Hey everyone, I'm going to try a new kind of review format out :) Basically, I'll have a VPS and will do basic benchmarks and you guys can ask me to test certain things or ask me for views and opinions on the service! Please note this is my first review of a VPS, I looked at 96mb.com for inspiration (thanks for the blog, it's awesome!) and if anyone has suggestions please note them below :)
Anyway, for this review I have a 256 MB Xen PV GoWEB review server based in Germany. The base plan is 3.50 euros a month and comes with 256 MB RAM, 1 CPU Core, 5 GB HD and 100 GB bandwidth. Standard disclaimers apply: I am not affiliated with GoWEB in any way and this server was given to me for review purposes, it could have been rigged to perform faster then the usual plans.
Basics:
IRC is disallowed in the TOS (which can be found here: https://www.goweb.de/tos.php) which may discourage some people. Fortunately there doesn't appear to be anything about torrenting so as far as I know it's allowed (legal files only of course!) :)
Support:
Support was fast with my review VPS request being answered within half an hour (I sent the request via email and it was added to the WHMC ticket system automatically). In the first email support gave me the wrong IP (it was manually provisioned with me not having a Solus account) but after sending an email support sent me the correct details and reinstalled the server to Debian 6 as I requested (Unfortunately they only offer 32 bit Debian 6 so I had to request Debian 5 to do the tests). The setup email contained the password in plain text and requests to remove the network cap and add more inodes were met with a swift response (about 20 minutes) and the actions were carried out quickly.
Defaults:
Default RAM usage was fairly low with the install using maybe 30 MB of RAM after boot up (it seems to be a stock Debian install).
max:~# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 270 48 221 0 2 14
-/+ buffers/cache: 31 238
Swap: 1023 0 1023
Default disk usage was quite fairly low, I suspect that the Debian 6 install is simply a stock install.
max:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 5.0G 634M 4.1G 14% / tmpfs 127M 0 127M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 110M 80K 110M 1% /dev tmpfs 127M 0 127M 0% /dev/shm
Basic Information:
/proc/cpuinfo showed one usable core which matched the plan description well:
max:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 44 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 2400.084 cache size : 12288 KB physical id : 1 siblings : 1 core id : 9 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 51 initial apicid : 51 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 11 wp : yes flags : fpu de tsc msr pae cx8 sep cmov pat clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht nx constant_tsc up pni ssse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt bogomips : 4806.42 clflush size : 64 power management:
/proc/meminfo showed typical results as well:
max:~# cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 276980 kB MemFree: 227112 kB Buffers: 2736 kB Cached: 14628 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 12524 kB Inactive: 7928 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 276980 kB LowFree: 227112 kB SwapTotal: 1048568 kB SwapFree: 1048568 kB Dirty: 28 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 3116 kB Mapped: 3728 kB Slab: 3156 kB SReclaimable: 1200 kB SUnreclaim: 1956 kB PageTables: 404 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 1187056 kB Committed_AS: 35220 kB VmallocTotal: 600056 kB VmallocUsed: 3224 kB VmallocChunk: 596368 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
Inode allocation was fairly good for a budget VPS (as far as I know, I don't have a great deal of experience with inode counts):
max:~# df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 327680 18385 309295 6% / tmpfs 32363 4 32359 1% /lib/init/rw udev 27976 447 27529 2% /dev tmpfs 32363 1 32362 1% /dev/shm
After sending a message the count was increased:
max:~# df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 983040 21069 961971 3% / tmpfs 34622 4 34618 1% /lib/init/rw udev 34622 1022 33600 3% /dev tmpfs 34622 1 34621 1% /dev/shm
VMStat showed good values:
max:~# vmstat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 227112 2708 14640 0 0 38 7 36 35 1 0 99 0
Tests:
Each test was run three times and the middle ranked test was picked.
Cachefly Speedtest (the network on the test VPS seems to have been limited, take this with a grain of salt):
max:~# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test --2011-08-26 13:15:26-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175 Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: “/dev/null” 100%[====>] 104,857,600 138K/s in 12m 16s 2011-08-26 13:27:42 (139 KB/s) - “/dev/null” saved [104857600/104857600]
Ping Tests (IPv6 didn't appear to work out of the box):
max:~# ping -c 3 google.com PING google.com (74.125.230.83) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 74.125.230.83: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=11.1 ms 64 bytes from 74.125.230.83: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=11.5 ms 64 bytes from 74.125.230.83: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=10.5 ms --- google.com ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2009ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 10.561/11.106/11.560/0.412 ms max:~# ping6 -c 3 ipv6.google.com connect: Network is unreachable
Disk IO Test (tests ranged from 130 MB/s to 230 MB/s):
max:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.41937 s, 198 MB/s