks benchmarks here

cybertech — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 11:14:29 +0000

Any kind of benchmarks that works CPU till borderline overheating!

Got a high clocked i9 , Ryzen or Platinum? If you have it, flaunt it!

show your best deals from any provider that you have invested in!

fire away!

Review - Hostcram LXC-1G i9-11900K

cybertech — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 03:17:28 +0000

*Disclaimer: This review is based on my personal opinion and experience. Also I may be getting an additional month service extension for this

And first time posting from Linux Desktop woohooo

So Shakib from Hostcram LLC, a US based Wyoming registered company (Filling ID: 2016-000736577) posted some juicy deals here:

https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/3341/the-fastest-i9-11900k-samsung-4-0-nvme-vps-from-35-year-1-first-month-for-testers-hostcram-llc

Being the YABS addict I am with fetish for the highest scoring CPUs and briefly intrigued by LXC, got the $1 for first month LXC deal with below specs:

Shakib was active at that time so everything was provisioned in less than 30mins I recall. Support is equally fast in dealing with my request to change OS.

So then I beamed in; let's take a look what this little container can do:

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2021-06-05                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Sun Sep 19 01:30:01 UTC 2021

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz
CPU cores  : 1 @ 5056.953 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 1.0 GiB
Swap       : 1.9 GiB
Disk       : 19.6 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 1.05 GB/s   (262.8k) | 3.39 GB/s    (53.0k)
Write      | 1.05 GB/s   (263.5k) | 3.41 GB/s    (53.3k)
Total      | 2.10 GB/s   (526.3k) | 6.80 GB/s   (106.3k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 3.38 GB/s     (6.6k) | 1.22 GB/s     (1.1k)
Write      | 3.56 GB/s     (6.9k) | 1.30 GB/s     (1.2k)
Total      | 6.95 GB/s    (13.5k) | 2.53 GB/s     (2.4k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 829 Mbits/sec   | 187 Mbits/sec  
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 810 Mbits/sec   | 145 Mbits/sec  
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | busy            | 188 Mbits/sec  
Biznet          | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G)   | 515 Mbits/sec   | 43.5 Mbits/sec 
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 843 Mbits/sec   | 489 Mbits/sec  
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 824 Mbits/sec   | 687 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 841 Mbits/sec   | 479 Mbits/sec  
Iveloz Telecom  | Sao Paulo, BR (2G)        | 319 Mbits/sec   | 145 Mbits/sec  

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 7242                          
Multi Core      | 6965                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16348096

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 1640                          
Multi Core      | 1636                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9920152

GB4 score above SEVEN THOUSANNNNNN what is this, alien technology? Anyway it was mentioned that there are lots of empty nodes so time will tell if this holds up. But understanding how LXC works, this node should be able to pack quite a number of containers without breaking a sweat.

4K IOPS over 500,000 is also off the charts! What are they using RAM as disks now? So i had to take a second look at their node specs to be sure:

All new Dell Branded Hardware
Intel® Core™ i9-11900K Processor
Samsung 4.0 NVMe SSD Storage
3200 MHz DDR4 RAM
1 Gbps Bandwidth (AS39618 via Juniper router)
Free /48 IPv6 Prefix on request
Linux & Windows OS
Full Root Access

It seems they have focused on getting the latest and greatest parts of 2021 on these nodes. Hostscram has KVM VPSes with the same specs too so, use cases with need for speed should give this fair consideration.

Network is stable and reasonably fast but since its not in my preferred location not much tests were done in detail (apart from the obvious benches). No choppy experience in general.

The only problem I have with this LXC service is that there is no self managed panel for reinstalling OS. No WHMCS plugin, no ProxCP or anything. This is a bummer for me since I'm using small 1GBs for testing only. Consolation was that support was fast and reloaded OS in less than 10mins. Can they do that at 3am? Won't be trying that for sure.

Conclusion? Have been AMD supporter since Zen 2 came out, but this 11th Generation Rocket Lake has outperformed the Ryzen 3900X for sure on singlecore benchmarks. With the combination of NVMe 4.0 and fast DDR4 RAMs I think it will stay at at top 5 speeds for quite a while....

Signing out with more benches.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 OS           : CentOS 7.9.2009 (64 Bit)
 Virt/Kernel  : Lxc / 5.4.128-1-pve
 CPU Model    : 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz
 CPU Cores    : 1 @ 4177.899 MHz x86_64 16384 KB Cache
 CPU Flags    : AES-NI Enabled & VM-x/AMD-V Enabled
 Load Average : 0.14, 0.16, 0.12
 Total Space  : 20G (6.5G ~35% used)
 Total RAM    : 1024 MB (120 MB + 67 MB Buff in use)
 Total SWAP   : 1999 MB (520 MB in use)
 Uptime       : 3 days 21:16
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ASN & ISP    : AS39618, HostCram LLC
 Organization : HostCram LLC
 Location     : Dallas, United States / US
 Region       : Texas
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 ## Geekbench v4 CPU Benchmark:

  Single Core : 7234  (EXCELLENT)
   Multi Core : 6968

 ## IO Test

 CPU Speed:
    bzip2     : 153 MB/s
   sha256     :   1.4 GB/s
   md5sum     : 782 MB/s

 RAM Speed:
   Avg. write : 5632.0 MB/s
   Avg. read  : 9932.8 MB/s

 Disk Speed:
   1st run    : 1.1 GB/s
   2nd run    : 1.2 GB/s
   3rd run    : 1.2 GB/s
   -----------------------
   Average    : 1194.7 MB/s

 ## Global Speedtest.net

 Location                       Upload           Download         Ping   
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nearby                         799.04 Mbit/s    827.41 Mbit/s    13.513 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 USA, New York (Optimum)        273.71 Mbit/s    66.84 Mbit/s     41.161 ms
 USA, Chicago (Windstream)      503.58 Mbit/s    298.55 Mbit/s    26.195 ms
 USA, Dallas (Frontier)         514.57 Mbit/s    363.72 Mbit/s    24.558 ms
 USA, Miami (Sprint)            261.16 Mbit/s    324.75 Mbit/s    36.845 ms
 USA, Los Angeles (Windstream)  389.40 Mbit/s    236.86 Mbit/s    42.257 ms
 UK, London (toob Ltd)          140.69 Mbit/s    151.90 Mbit/s   ping error!
 France, Lyon (SFR)             124.26 Mbit/s    116.44 Mbit/s   118.998 ms
 Germany, Berlin (DNS:NET)      163.67 Mbit/s    90.79 Mbit/s    122.588 ms
 Spain, Madrid (MasMovil)       169.73 Mbit/s    84.40 Mbit/s    117.705 ms
 Italy, Rome (Unidata)          144.23 Mbit/s    78.19 Mbit/s    138.739 ms
 Russia, Moscow (Rostelecom)    123.02 Mbit/s    80.22 Mbit/s    153.348 ms
 Israel, Haifa (013Netvision)   111.76 Mbit/s    91.49 Mbit/s    180.534 ms
 India, New Delhi (Weebo)       47.03 Mbit/s     91.75 Mbit/s    245.625 ms
 Singapore (FirstMedia)         28.12 Mbit/s     14.02 Mbit/s    217.557 ms
 Japan, Tsukuba (SoftEther)     140.13 Mbit/s    90.75 Mbit/s    149.428 ms
 Australia, Sydney (Optus)      86.60 Mbit/s     80.18 Mbit/s    185.875 ms
 RSA, Randburg (Cool Ideas)     11.78 Mbit/s     128.42 Mbit/s   271.458 ms
 Brazil, Sao Paulo (Criare)     50.86 Mbit/s     152.39 Mbit/s   151.864 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Finished in : 11 min 14 sec
 Timestamp   : 2021-09-19 03:06:54 GMT
 Saved in    : /root/speedtest.log

 Share results:
 - https://www.speedtest.net/result/12056862133.png
 - https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16348152
 - https://clbin.com/UuWAT

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 CPU Model             : 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz
 CPU Cores             : 1
 CPU Frequency         : 4488.179 MHz
 CPU Cache             : 16384 KB
 Total Disk            : 20.0 GB (6.5 GB Used)
 Total Mem             : 1024 MB (117 MB Used)
 Total Swap            : 1999 MB (520 MB Used)
 System uptime         : 3 days, 20 hour 21 min
 Load average          : 0.02, 0.07, 0.15
 OS                    : CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)
 Arch                  : x86_64 (64 Bit)
 Kernel                : 5.4.128-1-pve
 TCP CC                : cubic
 Virtualization        : LXC
 Organization          : AS39618 HostCram LLC
 Location              : Dallas / US
 Region                : Texas
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 I/O Speed(1st run)    : 982 MB/s
 I/O Speed(2nd run)    : 981 MB/s
 I/O Speed(3rd run)    : 981 MB/s
 Average I/O speed     : 981.3 MB/s
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Node Name        Upload Speed      Download Speed      Latency     
 Speedtest.net    857.47 Mbps       909.44 Mbps         24.47 ms    
 Shanghai   CT    359.97 Mbps       426.35 Mbps         179.24 ms   
 Shanghai   CU    448.42 Mbps       684.84 Mbps         192.95 ms   
 Guangzhou  CT    242.61 Mbps       105.57 Mbps         199.45 ms   
 Guangzhou  CU    450.12 Mbps       366.14 Mbps         192.02 ms   
 Hongkong   CN    421.24 Mbps       969.84 Mbps         202.61 ms   
 Singapore  SG    401.58 Mbps       429.96 Mbps         212.15 ms   
 Tokyo      JP    207.30 Mbps       344.27 Mbps         133.65 ms   
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Linode vs DigitalOcean vs UpCloud vs Hetzner vs Terrahost vs Scaleway

vitobotta — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 11:59:11 +0000

Hi all! I've been reading these pages for a while but only now I registered. I did a comparison with some benchmarks on various providers in the title, and I thought I'd share it here since it may be useful for someone who is looking for a provider. I am posting just because I think it may be useful, but if it's not OK that I post a link in my first post then please remove it

You can see the comparison with the links to the full benchmarks here: https://vitobotta.com/2021/09/10/disk-cpu-performance-linode-vs-digitalocean-vs-upcloud-vs-hetzner-vs-terrahost-vs-scaleway/

There are some interesting surprises

When I have time I will see if I can benchmark more providers.

The-Online.com Shared Hosting Review | cPanel Hosting and VPS Hosting

nickelodeon — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 07:34:48 +0000

About Shared-Hosting:
I have been a client with The-Online.com for 4 years now. The first order of mine which I ordered 4 years ago is still something I’m using to this day, it is a cPanel hosting service which has been running reliably (it hosts my main ecommerce business). Their shared hosting includes free backups with JetBackup. That’s a useful feature I had to use several times when I found myself accidentally deleting files! Also its lightning fast speed compared to my older web-host like godaddy, bluehost and namecheap-hosting. Ah! you get free domain name if you purchase hosting plan for annual terms. I had used their hosting deal where they offered 3rd year free-hosting if user purchases 2 years of hosting! I don't know if this hosting-offer is still going on or ended. But in all their service, uptime, reliability is top-notch and premium.

About VPS-Hosting:
I moved over two droplets from DigitalOcean over to The-Online.com VPS, both instances riding on 4 GB of RAM, one in U.S and the other in their Netherlands (Europe) location. Uptime and reliability has been very solid. Performance is better than DigitalOcean, not to mention the better cost savings for my wallet plus there 24/7 free support even for self-managed VPS. You can also order managed-vps with cPanel and dedicated support.

Fantastic deals for yearly pricing via Black-Friday. This company responses to tickets in less than 15 mins. Extremely helpful. No down time and excellent service provided all around. They don't care how much you spend with them, every customer is as important as the rest.

Overall a small yet, good and affordable hosting provider in U.S, Europe and Asia. you can give it a try.

Review: System administration and networking services from @PenguinGenius ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Not_Oles — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 01:57:02 +0000

Guys!

It all started the day I dreamed of trying lower level dedicated server network and virtual machine configuration by myself instead of having Proxmox do the configuration for me. So, recently, I moved my MetalVPS server from Proxmox to Debian sid.

As part of the move from Proxmox to Debian sid, I got my clueless self into big trouble when I imagined setting up link layer networking inside the server. I imagined that, with link layer networking, virtual machines could use all sixteen of the server's expensive IPv4 addresses. Routing the extra subnet inside the server would have cost three IP addresses from the subnet, leaving only thirteen available for use by virtual machines. I wanted to use all 16 IPs.

Entire days passed by while I kept trying different network configurations. Eventually it seemed like I must have tried every possible configuration except the one configuration that would have worked! I kept reading and rereading the Hetzner tutorials plus several others that I found. Even posting here at LES and getting great responses wasn't enough to push me to victory.

Ultimately there seemed no choice other than to get help. But, from whom? I asked friends for referrals. I looked on Google. I checked Upwork and Fiverr. Most of the search results were about Microsoft, but I wanted Linux.

Eventually, however, I struck pure gold when I searched for "linux server administration -microsoft". There was this guy, Ratko, who seemed listed everywhere on every freelance site. And all the Ratko pages mentioned "networking." It seemed like Ratko was an exact fit for my problem!

But, which freelancing website to use? I've never used any of them, and so, as usual, I was clueless. I wondered if I could make direct contact with Ratko. It took awhile to figure out his last name. And then I found an email address! So I sent off an email.

Wow! Ratko replied almost immediately! Now, after working with Ratko, I know he always replies almost immediately. I don't know how he replies so fast! Well, "immediately" might be overstating the case. Maybe ten or twenty minutes. But that's amazing!

Ratko seemed to think he could fix my server's network configuration so that my plan to use all sixteen IP addresses in the subnet would work.

I made an account on the server for Ratko. Haha! I cluelessly forgot to install the ssh public key that Ratko had sent me at my request. Haha!

After he finally could log in, Ratko suggested changes in my attempted network configuration plus a few changes in Hetzner's or Debian's kernel network configuration and their qemu defaults, plus also a change in my qemu VM launch script.

Haha, well, nothing worked, but that was, as Ratko realized, because I had not left even one VM running.

Next it was time to look inside a running VM. I set one up. Ratko courageously and tirelessly fought through all the trouble of setting up an ssh tunnel! He then dove inside the test VM through qemu's VNC console interface!

Well, you will not be surprised that Ratko made a couple of changes to my VM configuration. And then. . . .

Suddenly, everything worked! It was like magic! Ratko comes in, looks carefully but quickly at what I had been trying for weeks. Then he makes a tweak here, there, everywhere. Suddenly, everything just works!

Now a few days and a few reboots, retests, and IP changes later, Ratko's entire configuration seems stable and indeed does appear to work for all the IPs in the subnet. Plus, no complaints from Hetzner!

Next came time for financial reckoning, Ratko asked me to send him an amount I thought was fair. While thinking about what number might be fair, I happened to notice a three digit number in one of the octets of the IP address of our test VM. Although it was an odd number, it nevertheless jumped out as perfect! I immediately sent Ratko that exact number of dollars.

Ratko told me the amount was generous. I won't say for sure that the funds I sent to Ratko were my best spent money ever, but I do say for sure that they might have been.

Working with Ratko is pure joy! Everything remains calm, but there is speed, focus, intensity, nuance, breadth, depth, vast context, wide experience, patience, courtesy, and great generosity! Plus perfect results!

Here is a link to Ratko's LinkedIn.

Highest thanks to Ratko for a super great job! Five stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Afterword

My biggest problem writing this review is imagining people won't believe what I am saying about Ratko because my review is too good to be true. Well, every language's literature has its classic hero saga genre. So now maybe we have a Beowulf for Linux network and system administration freelancers and their worthy clients.

I am delighted to speak privately with anyone considering hiring Ratko. If you contact me I promise additional superlatives! 🤩

I sent Ratko a few questions in case he wanted to answer them for you guys. I did not include a draft of this review. Ratko's answers are below.

For those interested, a few more tech details are posted here and elsewhere throughout that same thread.

Friendly greetings from New York City and Sonora, MX! 🗽🇺🇸🇲🇽🏜️

Interview with Ratko @PenguinGenius

Hi Tom,

Hey Ratko!
Hope you are doing great!

So far so good

How did you get started with Linux?

25+ years ago With Slackware 1.0 distro.

How did you get started with networking?

About same time, 1996. when I started working in Data Center, and I was
at Junior Network Engineer position first.

How did you get started freelancing?

Couple years after I got my regular job at University, as government
doesn't give high salaries
Friend of mine asked me to start as QA Engineer for his friends company,
which build some shareware applications for Windows.

How do you and your clients find each other?

Freelancer sites at first, LinkedIn, and finally - satisfied clients
recommendation

What has been your most complex and challenging freelance job?

Can't remember, I'm doing this for so many years...

How could your clients make your life easier?

With clear and complete info about problem, access, etc. And timely
response for my additional queries.

What's your schedule on days, nights, and weekends?

8am-3pm - in office at University - sometimes doing some fast freelance
tasks in office when I'm bored.
7pm-10pm - freelance work for clients (or more if needed)
Night - only if world catastrophic failure is in progress
Weekends - only super urgent requests (which of course have super-duper
high hourly rate), or some maintenance tasks I have scheduled over
weekend days.

If you also have a regular job, how do you manage conflicts?

I do have regular job. No conflicts - office work is primary. Then
clients' requests scheduled per urgency.
But in office first rule of system administration helps: "Best sysadmin
is one who is not doing anything!"
Meaning - he did all great, and nothing to do more (until any failure).

How can you respond to clients so quickly?

I know my value, and what I can do
And I'd like any my client to feel special and to know I take care for
him.

What advice would you give a new freelancer?

Don't Learn to Hack... Hack to Learn!
Even something seems hard - try to apply RTFM rule (Read The Fuckin'
Manual) before start to ask around. Try things (and know how to revert).
And don't feel insecure in yourself - otherwise, this is not for you.

Webhosting24 VPSes - 2 months later

vyas — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 14:27:53 +0000

Below is my experience / mini review of testing VPS by Webhosting24 (@tomazu)

Background
I had said earlier in the year about my decision to slow down on the number of reviews and benchmarks that I run for VPS. Earlier this year, I was approached by tomasu to review/ post my experience with their service for VPS'es. I agreed.

There was a bit of a back and forth in communication because of other commitments for both of us. Not to mention a Kiss of Death (sort of) by Lady Corona, and my hospitalisation in early March. Finally, it was in April 2021 when I got the access to both the servers. I was thinking of reviewing one location (Singapore) but turns out that there were two: Singapore and Munich.

In this post
I will talk about my experiences about account setting up the account, Configuring the Virtual Private Servers, working with the VPS and in general about the experiences with Webhosting24. Based on some of the comments from users on both the green forums (here and OGF), they seem to be an old hand in these circles. Some users immediately recognised tomazu and started commenting and complimenting on the quality of their services. So I think if you've been around the web hosting forums for some time, you may know them. If you are a novice to the LE world, probably, it's a good time to go ahead and say hello to Webhosting24.

You can check out their past offers here and here.

In my experience so far, communication with them has been warm, and polite. One even included an apology- because they were with family during Easter. I've been a family first guy, so that resonated well. ¹

Down to Brass Tacks
Here, I will talk about account setup, configuring the servers.
I created my account sent the details to tomazu here on LES. Setting up the account was a pretty easy process, and they quickly added two virtual private servers to my account for the testing and review. Based on that, I spent a couple of weeks, poking around the specifications are trying to understand the provider. That is, the company and some other trivia. Then I set off working on the machines.

Specs for the two servers:
Munich VPS had the following specs:

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v4
2 GB RAM
40 GB Disk

Check out its bench.monster result: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/61586/#Comment_61586
You cannot miss my post where I had linked a 85 MB GIF (screen capture of the Benchmark, link now removed)

YABS result here

Click me

Benching the new AMD KVM VPS from alwyzon

cybertech — Fri, 21 May 2021 03:16:21 +0000

EPYC isn't it?! fresh new series from the AMD powerhouse.

resident bench junkie says thanks to Michael from @alwyzon for sponsoring a free trial.

not much will be said about the control panel and inner workings, but I'm happy that network boot is supported so it is possible to do that netboot trick via iPXE less the hassles. ISO mount is so 2020.

(at this stage I presume to be the only guest VM on the node)

guess what, IPv6 ready y'all!

maybe someone can make an AMD+IPv6 hall of fame.

nested Virt enabled? oh my
Austria location? oh my
singlecore GB4 close to 5000? oh my
fio 1M IOPS above 5K? oh my
redundant PSU? oh my

it's gonna be NTAO below. no talk, action only.

[root@cybertech ~]# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -9
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-29                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri May 21 10:30:13 +08 2021

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD EPYC 7502P 32-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 2 @ 2495.310 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 3.8 GiB
Swap       : 0.0 KiB
Disk       : 50.0 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 151.19 MB/s  (37.7k) | 2.03 GB/s    (31.8k)
Write      | 151.59 MB/s  (37.8k) | 2.04 GB/s    (31.9k)
Total      | 302.79 MB/s  (75.6k) | 4.08 GB/s    (63.8k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 4.22 GB/s     (8.2k) | 4.16 GB/s     (4.0k)
Write      | 4.44 GB/s     (8.6k) | 4.44 GB/s     (4.3k)
Total      | 8.66 GB/s    (16.9k) | 8.61 GB/s     (8.4k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed   
                |                           |                 |              
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 933 Mbits/sec   | 925 Mbits/sec
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 929 Mbits/sec   | busy         
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 929 Mbits/sec   | 927 Mbits/sec
Biznet          | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G)   | 323 Mbits/sec   | 297 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 760 Mbits/sec   | 881 Mbits/sec
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 512 Mbits/sec   | 849 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 463 Mbits/sec   | 833 Mbits/sec
Iveloz Telecom  | Sao Paulo, BR (2G)        | 340 Mbits/sec   | 580 Mbits/sec

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed   
                |                           |                 |              
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 919 Mbits/sec   | 915 Mbits/sec
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 917 Mbits/sec   | 914 Mbits/sec
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 915 Mbits/sec   | 915 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 818 Mbits/sec   | 869 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 589 Mbits/sec   | 825 Mbits/sec

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value
                |
Single Core     | 4796
Multi Core      | 8970
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16183345

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value
                |
Single Core     | 1060
Multi Core      | 2083
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/8000376

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 OS           : CentOS 8.3.2011 (64 Bit)
 Virt/Kernel  : KVM / 5.12.5-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
 CPU Model    : AMD EPYC 7502P 32-Core Processor
 CPU Cores    : 2 @ 2495.310 MHz x86_64 512 KB Cache
 CPU Flags    : AES-NI Enabled & VM-x/AMD-V Enabled
 Load Average : 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
 Total Space  : 50G (2.1G ~5% used)
 Total RAM    : 3929 MB (159 MB + 312 MB Buff in use)
 Total SWAP   : 0 MB (0 MB in use)
 Uptime       : 0 days 1:1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------   
ASN & ISP    : AS40994, Alwyzon
 Organization : Hohl IT e.U.                                                  
Location     : Vienna, Austria / AT
 Region       : Vienna                                                       
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ## Geekbench v4 CPU Benchmark:
  Single Core : 4797  (EXCELLENT)
   Multi Core : 8958                                                         
 ## IO Test                                                                  
 CPU Speed:                                                                      
bzip2     : 120 MB/s
   sha256     : 752 MB/s                                                        
md5sum     : 495 MB/s
 RAM Speed:
   Avg. write : 2935.5 MB/s
   Avg. read  : 8089.6 MB/s

 Disk Speed:                                                                    
1st run    : 2.1 GB/s
   2nd run    : 1.9 GB/s                                                        
3rd run    : 2.0 GB/s
   -----------------------                                                      
Average    : 2048.0 MB/s
 ## Global Speedtest.net
 Location                       Upload           Download         Ping
---------------------------------------------------------------------------   
Nearby                         873.22 Mbit/s    927.57 Mbit/s    11.538 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------   
USA, New York (Optimum)        187.87 Mbit/s    307.71 Mbit/s    97.589 ms
 USA, Chicago (Windstream)      141.89 Mbit/s    272.39 Mbit/s   111.965 ms
 USA, Dallas (Frontier)         114.33 Mbit/s    70.71 Mbit/s    135.990 ms
 USA, Miami (Frontier)          152.63 Mbit/s    372.01 Mbit/s   125.387 ms
 USA, Los Angeles (Windstream)  123.22 Mbit/s    255.43 Mbit/s   152.051 ms
 UK, London (toob Ltd)          276.89 Mbit/s    677.50 Mbit/s    24.565 ms
 France, Lyon (SFR)             421.82 Mbit/s    600.14 Mbit/s    35.743 ms
 Germany, Berlin (DNS:NET)      349.08 Mbit/s    732.35 Mbit/s    22.037 ms
 Spain, Madrid (MasMovil)       265.32 Mbit/s    540.12 Mbit/s    35.556 ms
 Italy, Rome (Unidata)          151.27 Mbit/s    432.02 Mbit/s    66.665 ms
 Russia, Moscow (Rostelecom)    216.48 Mbit/s    421.64 Mbit/s    55.369 ms
 Israel, Haifa (013Netvision)   148.10 Mbit/s    470.60 Mbit/s    79.621 ms
 Singapore (FirstMedia)         58.95 Mbit/s     47.92 Mbit/s    186.574 ms
 Japan, Tsukuba (SoftEther)     62.22 Mbit/s     136.76 Mbit/s   238.311 ms
 Australia, Sydney (Optus)      9.14 Mbit/s      54.86 Mbit/s    306.750 ms
 RSA, Randburg (Cool Ideas)     72.58 Mbit/s     326.73 Mbit/s   182.245 ms
 Brazil, Sao Paulo (Criare)     68.35 Mbit/s     179.98 Mbit/s   203.445 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Finished in : 9 min 48 sec
 Timestamp   : 2021-05-21 02:54:02 GMT
 Saved in    : /root/speedtest.log

 Share results:
 - https://www.speedtest.net/result/11451435896.png
 - https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16183354
 - https://clbin.com/py02Y

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 CPU Model             : AMD EPYC 7502P 32-Core Processor
 CPU Cores             : 2
 CPU Frequency         : 2495.310 MHz
 CPU Cache             : 512 KB
 Total Disk            : 50.0 GB (2.1 GB Used)
 Total Mem             : 3929 MB (158 MB Used)
 Total Swap            : 0 MB (0 MB Used)
 System uptime         : 0 days, 0 hour 35 min
 Load average          : 0.26, 0.15, 0.15
 OS                    : CentOS Linux release 8.3.2011
 Arch                  : x86_64 (64 Bit)
 Kernel                : 5.12.5-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
 TCP CC                : bbr
 Virtualization        : KVM
 Organization          : AS40994 Michael Hohl trading as Hohl IT e.U.
 Location              : Langenzersdorf / AT
 Region                : Lower Austria
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 I/O Speed(1st run)    : 2.2 GB/s
 I/O Speed(2nd run)    : 2.5 GB/s
 I/O Speed(3rd run)    : 2.4 GB/s
 Average I/O speed     : 2423.5 MB/s
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Node Name        Upload Speed      Download Speed      Latency
 Speedtest.net    938.16 Mbps       932.95 Mbps         0.72 ms
 Shanghai   CT    293.08 Mbps       948.90 Mbps         215.05 ms
 Shanghai   CU    426.80 Mbps       955.22 Mbps         193.30 ms
 Guangzhou  CU    454.59 Mbps       947.28 Mbps         188.58 ms
 Shenzhen   CU    401.65 Mbps       949.61 Mbps         182.70 ms             
Hongkong   CN    366.65 Mbps       963.26 Mbps         203.65 ms
 Singapore  SG    325.29 Mbps       952.04 Mbps         255.67 ms             
Tokyo      JP    188.71 Mbps       98.43 Mbps          242.06 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------
 nench.sh v2019.07.20 -- https://git.io/nench.sh
 benchmark timestamp:    2021-05-21 03:11:13 UTC
-------------------------------------------------

Processor:    AMD EPYC 7502P 32-Core Processor
CPU cores:    2
Frequency:    2495.310 MHz
RAM:          3.8Gi
Swap:         -
Kernel:       Linux 5.12.5-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64 x86_64

Disks:
sda     50G  HDD

CPU: SHA256-hashing 500 MB
    0.636 seconds
CPU: bzip2-compressing 500 MB
    4.422 seconds
CPU: AES-encrypting 500 MB
    1.053 seconds

ioping: seek rate
    min/avg/max/mdev = 76.3 us / 89.8 us / 956.3 us / 6.61 us
ioping: sequential read speed
    generated 24.2 k requests in 5.00 s, 5.90 GiB, 4.83 k iops, 1.18 GiB/s

dd: sequential write speed
    1st run:    2574.92 MiB/s
    2nd run:    2098.08 MiB/s
    3rd run:    2384.19 MiB/s
    average:    2352.40 MiB/s

IPv4 speedtests
    your IPv4:    xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx

    Cachefly CDN:         96.43 MiB/s
    Leaseweb (NL):        92.32 MiB/s
    Softlayer DAL (US):   11.87 MiB/s
    Online.net (FR):      84.17 MiB/s
    OVH BHS (CA):         22.84 MiB/s

IPv6 speedtests
    your IPv6:    xxxx:xxxx:xxx:xxxx

    Leaseweb (NL):        90.91 MiB/s
    Softlayer DAL (US):   12.27 MiB/s
    Online.net (FR):      84.85 MiB/s
    OVH BHS (CA):         21.72 MiB/s
-------------------------------------------------

well, this drama...my fault

brunuh — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:38:19 +0000

Yesterday I grabbed HostSlick LowEnd Small KVM I (2020)
then I have a YABS test on it and the result, I/O and cpu score is quiet low
at that time, I should have opened a ticket asking for help,
but I didn't cause there is some pre-judge or prejudice in my head, like HostSlick doesn't provide a good service somewhat based on some previous bad reviews I have seen before.
And it turns out that I misunderstand them, so here I would make an apology for my sudden impulse and the harm I have done
They give the refund and in the end present a vps to me as a gift.
I'd say sorry for the chaos interrupting a nice weekend

MaxKVM is superb and I like it, but..

dinoudon — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:22:57 +0000

First of all, I am a university student and i see MaxKVM have promotion code for my student mail which is a huge offer for me. I tried the SKVM-4G ones in singapore, pretty far so good, experimenting things and setting up some projects for my group and startup. The connections superb, I can't asked for more.

As the time passes, I need to order another servers in Singapore for my own project but i can't find one. So I asked the support about that. The reply is crystal clear, but the next lines is somewhat unnecessary. I am still in learning phase, but this one, I would never forget. Ever.

Sorry for my awful english.

A month with SmallWeb

kind — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:10:19 +0000

Hi there!
Im here to leave my first review of services, wich at the time isn't good at all, and possible after writing this it could possibly go to worse.

On december 7 I hired a small budged webhosting from them, to have as backup/emergency host (all data would be replicated in case of downtime of my main host ( @Abdullah ).
Payment was delivered the same day, instantly after the purchase, and at the third day of no news, I send a ticket to see whats was happening with no service activation. They answered sorry for the delay and that will be moving to automatic provisioning soon. The service was activated (don't have proof, usually don't take pictures of my services and at the time no email was received).
Today I find myself in the search of reseller, and remembered that SmallWeb has some nice offers (wich probably gonna be idling as the other shared). So I login on the site to put an order, I find myself with no service at all, and again on pending.
Immediately after this I send a ticket demanding an explanaition, their answer was "your service was never active and you didn't claim it again with us after your first ticket a month ago, either way we setup the service with a extension date "
So... not only they don't recognize that the service has been active previously and deactivated for some reason, they also blame you for not having claiming the activation at least twice, and also you have to be grateful because they put "a new expiration date" on the service.

Obviously im not gonna hire the reseller there, and expect to be able to test the service and revert this review, but, at the current time, I wouldn't recommend noone to hire a service there, at least not if you expect to be delivered on time.

PD: At least the ticket response was quickly.
PD2: Sorry for the bad english.

Some pictures:

Oneprovider Review + Benchmarks

agadmin — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 14:45:21 +0000

After a lot of search i found oneprovider (online) order their storage vps and just bang its very good for price. I am sharing benchmark here anybody else can use them for review its located at Helsinki, FI (mine instance) but its available in 8 locations.
Also Its peering is also good i just tested it and its amazing. Please note here that its not cpu intensive i use linode ,hetzner for that kind of things. Also i am not a oneprovider employee/affiliate .
Price: 5$

## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##

Yet-Another-Bench-Script

v2020-12-29

https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script

## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##

Wed Mar 17 20:02:14 IST 2021

Basic System Information:

Processor : QEMU Virtual CPU version 2.5+
CPU cores : 1 @ 2394.206 MHz
AES-NI : ❌ Disabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled
RAM : 477.2 MiB
Swap : 512.0 MiB
Disk : 503.4 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):

Block Size	4k (IOPS)	64k (IOPS)
Read	20.44 MB/s (5.1k)	381.54 MB/s (5.9k)
Write	20.46 MB/s (5.1k)	383.55 MB/s (5.9k)
Total	40.91 MB/s (10.2k)	765.10 MB/s (11.9k)

Block Size	512k (IOPS)	1m (IOPS)
------	--- ----	---- ----
Read	789.67 MB/s (1.5k)	864.01 MB/s (843)
Write	831.62 MB/s (1.6k)	921.55 MB/s (899)
Total	1.62 GB/s (3.1k)	1.78 GB/s (1.7k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:

FreeMach™ - AlphaVPS - End of Year 2 Report

Mason — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 18:30:35 +0000

This is a continuation of the yearly service review/reports for the FreeMach™ service now that yet another year has passed with AlphaVPS. Big thank you goes out to AlphaVPS / @AlexBarakov for sponsoring this server for the second year!

FreeMach Overview

FreeMach™ is a free service providing free KVM VPSes to community members that was enabled by a sponsored E3 unmanaged VirMach server won during the LET 2017 Provider Poll. The service was offered because when I won the free server for a year, I did not have a purpose in mind. I didn’t want it to go to waste idling away, thus I decided to give back to the community. The project now has two locations, with the second sponsored node running in Sofia, BG, thanks to the wonderful folks over at AlphaVPS.

Here are some example projects that are/have been running on FreeMach –

GeoDNS Load Balancing
EasyEngine Testing
Private File Sharing
MariaDB Galera Cluster
NodeJS App Development
Non-Profit University Organization’s Website
Rancher Testing
IPv6 HE.net Tunnel Testing
Hindi Community Website
Control Panel Development
Video Encoding Tool Testing and Development
Web IDE / Dev Environment for School Projects
Automated Build of Android Projects
VOIP Module Development
Mirror for Open Source Virtualization Platform Distributions
Personal Media Server
and a quite a bit more…

AlphaVPS Review

AlphaVPS has always been pretty great with the sponsored hardware and with the provided support! Looking back at my ticket history, there's only been two issues support issues that were promptly dealt with in the past year.

The first incident was an issue where a user's VM was exploited and was being used to send a large amount of traffic (DDoS) back in July 2020. Unfortunately, the control panel daemon had crashed and wasn't tracking the bandwidth used so the auto-suspension never happened like it should have (horrible timing, I know). Alex reached out to me via ticket letting me know of the high bandwidth usage, which I quickly tracked down the problem VM and worked with the user to reinstall and secure their setup. Within a couple hours, we were back up and running as usual.

The second incident was a little harder to debug and work through. I noticed some stability issues with the server rebooting on occasion (once every month or two). After working with Alex and his team to track down the cause of the issue, the server's redundant PSUs and the attached outlet were changed. Ever since that change occurred in January of this year, we've been smoothing sailing ever since. Support replies were always super fast (< 1 hour most times), which is pretty great for an unmanaged service!

The specs of the server are more than able to keep up with all the users on the system. The SSD disk is still chugging along and is in good health (28k hours). Network has also been really solid with some small minute-long blips here and there (probably from route issues between HetrixTools & AlphaVPS), but no long outages of any kind. Besides the occasional reboots from the PSU issue, the only other instances of downtime was when the system was upgraded to Proxmox v6 in Late Summer/Early Fall.

Server Usage

As is tradition, here’s some stats and graphs for the past year. Fairly light usage overall. Most of the projects running on the node don’t seem to be very resource intensive.

Uptime report: https://hetrixtools.com/report/uptime/6af17a5973b0c9d42563eda4358adae9/

Network:

CPU:

Load Avg:

Memory:

Conclusion

Once again, big props to AlphaVPS for being a solid service provider and for sponsoring the FreeMach server for the project for the second year in a row and for helping to support the many awesome projects of the FreeMach users. Thanks to Alex and his staff for being accommodating to our little community project and for always being there for us whenever support was needed!

Cheers!,
-Mason

Disclaimer: FreeMach is sponsored by VirMach (sponsored US location), AlphaVPS (sponsored EU location), and ProxCP (sponsored VM Control Panel). The FreeMach project is not associated with LowEndSpirit and I provide this endorsement of AlphaVPS on my own, personal accord (wasn't a stipulation by anyone for providing the service to us, but I think it's important to show how the server has been put to good use and continues to provide a great home to a great many of projects).

[Review]1Fichier - Unlimited File Hosting Storage; 100GB/mo CDN.

Ympker — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 21:22:19 +0000

Moving that review here, also

Being a customer with them for a while I have to admit I am quite happy with their services for the price offered. I have tested them for 30 days now (back to a free account rn) and can recommend them from my personal experience. I am not affilated with them in any way (although they do have afflinks but I will not post it here).

So what is so cool about this service? Well they are in buisiness since 2009 (so quite stable), operate their own network, and offer Unlimited File Storage for their Premium Plans along with 100 GB CDN Credits per month. Now usually the Premium plan is priced at 35€ which would make me hesitate but with the 10€ per year special coming up I am totally in :-)

I have made some screenshots to let you get an idea of how it will look like (no fancy design there though):

Features:

What they don't list here is the "inline" option you have in your files dashboard. If you mark a file as "inline" you can "stream it" in your dashboard if it was a movie/image file you'd be able to see it in dashboard. You can also create various folders to seperate files. You can also sign up totally anonymously aside from your payment method being the part where you could be tracked. While this also attracts some nasty people I thought I'd mention it because I, too, enjoyed it to just not having to throw my personal details at yet another provider.

Their own Network:

Since they only offer 10GB test files and most of them stopped working I have uploaded a 1 GB test file for download. You will see some ads before downloading (most likely some pop-up) but "For testing our services we will not limit your download speed" works every 24h when you access any download link by 1Fichier which makes sharing your files with friends more comfortable as they wont need a premium account of any sort to dl at full speed.

Test file: https://1fichier.com/?hgafnkb0ob

**Remote Upload & Download Speeds:
**
These are the dl speeds I measured with remote upload via URL. You can also upload via remote FTP which is great for backups

Expiration of Storage

The cool thing is even if you switch back to Free Account Status (like I am atm) your files acctually stay alive in your dashboard and the respective download links forever if you have been Premium Account before. My 100GB Test file has yet to be removed and so has the other one. This will still let you dl all your uploaded files without dl speed limits once every 24h by using their "Free Trial of our Services" where they dont limit your speeds :P

CDN

My CDN Credits did not expire either and I can - at any time - setup any of my already uploaded files as CDN

Legal/Mentionable stuff:

ToS

Abuse Procedure

TL;DR:

This is a great File Hosting Service and for 10€/year for UNLIMITED Storage & 100GB CDN/month you can't really go wrong. They have a nice feature set (such as operating their own network), are situated in France and are in buisiness since 2009.

Are people abusing their services?
--> Probably yes, given the nature of their anonymous signup policy but non noticeable downsides on my end.

Is there a mobile app for managing 1Fichier files?
Yes, there is: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.itgecko.sharedownloader&hl=de

Can I also connect & download via FTP?
--> Yeah should be possible^^

Is there rclone support for 1Fichier?
--> Yes there is: https://rclone.org/fichier/

Kind regards,
Ympker

Oh and if you want to use my afflink (well, I do have one) you can kindly PM me :-)
Just felt like I would not post it here to avoid people drawing presumptous conclusions :P

A year with Nexus Bytes

imok — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 21:53:47 +0000

It's been a year since I got my first server with @seriesn. I only get yearly services from reputable providers and Nexus Bytes is one of them.

I currently have 2 servers.

VPS 4G Preorder Special in Los Angeles (4GB RAM, 4 cores, 120GB NVMe)

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-29                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Thu Jan  7 16:23:40 -05 2021

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 4 @ 3792.874 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 3.7 GiB
Swap       : 0.0 KiB
Disk       : 118.1 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 216.56 MB/s  (54.1k) | 2.39 GB/s    (37.3k)
Write      | 217.13 MB/s  (54.2k) | 2.40 GB/s    (37.5k)
Total      | 433.69 MB/s (108.4k) | 4.79 GB/s    (74.9k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 3.15 GB/s     (6.1k) | 2.78 GB/s     (2.7k)
Write      | 3.32 GB/s     (6.4k) | 2.96 GB/s     (2.8k)
Total      | 6.48 GB/s    (12.6k) | 5.75 GB/s     (5.6k)

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 904                           
Multi Core      | 2558                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/5760987

VPS 8G (8 GB RAM, 8 big cores, 160GB NVMe) sponsored by Mark from DirectAdmin

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-29                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Thu Jan  7 16:27:28 -05 2021

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 8 @ 3493.436 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 7.6 GiB
Swap       : 4.0 GiB
Disk       : 155.9 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 308.22 MB/s  (77.0k) | 3.18 GB/s    (49.8k)
Write      | 309.03 MB/s  (77.2k) | 3.20 GB/s    (50.0k)
Total      | 617.26 MB/s (154.3k) | 6.39 GB/s    (99.9k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 3.81 GB/s     (7.4k) | 3.88 GB/s     (3.7k)
Write      | 4.02 GB/s     (7.8k) | 4.14 GB/s     (4.0k)
Total      | 7.83 GB/s    (15.3k) | 8.03 GB/s     (7.8k)

Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 1163                          
Multi Core      | 5579                          
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/5760975

I still feel bad for choosing a big server. I'm sorry Mark. Thank you for everything!

No network tests because I don't want to run out of bandwith and firewall is enabled.

I used to have smaller ones but they were backup machines and they were idling too much time so I cancelled them.

Impressive Ryzen CPU, impressive disk speeds for both. Every cent spend with these servers are well paid. I haven't had any outage I think, except for a partial network cut last month affecting the connection to another datacenter in US where I keep my databases.

I've opened some tickets and they have been responded in minutes at any time of the day, always ready to help. Jay even helped me in an unthinkable way when I had problems with my virtualization software. Also, it's nice to have a personal license for Direct Admin which I'm using in Miami and, as I've just renewed until 2022, I'm moving LA from nginx to OLS with DA too.

They also offer ApisCP and Blesta for free. I'm planing to start building some themes for this kind of software so being a NB customer is a perfect fit.

A+. Will buy again for sure. And thank you for the memes.

FreeMach™ - VirMach - End of Year 3 Report

Mason — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 20:04:32 +0000

This is a continuation of the yearly service review/reports for the FreeMach™ service now that yet another year has passed. Big thank you goes out to VirMach for sponsoring this server for the third year in a row!

Cross-posted to HostedTalk: https://hostedtalk.net/t/freemach-virmach-end-of-year-3-report/

FreeMach Overview

Here are some example projects that are/have been running on FreeMach –

GeoDNS Load Balancing
EasyEngine Testing
Private File Sharing
MariaDB Galera Cluster
NodeJS App Development
Non-Profit University Organization’s Website
Rancher Testing
IPv6 HE.net Tunnel Testing
Hindi Community Website
Control Panel Development
Video Encoding Tool Testing and Development
Web IDE / Dev Environment for School Projects
Automated Build of Android Projects
VOIP Module Development
Mirror for Open Source Virtualization Platform Distributions
Personal Media Server
and a quite a bit more…

VirMach Review

As in the past, VirMach has been rock solid – both with hardware and with support! Not much to say, really, other than the one hardware issue that was encountered in April of this year was resolved in a very timely and professional manner. A failed PDU had brought the server offline for a short period of time. Unfortunately, it happened in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, but after sending in a ticket in the morning, the issue was corrected and the server was back up and running in just a few hours. Couldn’t really ask for better support on an unmanaged service.

Hardware-wise the server has been chugging along nicely and is able to keep up with all the tenets’ activities. Disks are in good shape (36k hours, no reallocated sectors). Network has been solid with some short-lived blips here and there, but nothing major. Only other ticket I have submitted in the past year was for a rDNS entry, which was quickly handled by support staff in a few hours time.

Two instances of system downtime were the previous PDU incident already mentioned and when the system was upgraded to Proxmox v6 in Late Summer/Early Fall.

Server Usage

As is tradition, here’s some stats and graphs for the past year. Fairly light usage overall. Most of the projects running on the node don’t seem to be very resource intensive.

Uptime report: https://hetrixtools.com/report/uptime/a5b832d6bc468d9b0cc2b2d37dda13af/

Network:

CPU:

Load Avg:

Memory:

System I/O:

Conclusion

A HUGE thank you goes out to VirMach again for sponsoring this server for the FreeMach project for the third year in a row and for giving a home to many users with a wide variety of interesting projects. I’d like to thank all the participants of the FreeMach service, I hope the VMs have treated you well and have helped you achieve some of your goals.

I’ll gladly keep the project going for yet another year if VirMach decides to bless us with their generosity again this year. However, I do realize with COVID and other things going on that circumstances change, so regardless of whether or not the project gets another extension, VirMach deserves a lot of praise and love for keeping this project going for three years!

Cheers!,
-Mason

P.S. End of Year 2 Report for the EU1 (AlphaVPS - Sofia, BG) node will be posted in March 2021.

FreeMach is sponsored by VirMach (sponsored US location), AlphaVPS (sponsored EU location), and ProxCP (sponsored VM Control Panel).

?? Store-Host.com 1 Week Test out.

Xenic — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 18:25:12 +0000

Hey LES,
Today i want to tell you my personal experience with ?? store-host.com.
I tested now Store-Host.com for over one week and the performance and the pricing is really good for an Swiss Provider, btw: if you don't know it in ?? are normally VPS more expensive than in other parts of the European continent.
The Store-Host.com VPSs Servers are based on vmWare EXSI, which is really awesome. The Servers are based in the Kanton Zurich ??
I Tested now since a week there "vmWare Medium" Package and the performance is good, but there is one thing which was not so nice but its soon fixed.
They are using HDDs right now but i know that they are soon replaced through SSDs.
So i think the performance should be better then.
You get also a 1GBIT Port with Fair Usable Traffic inclusive in each package.
They are offering also Storage Based VPS Packages.
The Support is fast, and good (They are offering 24/7 also), i know the owner since a while and he is really a good guy he is really kind.
The Packages prices are starting at 3€/$3,69USD.
There Servers are based on Intel Xeon E5 Processors and clock at 3Ghz.
IPv6 is also included. (I don't understand the Providers which don't offer in the year 2021 no IPv6 Addresses)
And they have a nice iso installing system which is based on IPXE.
Here a screenshot:

I love really this type of installation because it's not template based.
I would say its one of the best providers which i ever tried.
They are accepting the following Payment Methods: PayPal and the good old classic bank transfer.

Network Details:
They have announced their own IP Space under AS59891 (FSIT AG) (The Network is really awesome)
1GB Test File: https://dl.store-host.com/1GB.bin

Here are some benchmarks:

YABS
SYSPERF
Bench.monster

Best regards,
Xenic

Post your top 3 VPS here 2020

cybertech — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 03:06:06 +0000

Xmas is coming and signaling the End of 2020........been a tumultuous year but hey, we all survived.....to some degree.....in one way or another.......right?

Anyway I'm sure you've gotten some good/great/awesome deals from the recent BF/CM/Xmas sale, so why not give them some credit here? Could be from year 2000 doesnt matter.

Do it in any format you like; Imma reserve this space to add in mine as well.
Heck if you've got more than 3 VPSes, show em all off if you want.
Providers are more than welcome to post their own top 3s as well.

heres Whats mine gonna be like (up to you really):

Provider Name
VPS product name
Price
CPU
RAM
Disk
Monthly Data/Bandwidth
Location
DirectAdmin / Windows licenses etc. (if included)
Comments if any (e.g. blazing fast cpu, good support, best value, uptime since Y2K, FOMO, i-only-have-3-vps-so...etc)

(spoiler)
bench
bench
bench
more bench
bench till the new year all day long
(/spoiler)

ARM dedi/colo makes sense?

terrorgen — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:55:00 +0000

I know some ARM hosts don't give ARM servers any good reputation, but...
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hardware/raspberry-pi-hosting-firm-mininodes-grows-enough-get-proper-data-center

One year of NexusBytes

ouvoun — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:11:45 +0000

Alright, this review is long overdue. I've had my NexusBytes VPS for about a year now. I found a home with NexusBytes after an...interesting adventure with a certain runaway Doctor. I've been so happy with this box that I actually skipped most of the recent BF shenanigans. So, let's talk about it, shall we?

Service
I want to discuss this first because it's one of the things which I appreciate the most about NB. When I was first picking up service, I had a lot of needs. I wanted a beefy CPU, needed enough RAM, wanted fast storage, but all at a good price of course. Throughout the whole sales process I had a significant amount of communication with @seriesn. Every step of the way he was professional and personal, despite my incessant messages.

This didn't stop after I bought my VPS, either. There were some network issues nearly a year ago which we worked through together, and @seriesn put significant effort into making sure everything was resolved perfectly, communicating frequently throughout the whole process. I mean, look at this:

The dude is a legend. I also talk way too much.

Reliability
My VPS uptime is so high that I was worried my HetrixTools monitoring wasn't properly configured. I bought this VPS in a new location, so there were some initial kinks to work out. But after the first week of bringing things online, this has by far been the most stable VPS I've ever had. Like seriously, I believe I've only had one unexpected downtime during the whole year that I've owned this bad boy. It's always there. Always up. Working perfectly.

I'm on a shared node, but I haven't had any issues with bad neighbors. Not once. In fact, that's what I'd categorize this box as: incredibly stable. My ping, and disk speed is exactly the same or greater than when I first got the box. That's more than you can say for most providers out there. Performance has slightly dropped compared to the first week, but I also was on a fully empty node before, whereas now I'm sharing with neighbors.

If you're curious, check it out for yourself. Here's a bench from nearly a year ago, and here's one from recently.

Performance
So, let's talk about performance. I haven't ever owned any VPS this fast. NexusBytes was one of the first providers to heavily utilize Ryzen CPUs, which is why I was drawn to them in the first place. So what are the specs?

CPU: Ryzen 9 3900X, 4 cores
RAM: 4GB
Disk: 40GB
Bandwidth: 4TB
Location: LA

This is a custom plan, so don't go looking for it. But it's brilliant. So I'm sure what you all really want to see is the bench, yeah?

Just give me the bench, dude
Fine, I know this is what you bench goblins were wanting anyways. Take it or leave it.

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-07                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri 18 Dec 2020 10:36:53 PM PST

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 4 @ 3792.874 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 3.8 GiB
Swap       : 4.0 GiB
Disk       : 39.4 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 287.96 MB/s  (71.9k) | 2.83 GB/s    (44.3k)
Write      | 288.72 MB/s  (72.1k) | 2.85 GB/s    (44.5k)
Total      | 576.69 MB/s (144.1k) | 5.69 GB/s    (88.9k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 2.47 GB/s     (4.8k) | 3.18 GB/s     (3.1k)
Write      | 2.60 GB/s     (5.0k) | 3.39 GB/s     (3.3k)
Total      | 5.07 GB/s     (9.9k) | 6.58 GB/s     (6.4k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 1.21 Gbits/sec  | 1.18 Gbits/sec 
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 1.34 Gbits/sec  | 952 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 1.96 Gbits/sec  | 2.33 Gbits/sec 

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 1.01 Gbits/sec  | 1.28 Gbits/sec 
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 803 Mbits/sec   | 1.37 Gbits/sec 
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 650 Mbits/sec   | 2.83 Gbits/sec 

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:---------------------------------
Test            | Value                         
                |                               
Single Core     | 4895                          
Multi Core      | 13423                         
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15946641

Closing thoughts
I'm a huge fan of being part of the NexusBytes family and I don't plan on leaving any time soon. It cured my VPS switching addiction. Give it a try, you won't regret it.

G-Core Labs - Khabarovsk small kvm vps

swat4 — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 17:17:22 +0000

Hello everyone,

It is my first time writing a review here. I joined LES last month and LET a few months ago. In short, I am a newbie in VPS.

Before I heard about "VPS" / "Linux" etc, the only thing I could do with a computer is Google Chrome, using Outlook to work on emails and making bookings on airlines website. My work has never (and probably will never) come across anything about I.T. Why would I bother to trespass in the world that I did not belong to? It was all about an old pc game called SWAT4. I guess no one here would like to know about or even play this game so I would skip the details. In short, in other to keep this game alive, I have to look for ways how to host game rooms globally to make sure this small community can continue to enjoy the lowest latency and therefore the best experience. I have not played this for a long time until COVID lockdown - when I must return my home country (as I was working abroad) and not sure when I could ever go back. Working from home, much free time has arisen so I could afford the adventure.

As for G-Core Labs, I only knew about them when randomly googling "south america vps". The cost turned out to be prohibitive so I forgot about it quickly. Until today, I saw a thread on LET about vps in Russia and all of a sudden - On 100% impulse, I decided to give it a try - I have never had a VPS in Russia before.

And yesterday it was also my first time reading the blog of @vyas, which has enlightened me a lot. I would not have the time nor the knowledge to run a blog so I guess I would at most write on LES and await better insights from the community, since I have very little knowledge about system administration on Linux.

OK - Sorry for long crap above - let's dive into the topic:

The subject today is a small vps at 88 Russian Rubble per month , about 1.2 USD. You may find the spec below:

The sign-up process is quite easy, no-frills design, no painful captcha. It even did not require me to manually verify my email address.

As for payment, Paypal is not available. Therefore, I proceeded with paying with credit card direct.

Provision was quite fast - the payment was confirmed with a receipt at 7:43pm and received the root password at 7:53pm.

The control panel was quite plain - and sometimes not very smooth (that you need to click a few times to navigate)

OK - Time for benchmark:

Let's test the download speed to Asia

And the remaining storage before I load my stuff:

Geekbench 5 (and the CPU reached 100% during testing )

The port speed (at least to Europe) is as per described - 100mb - well.... Can't complain here.
And well... the harddisk I guess is HDD for sure? Doesn't matter - SWAT4 is an old game and is not hungry for resource

One of the applications that I needed to download and install is wine32... the download process itself took almost 8 minutes and installation another 2 minutes (or slightly more).. I guess it was the longest I have ever had with all other vps... Again.... I signed up not for the hardware spec , but instead - the exotic location. So, I am ok with this.

So far the game room is running very smoothly - no lag no crash. For shit vps, the game would crash after 1 or 2 times of map change.

Last but not least, I tested their ticket handling by asking some newbie questions and the result was positive. The response time was below 10 minutes with very good attitude.

Well, definitely can't say the node is nice - but for such price and rare location - so long as it can maintain its uptime, I really can't make any complaints. Based on the past 6 hours, I would say this is a good buy if you do want something in such location.

Sorry for poor writing and organization. Have a good day ahead.

Inception Hosting UK-SSD-KVM-2048

cybertech — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 06:30:31 +0000

seems like 1270s gonna be phased out? check out the new 3.8Gs:

UK-SSD-KVM-2048

2 CPU Core (Equal Share)
2048 MB Ram
20 GB Pure NVMe SSD Disk space
2000 GB Bandwidth @ 1 gbit (shared)
1 x IPv4 address
1 x /64 IPv6
Full daily backup
€5/mth
https://clients.inceptionhosting.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=185
no AFFs sorry

there's vps, there's prem vps, then there's inception hosting vps.

YABS

[root@cybertech ~]# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -i4
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-07                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Wed Dec 16 06:02:24 GMT 2020

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276G CPU @ 3.80GHz
CPU cores  : 2 @ 3792.000 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 1.9 GiB
Swap       : 257.0 MiB
Disk       : 19.7 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 214.08 MB/s  (53.5k) | 1.12 GB/s    (17.5k)
Write      | 214.64 MB/s  (53.6k) | 1.12 GB/s    (17.6k)
Total      | 428.73 MB/s (107.1k) | 2.25 GB/s    (35.1k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 1.20 GB/s     (2.3k) | 1.31 GB/s     (1.2k)
Write      | 1.27 GB/s     (2.4k) | 1.40 GB/s     (1.3k)
Total      | 2.48 GB/s     (4.8k) | 2.71 GB/s     (2.6k)

Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value
                |
Single Core     | 5546
Multi Core      | 9437
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15941470

[root@cybertech ~]#

bench.sh

---------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 CPU Model             : Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276G CPU @ 3.80GHz
 CPU Cores             : 2
 CPU Frequency         : 3792.000 MHz
 CPU Cache             : 16384 KB
 Total Disk            : 20.0 GB (1.9 GB Used)
 Total Mem             : 1981 MB (149 MB Used)
 Total Swap            : 256 MB (0 MB Used)
 System uptime         : 0 days, 0 hour 31 min
 Load average          : 0.15, 0.03, 0.01
 OS                    : CentOS 8.3.2011
 Arch                  : x86_64 (64 Bit)
 Kernel                : 5.10.1-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
 TCP CC                : bbr
 Virtualization        : KVM
 Organization          : AS62240 Clouvider Limited
 Location              : London / GB
 Region                : England
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 I/O Speed(1st run)    : 1.9 GB/s
 I/O Speed(2nd run)    : 2.1 GB/s
 I/O Speed(3rd run)    : 1.9 GB/s
 Average I/O speed     : 2013.9 MB/s
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Node Name        Upload Speed      Download Speed      Latency
 Speedtest.net    932.21 Mbps       875.76 Mbps         46.08 ms
 Beijing    CU    375.84 Mbps       433.10 Mbps         201.92 ms
 Shanghai   CT    0.35 Mbps         349.86 Mbps         264.91 ms
 Shanghai   CU    9.91 Mbps         455.26 Mbps         311.67 ms
 Guangzhou  CU    4.57 Mbps         142.42 Mbps         305.25 ms
 Shenzhen   CU    4.48 Mbps         403.37 Mbps         330.25 ms
 Shenzhen   CM    279.79 Mbps       743.81 Mbps         293.29 ms
 Hongkong   CN    389.37 Mbps       510.30 Mbps         206.58 ms
 Singapore  SG    196.93 Mbps       199.42 Mbps         352.33 ms
 Tokyo      JP    158.58 Mbps       8.59 Mbps           228.41 ms
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@cybertech ~]#

monster bench

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 OS           : CentOS 8.3.2011 (64 Bit)
 Virt/Kernel  : KVM / 5.10.1-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
 CPU Model    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276G CPU @ 3.80GHz
 CPU Cores    : 2 @ 3792.000 MHz x86_64 16384 KB Cache
 CPU Flags    : AES-NI Enabled & VM-x/AMD-V Enabled
 Load Average : 0.26, 0.10, 0.02
 Total Space  : 20G (2.0G ~10% used)
 Total RAM    : 1981 MB (157 MB + 285 MB Buff in use)
 Total SWAP   : 256 MB (0 MB in use)
 Uptime       : 0 days 0:45
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ASN & ISP    : AS62240, World CDN Limited
 Organization : Inception Hosting Limited
 Location     : Enfield, United Kingdom / GB
 Region       : England
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 ## Geekbench v4 CPU Benchmark:

  Single Core : 5533  (EXCELLENT)
   Multi Core : 9276

 ## IO Test

 CPU Speed:
    bzip2     : 137 MB/s
   sha256     : 451 MB/s
   md5sum     : 743 MB/s

 RAM Speed:
   Avg. write : 5017.6 MB/s
   Avg. read  : 8840.5 MB/s

 Disk Speed:
   1st run    : 2.0 GB/s
   2nd run    : 2.0 GB/s
   3rd run    : 2.0 GB/s
   -----------------------
   Average    : 2048.0 MB/s

 ## Global Speedtest.net

 Location                       Upload           Download         Ping
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nearby                         646.07 Mbit/s    867.56 Mbit/s    31.63 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 USA, New York (Optimum)        232.38 Mbit/s    124.00 Mbit/s    74.602 ms
 USA, Chicago (Windstream)      202.43 Mbit/s    118.19 Mbit/s    93.853 ms
 USA, Dallas (Frontier)         172.48 Mbit/s    167.08 Mbit/s   107.793 ms
 USA, Miami (Frontier)          190.73 Mbit/s    150.33 Mbit/s   102.060 ms
 USA, Los Angeles (Windstream)  139.43 Mbit/s    184.62 Mbit/s   132.281 ms
 UK, London (toob Ltd)          899.11 Mbit/s    934.60 Mbit/s     2.085 ms
 France, Lyon (SFR)             575.64 Mbit/s    568.39 Mbit/s    18.198 ms
 Germany, Berlin (DNS:NET)      534.55 Mbit/s    385.71 Mbit/s    21.808 ms
 Spain, Madrid (MasMovil)       325.34 Mbit/s    133.10 Mbit/s    33.259 ms
 Italy, Rome (Unidata)          402.93 Mbit/s    365.75 Mbit/s    32.378 ms
 Russia, Moscow (Rostelecom)    309.60 Mbit/s    278.50 Mbit/s    56.428 ms
 Israel, Haifa (013Netvision)   251.46 Mbit/s    312.15 Mbit/s    69.477 ms
 India, New Delhi (GIGATEL)     121.23 Mbit/s    212.50 Mbit/s   153.562 ms
 Singapore (FirstMedia)         69.17 Mbit/s     34.26 Mbit/s    158.821 ms
 Japan, Tsukuba (SoftEther)     35.16 Mbit/s     56.96 Mbit/s    247.708 ms
 Australia, Sydney (Optus)      19.61 Mbit/s     50.20 Mbit/s    288.906 ms
 RSA, Randburg (Cool Ideas)     124.98 Mbit/s    269.42 Mbit/s   157.481 ms
 Brazil, Sao Paulo (Criare)     59.12 Mbit/s     85.10 Mbit/s    195.691 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Finished in : 8 min 57 sec
 Timestamp   : 2020-12-16 06:53:18 GMT
 Saved in    : /root/speedtest.log

 Share results:
 - https://www.speedtest.net/result/10597812427.png
 - https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15941537
 - https://clbin.com/UEYge

nench

[root@cybertech ~]# wget -qO- wget.racing/nench.sh | bash
-------------------------------------------------
 nench.sh v2019.07.20 -- https://git.io/nench.sh
 benchmark timestamp:    2020-12-16 06:55:00 UTC
-------------------------------------------------

Processor:    Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276G CPU @ 3.80GHz
CPU cores:    2
Frequency:    3792.000 MHz
RAM:          1.9Gi
Swap:         256Mi
Kernel:       Linux 5.10.1-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64 x86_64

Disks:
vda     20G  HDD

CPU: SHA256-hashing 500 MB
    1.663 seconds
CPU: bzip2-compressing 500 MB
    4.087 seconds
CPU: AES-encrypting 500 MB
    0.774 seconds

ioping: seek rate
    min/avg/max/mdev = 52.1 us / 243.2 us / 6.78 ms / 162.4 us
ioping: sequential read speed
    generated 10.8 k requests in 5.00 s, 2.63 GiB, 2.15 k iops, 538.7 MiB/s

dd: sequential write speed
    1st run:    1716.61 MiB/s
    2nd run:    1907.35 MiB/s
    3rd run:    1907.35 MiB/s
    average:    1843.77 MiB/s

IPv4 speedtests
    your IPv4:    185.164.136.xxxx

    Cachefly CDN:         107.53 MiB/s
    Leaseweb (NL):        13.57 MiB/s
    Softlayer DAL (US):   10.08 MiB/s
    Online.net (FR):      91.00 MiB/s
    OVH BHS (CA):         16.61 MiB/s

No IPv6 connectivity detected
-------------------------------------------------

[root@cybertech ~]#

Review of Nexus Bytes

dahartigan — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 04:01:08 +0000

Hey everyone, pull up a seat and gather round.. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here.. but...

I just realised today that I have been with Nexus Bytes for a whole year and thought it would be a good idea to share my experience with you. Call it a review if you like..

It all started one rainy morning on Friday, November 15th, 2019. I was browsing the interwebs and happened upon a deal which caught my eye and my wallet. The deal was crazy and not to make you jealous - but it is $4/month for 1 core, 1GB and 100GB of SSD. It comes with a free NAT backup service with the equivalent space, plus a free Blesta licence.. kind of a no-brainer.

This was awesome enough, but then the bossman decided to retire certain nodes and replace ALL services with the new stuff. So my VPS suddenly became super prem, the SSD became NVMe and the CPU turned into a Ryzen. Drooooool.

My VPS is number 318 which is quite early, I'm sure there are 317 (give or take) earlier services out there but this is still early. I suspect there are over 1000 now.

The service itself has of course been flawless. I have had zero issues with the service, actually ZERO issues. I have had 3 tickets all up. One I sent when I first signed up because I was silly and triggered a flag, oops, that was my bad. Second ticket was a friendly notice that my backup NAT service was using a little too much disk IO. Ooops, I fixed that, and again, that was my bad. The third ticket was to request an upgrade of RAM to 2GB (which was $3, almost double the price.. I should have done that earlier!!)

The tickets were all handled super quickly and professionally. Jay is a very good businessman who also possesses an excellent level of customer relations skills, so the ticket exchanges are very comfortable and professional - when I crack a joke in a ticket he laughs out of courtesy, I like that.

Something I should mention that should not be lost here, is the fact that this is the first service paid monthly from any LE* provider that I've consistently renewed for 12 months. I put credit on my NB account in advance to cover the upcoming fees, because for $4/month I feel like I'm pulling his pants down without buying dinner first. So for this to be a year-in-review, it's not unusual for a yearly service, but for me to renew 12 months without considering cancelling is something massive. I very routinely cancel monthlies.

I could post a benchmark here, and perhaps I will update this later with one, but I wanted to talk about the experience that comes with the very little money I've spent. I think I was fortunate that I made the move early to become a Nexus Bytes family member when the prices were lower (when Jay was basically selling himself on the street corner to get noticed) because I've witnessed the prices of his new services increase consistently over the 12 months to where they are now which is exactly how things should be IMO.

This post may be incoherent rambling, but I ain't not got experted english okay.

TL;DR - Nexus Bytes is prem. To quote Biggie.. "If you didn't know, now you know..."

73.

An honest review of extraordinary providers

flips — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 12:39:47 +0000

I've been planning on writing a nice review for @seriesn's NexusBytes for a while. They are offering a very good, performant and stable service. And when there was some hardware issue, it was promptly fixed, and I ended up with an even better deal. Not to mention Jay's friendly service and helpful support. And it's also amazing how he values existing customers (family), giving access to new perks/addons and favorable pricing. Outstanding!
Great host offering good prices and quality service in good locations. Feel free to signup using my NexusBytes aff.link.

When that's written, I also feel like praising a few other great providers:

MXroute's services provide excellent value for money, unrivaled quality email for low prices. Been using MXroute for some years now, and all my previous worries from using shared web hosting's included email hosting have vanished. And @jarland's been very helpful numerous times, so much that I purposefully hang around in the support chat to try to help out when I'm able to.

Inception Hosting and @AnthonySmith has also been great. I have had rock stable services at great prices. As my needs changed, Anthony helped me out, and for my use, the UK Clouvider location is just perfect (great connectivity)!
Aff.link: Inception Hosting

For shared web hosting I should also mention @MikePT's offerings. Great performing and stable shared and reseller web services by MyW.pt (aff.link). I've also gotten great and quick support for the few, small issues that surfaced. Recommended!

Honorable mentions: @mikho's mrvm.net and Gullo's Hosting by @cam!

I just realized the title might give association with more critical reviews. But this really is my honest opinion. All hosts have technical issues every now and then, but with these, I feel I've been so well taken care of, and issues have been sorted quickly.

(As for critical/more angry reviews, I try not to write those when I'm angry, as my anger clouds my judgements. And I don't feel I need to warn of any of my bad experiences right now.)

MXroute email provider review

bikegremlin — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:44:59 +0000

I think that good hosting, and other service (including the emails) providers are not a majority.
When looking at budget prices - it's even less likely to find high quality options.

In my experience so far, since August of 2019, MXroute has offered a very good, stable, and reliable email service. And deserve all the praise they can get. No hick-ups, no problems - just set and forget. As it should be.

I'm sure that most of the LESbians are already well aware of this, but in case any newbies make the mistake of joining this rotten place - thought it would be a good idea to write and share my good experience. Looking back - I only regret not having found out about MXroute earlier.

Sure, many hosting providers offer email "for free" (included in the price), but, at least in my experience, having tried several shared/reseller hosting providers (both budget, and "premium"), hosted email service, MXroute in particular (in my case), is head and shoulders above that (pros and cons of using hosted email service).

I don't know if they still sell lifetime offers - which is what I got. Relatively modest storage space, but I download all the emails to Gmail email client, so for me it is not an issue (normal people, concerned about their privacy, can use any other email client, or use MXroute emai storage space - I find Gmail more convenient, with all the pros and cons).

Keep up the good work @jarland & the co!

Inceptionhosting - Great uptime, friendly support

sonic — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 03:32:34 +0000

Hey guys,
We all know how great Inceptionhosting services are, right!
I just want to share my short reviews about Ant services.

I have 18 VPS there. I bought most of them on Black Friday 2019, the rest on 2018.
Support, Performance, Uptime are great, nothing to complain cuz Ant done right.

05:28:32 up 79 days, 19:17, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.21, 0.44

I'm going to grab more this coming Black Friday!

My review of BuyVM VPS and service

sgheghele — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 16:57:40 +0000

Even though BuyVM is well known in the LE communities, new users join on a daily basis, and they might not be aware of them. People often take the time to write a review when they are pissed off, while positive experiences are underreported. I think it is time for a review, so here it comes.

Full disclosure: my review is spontaneous, unsolicited, and there is (AFAIK) no rewarding systems at BuyVM for writing a review. In case there are, @Francisco, I accept cash only ;-)

I have had a few Slices (BuyVM name for VPS with dedicated virtual cores, or CPU threads) over the last 2 years or so. These are the major operating periods I have had most recently:

1x 8GB/$30 Slice in LV (Las Vegas) [Ryzen 3900X].
1x 512MB/$2.50 Slice in LV, [Ryzen 3900X].
3x 1GB/$3.00 Slice (LV [Ryzen 3900X], NY (New York) [Xeon E3-1241 v3], LU (Luxembourg) [Xeon E3-1241 v3] with Anycast.
The above 3x 1GB/$3.00 Slices plus 1x 8GB/$30 Slice in LV (Ryzen 3900X)
1x 8GB/$30 in NY (Ryzen 3900X).

I currently am with the 8GB/$30 one in NY, to which I came back once I let the 8GB/$30 one in LV go.
My reason for letting it go was that LV is too far away from me, geographically, and both NY and LU did not have Ryzen or Slabs (what they call their mountable block storage) at the time.
When I cancelled, I promised that I would come back the moment either LU or NY would get Ryzen and Slabs. So I did when NY got them. I plan to do the same when LU receives Ryzen and Slabs, with one caveat: better peering is needed (see below).

Overall, I am very satisfied with the service. The VPSs perform greatly. They are snappy for my usage, even the $3.00 ones and even those with the older Xeon CPUs. I host websites, "cloud" sync services, automation services, git, wikis, adblocker, seatable, and so on. I have never had any significant downtime, although some users do complain about downtimes on Discord, so I might just have been lucky (see blamefran.com). Even when I see this happening, Francisco is extremely receptive and quick to find out solutions.

The offered I/O, both for the NVMe and the Slab, is excellent. This is the NVMe at the root partition:

curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -ig
fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 279.43 MB/s  (69.8k) | 2.32 GB/s    (36.3k)
Write      | 280.17 MB/s  (70.0k) | 2.33 GB/s    (36.5k)
Total      | 559.61 MB/s (139.9k) | 4.66 GB/s    (72.8k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 2.46 GB/s     (4.8k) | 2.43 GB/s     (2.3k)
Write      | 2.59 GB/s     (5.0k) | 2.60 GB/s     (2.5k)
Total      | 5.05 GB/s     (9.8k) | 5.04 GB/s     (4.9k)

Slabs are also cheap, at $1.25/month for 250GB. I wish I could share I/O tests of the plain disk, but I have my Slab fully encrypted (LUKS) so the numbers are lower than they are supposed to be. IMHO, they are very good anyway!

curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -ig
fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 43.79 MB/s   (10.9k) | 74.73 MB/s    (1.1k)
Write      | 43.86 MB/s   (10.9k) | 75.12 MB/s    (1.1k)
Total      | 87.65 MB/s   (21.9k) | 149.86 MB/s   (2.3k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ---- 
Read       | 183.94 MB/s    (359) | 219.69 MB/s    (214)
Write      | 193.71 MB/s    (378) | 234.32 MB/s    (228)
Total      | 377.66 MB/s    (737) | 454.02 MB/s    (442)

If you need sequential read/write "dd" tests of the Slab, please let me know. I won't run further benchmarks on the Slice, though, because I do not want to stop my services unless it is necessary. You can find several of them on LET, though.

Their bandwidth is unmetered, yet you can not use their 1gbit/s uplink all the time. Rule of thumb (as far as I remember. I do not use a lot of bandwidth) is 100mbit/s 24/7 for the 4GB/$15 Slice, and you halve/double it going down/up in their pricing. I find it fair, and it exceeds my needs anyway.

On their support mechanisms. This is where BuyVM shines. First, their official ticket support system is useful and rather quick to fix issues. I received twice an IP with bad reputation, and they swapped them within minutes.

Then there is Discord. Despite their fair warning that Discord can cause cancer, as long as you stay away from the "misc" channels (or don't. Who am I to judge), people in there are supportive and non-judgmental. This includes both users and staff. Francisco hangs in there quite often and pretty much answers any inquiry, from issue reports, to feature suggestions and chitchats. You can pretty much see that, beyond the memes, he takes a lot of pride in his products and wants them to just perform the best. He also often asks users for what might be the next best thing to add to BuyVM.

Speaking of which, I find their pace of innovation to be schizophrenic and, at the same time, fair for the price. Latest additions in the last months include Cloudflare magic transit for their DDOS protected IPs, which costs a lot of money but is offered at $3.00 per IP, 5 free snapshots of any Slice and scheduled backups for ridiculously cheap pricing, custom ISOs for installing, copy/paste in the Web console (which is WAY more useful than it sounds), and BGP sessions to announce own networks.

No review should omit points for improvement. And there are, plenty of them. Some of them are my humble opinion and might not apply to most users. In no particular order:

Pricing does not scale up a lot, meaning that the least you pay, the higher is the value, IMHO. Everyone has their breaking point, but to me, the price/performance ratio of their first 3 Slices ($2.00, $3.50, $7.00) is way higher than the one of the three successive Slices ($15.00, $30.00, $45.00). Reason is that, especially after the $30.00/month mark, you start finding dedicated servers with perhaps older CPUs and lower characteristics (e.g., a single SSD). On the other hand, many features are included for zero price increase (e.g., snapshots, anycast) or with really low pricing (e.g., backups, DDOS protected IPs., Slabs). Another issue for some users is that pricing is non-flexible for Slices. For example, you can't have a 8GB ram Slice for less than $30/month if you needed, say, less storage.

Peering and transit could be improved, and it is not balanced between datacenters. LV is nicely connected (but too far away from where I am), followed by NY and then LU. The latter seems to be using Cogent only, which does not work very well in Europe. I was getting better transfer speeds from LV to Europe than from LU to..Europe. And I do not even live that far away from Luxembourg.
Speaking of LU, I feel that the datacenter is a bit of a second class citizen. This even taking into account the corona issues (right now, it is completely understandable that there is little going on there, as BuyVM people are not located in Europe). I am dying to have my data in LU, but this will only happen when LU receives Ryzen (and I heard that this might be coming by the end of the year), NVMe, Slabs, and better connectivity.

Edit: As a side note, NY also seems to use Cogent for Europe, but for some reason, it performs well, whereas LU does not. Maybe it is a matter of congestion at peak times.

The "single core" speed of Ryzen is good, but underwhelming on benchmarks (I see scores around 800-900 for Geekbench 5, whereas it is more typical to see scores around 1200-1300). Of course I brought this to the attention of Francisco, who transparently told me that he disabled most of AMD 4ghz+ turbo burst mode (sorry, I have no idea how AMD calls it) because of thermal throttling issues. On the one hand, this looks underwhelming, especially seeing bench results shared on LET/LES. On the other hand, two things: first, the VPS has never let me down. It just flies. I would have not noticed underwhelming CPU performance if I did not run benchmarks. Second, I do not know to which extent the turbo mode actively works for "normal" usage (normal as opposed to benchmarking stuff), so I do not know if and how other hosts that show higher single thread scores actually provide that performance on a daily basis. It might be better to have predictable good performance rather than mediocre performance with spikes of excellent performance. Nevertheless, Francisco promised me he would look at it and consider tweaking some settings.

Final one, and I will just say it: I find their overall ordering process lacking in many ways, potentially irritating for current customers, too. Having to wait for the 1st or the 7th of the month to snatch a VPS sucks, especially when there is a need to scale or offload. To be fair, this issue is almost non-existent currently for NY, because of the new nodes. Related to this issue is when their anti-fraud system kicks in. I completely understand their needs to protect themselves, but it is infuriating to wait weeks before finding the Slice you really needed, purchasing it, and find out that the order got rejected, even if you are a current customer who pays their bills, just because you forgot to disable your VPN, or whatever. Even if you open a ticket immediately after the issue shows up, their response will be that you need to order from scratch. And this might mean that you need to wait weeks. Again.
I think that existing customers should somehow get whitelisted.

Overall, I highly recommend the service and to at least try out their $3.00/month Slice and a Slab. They might do wonders. I also recommend trying out BuyVM for their exceptional support and their community. I am fairly sure that when Francisco reads this, the pride he takes in his service will result in some improvement one day or another.

Feel free to ask further questions about my experience!

[Free WebHosting] InfinityFree - Unlimited Disk Space & BW, 400 MySQL Dtb, Free SSL/Subdomains+DNS

Ympker — Thu, 28 May 2020 09:53:23 +0000

So I thought it was time about writing a review on InfinityFree since I have been using them for about a year now.

InfinityFree offers at no charge, what many would consider impossible:

"Unlimited" Disk Space (ofc there is probably some kind of FUP) and Bandwidth, 400 MySQL Databases, a PHP Selector, Free Subdomains, Free SSL and DNS, Free Softaculous and no ads on your website.

So, how does that work out then? Way too good, to be honest. They pride themselves in 99,99% Uptime and indeed my Uptime Roboto reported about 237 Minutes of Downtime within just about a year which equals about 4hours of downtime. Using uptime.is to calculate, 99,99% of Uptime would still allow a whopping 8 hours of downtime and it's nowhere near that.

Now, many of you may be disappointed because I didn't abuse the "Unlimited Disk Space", or provoke to see any limits being applied but I was able to host a few WordPress Divi website templates without an issue. Websites were loading fast-ish (not blazing fast but still good enough), SSL worked and I could bring my own domains 10/10.

You are limited to 3 "active accounts" on your dashboard, but you can add unlimited addon domains.
You can use about 30000 Inodes per account it seems.

And the Control Panel?.. is a cPanel rip-off, but this is positive, actually, as I am used to the workflow.

So, how do they make money then?
They show ads in the control panel (or in my case a "please disable your adblocker" notice; so you actually can block the ads), which is probably one way they make money. The other way is reminding you ever so often via E-Mail that you could very well upgrade to their premium tier. Fair enough, I'd say

TL;DR: What you see on the image below, is what you get (probably; judging from my experience:

They have an active forum (where people will complain about account deletions and other issues ever so often) and a Knowledgebase.

Overall, I have been happy and would recommend it for small projects of non-abusive/resource hungry nature

10/10 my free webhost to go to these days. Right now, I am not hosting any website with them, because I only trialed InfinityFree and have no actual use for it now. My HM reseller is still almost empty and my MyW reseller is running idle. Also I don't want to have more public facing domains than necessary where I have to put my imprint etc (german laws yay).

HotlineServers.com Review

Unixfy — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 14:44:51 +0000

Hotlineservers's 55% off recurring deal last month caught my eye, so I decided to write a review on it.

Check it out at my blog: https://blog.unixfy.net/hotlineservers-benchmark-review/

Let me know what you think!

Aquatis.host Minecraft Hosting - Review

Ympker — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 19:26:34 +0000

Just in case someone is looking for a cheap, yet performant Minecraft Hosting Solution.

Aquatis Minecraft Hosting: Click

So, the gf and I were looking for a small Minecraft server to play vanilla Minecraft (no mods) together. At first, I thought about setting up LGSM (like I'd usually do with gameservers) but since we wanted to go cheap, hassle-free setup&forget I was looking for Minecraft Hosting. Luckily, I remembered that I had used Aquatis in the past (for about 2 years) so I checked them out again.
Performance is still great and the Multicraftpanel is indeed useful. There's also a bunch of other useful features (see screenshots below), so I am quite happy for this "managed" Minecraft hosting now.
We are paying some 14$/year (yearly payment yields 20% discount) for the 1GB RAM plan and it's basically lag-free. Shouldn't have let the old plan expire, that one was 9,60$/year for the same plan but.. oh, well They are still dirt cheap for Minecraft hosting (most decent Minecraft Hosts start at 2$+/mo like Nitrado, Zap-Hosting, Gamed, Gameservers.eu, NGZ-Hosting, G-Portal...), so I won't complain.

It's worth noting that it's lag-free (at least we haven't noticed any lag) even though we picked the US location. US location (no idea with whom they are) is 1,5$/GB/mo and Germany location (Hetzner) 2,5$/GB/mo. There are discounts for 2GB RAM or higher plans though which brings it down to 1$/GB.

It is worth noting that although the US locations are running on only 2.x GHz CPUs performance is suprisingly well on a 1GB RAM instance with 2 concurrent players. A while back when I was with them we'd even play with 4ish ppl on that 1GB RAM (also US location). I'm sure their Hetzner locations performs even better.

Not sure if that's an error but one of their Texas Servers appears to be still running on HDD :P

At the end of the day if you rather want to make use of your idle VPS and throw smth like LGSM at it, go for it. If you just want to lean back and prefer a managed solution, however, odds are Aquatis won't be the worst pick.

Here are some screenshots of features and discounts. Enjoy!