96MB Low End VPS Review Part 48 – VMPort KVM
When I have completed my previous review for VMPort and asked for a refund for my payment last September, Ashley issued the refund quickly to me with one condition– I will come back and review their service in few months. I did get my refund but many reviews after, I still have not got back to VMPort. During this period, Ashley has started another line of business, KVMPort (although KVMPort.com is down for me as well as for isitup), offering services using KVM virtualization. During this period, Ashley has emailed me and contacted me via Twitter trying to get a review. After repeated apologies, I have finally got around to sign up with them and write a review for their KVM service.
And here is what I have seen from isitup at the moment:
Basic Information and Set Up
As usual, the package I am reviewing is the lowest KVM package that VMPort is offering and as per their offer on LowEndTalk, here is the specification and the price:
Note that the WHMCS is pointed to vmport.com with secured HTTPS connection.
The sign up process is a relatively standard one, once you click on the link in the offer page on LowEndTalk, you are taken to the sign up page automatically, which has the detailed specification of the plan listed. This is, as I have mentioned many times, something I truly appreciate, clearly knowing what I am getting is always one of the first criteria that I use when selecting a VPS provider.
For this particular plan, only the annual payment is available.
You can either have 400GB of bandwidth on 100Mbit port for free, or 5Mbit unmetered port for an extra 2.50 pounds per month:
The entire collection of installation CD seems to be shown on the sign up screen. There are a few of them thanks to the KVM virtualization. Proxmox is something I have tried a few weeks ago on one of my dedicated servers and fell in love with instantly for its ability to deploy VPS rapidly. Of course, for our testing purposes, the VPS has Debian 6 32 bit netinstall CD mounted.
And a few more Ubuntu templates:
Note that at the very bottom, you seem to have the option to request something else, which obviously would be a great news to someone who would like to set up Windows on one of the higher plans.
If you choose to have VMPort install the operating system for you, they will charge GBP15 of installation charge. This is pretty high considering that a few other KVM providers actually offers to install, at least for the first time, operating systems for free. I guess may be VMPort could do that too? Granted users can’t expect to reload their OS every other day and have the low end providers to do such for free, however at least an initial free OS reload seems to be a pretty reasonable request.
Activation is not instant for this VPS, in fact, I believe they only activate new VPS during their working hours, as I have received the payment confirmation from Paypal at 8:38pm and the VPS was not set up until next morning at 6:21am (both are EST so it would be close to noon in London?), therefore, if you are waiting for a quick activation, VMPort may not be your best option.
The WHMCS is using HTTPS connection, however Firefox has complained about the certificate somehow:
I think this happens because only part of the website is under HTTPS and part of it (I assume it would be the graphs) are not part of the encrypted connection and hence the overall page showed a problem. Although this is by no means a major issue (and probably occurred on many other provider’s WHMCS interface without me even noticing it), it would definitely be a nice to fix item.
In any case, the VPS control panel within WHMCS is active and running, with all buttons seems to work:
Note that in there is only the bandwidth usage bar and the bandwidth usage chart available.
VMPort also has a ticketing system with an add-on that actually indicates the average response time. When I was checking on the page, the statistic was not that impressive, presumably because it was late at night in UK:
There is also a link clearly informed us the hours of service and clearly indicated that they do not provide support 24×7. Many providers advertise “around-the-clock” support but more often than not it just means you can create the ticket at any time and they will respond during their daytime. Therefore, I really appreciate the honesty that VMPort has put in there.
If you have a twitter account, you can always subscribe to their Twitter page which should be able to give you the latest updates, including their server downtime as well. However even if you do not have a Twitter account, do not worry as VMPort actually has a status page that clearly shows the current status of their networks:
Click on the notice (which was updated a lot less often than the Twitter page by the way, it has only shown one outage so far this year) and you will see the details on the service outage:
As you can see, there is very detailed description of the outage as well as the resolution.
SolusVM control panel is on port 5656 with HTTPS connection and once logged in, a standard SolusVM control page was shown:
As you can see, there is no central backup feature and there is no instant rDNS as well:
The variety of OS installation images available with KVMPort is pretty much the same as what is shown on the WHMCS system. Of course, with the KVM system, you can always request for your own iso images to be loaded.
Test on the VPS
As mentioned above, the VPS that I have received for testing has 128MB of RAM, 7GB of hard drive space and 400GB of bandwidth on 100mbit port, the VPS is located in SafeHosts facilities in Cheltenham, UK with test IP: 217.146.95.31 (as per this post on WHT). I have installed Deabin 6 32 bit for testing purposes, as mentioned before.
On a fresh OS installation, the VPS uses about 15MB of RAM:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 121 51 69 0 2 34
-/+ buffers/cache: 15 106
Swap: 236 0 236
Top output showing the processes running:
top - 20:06:25 up 1 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 58 total, 1 running, 57 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 123996k total, 53000k used, 70996k free, 2360k buffers
Swap: 242680k total, 0k used, 242680k free, 35056k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1285 root 20 0 8264 2864 2344 S 0.0 2.3 0:00.08 sshd
1260 root 20 0 5516 2820 1468 S 0.0 2.3 0:00.12 bash
1287 root 20 0 5508 2812 1464 S 0.0 2.3 0:00.11 bash
853 root 20 0 27332 1476 964 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.00 rsyslogd
1201 root 20 0 2564 1308 1024 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.05 login
1306 root 20 0 2336 1124 904 R 0.3 0.9 0:00.01 top
1258 root 20 0 5500 972 580 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 sshd
1177 Debian-e 20 0 6520 928 612 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 exim4
295 root 16 -4 2488 920 404 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.02 udevd
448 root 18 -2 2484 844 328 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 udevd
449 root 18 -2 2484 844 328 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 udevd
720 statd 20 0 1940 792 656 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 rpc.statd
963 root 20 0 3788 772 600 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 cron
1 root 20 0 2036 708 616 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.57 init
1184 root 20 0 1708 584 480 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.00 acpid
1204 root 20 0 1712 572 492 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.00 getty
1202 root 20 0 1712 568 492 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.00 getty
And the htop output:
About 640MB of hard drive space was used:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 6.7G 642M 5.7G 10% / tmpfs 61M 0 61M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 57M 112K 57M 1% /dev tmpfs 61M 0 61M 0% /dev/shm
And the Inodes are set to pretty good values as well:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/sda1 443520 25321 418199 6% / tmpfs 15499 5 15494 1% /lib/init/rw udev 14388 543 13845 4% /dev tmpfs 15499 1 15498 1% /dev/shm
After the full LNMP stack was installed, 32MB of RAM was used:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 121 112 8 0 4 75
-/+ buffers/cache: 32 88
Swap: 236 7 229
Top output showing the processes running:
top - 08:41:21 up 36 min, 2 users, load average: 0.05, 0.53, 0.49
Tasks: 68 total, 1 running, 67 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 123996k total, 115696k used, 8300k free, 5096k buffers
Swap: 242680k total, 7356k used, 235324k free, 77308k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2837 www 20 0 15004 10m 432 S 0.0 8.9 0:00.01 nginx
2815 mysql 20 0 33948 4640 2040 S 0.0 3.7 0:00.02 mysqld
2825 root 20 0 24124 4548 1408 S 0.0 3.7 0:00.02 php-cgi
2827 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 3.4 0:00.00 php-cgi
2828 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 3.4 0:00.00 php-cgi
2829 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 3.4 0:00.00 php-cgi
2830 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 3.4 0:00.00 php-cgi
2831 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 3.4 0:00.00 php-cgi
2866 root 20 0 2336 1144 904 R 0.0 0.9 0:00.00 top
1287 root 20 0 5508 928 620 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.14 bash
853 root 20 0 27452 760 540 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 rsyslogd
2835 root 20 0 4792 716 272 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 nginx
1285 root 20 0 8656 572 380 S 0.0 0.5 0:01.19 sshd
2713 root 20 0 1752 560 472 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.00 mysqld_safe
448 root 18 -2 2484 404 276 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 udevd
449 root 18 -2 2484 400 276 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 udevd
295 root 16 -4 2488 352 272 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.02 udevd
963 root 20 0 3788 240 196 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 cron
1 root 20 0 2036 216 192 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.58 init
1177 Debian-e 20 0 6520 216 160 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 exim4
1201 root 20 0 2564 196 196 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 login
1258 root 20 0 5500 188 188 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd
1202 root 20 0 1712 172 172 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1203 root 20 0 1712 172 172 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1204 root 20 0 1712 172 172 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1205 root 20 0 1712 172 172 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1206 root 20 0 1712 172 172 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
720 statd 20 0 1940 168 168 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 rpc.statd
1260 root 20 0 5516 160 160 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.12 bash
707 daemon 20 0 1812 140 140 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 portmap
1184 root 20 0 1708 140 140 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
889 daemon 20 0 2164 104 104 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 atd
1227 root 20 0 2336 76 76 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 dhclient
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.32 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
And the htop output:
Almost 2GB of hard drive space were used:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 6.7G 1.9G 4.5G 30% / tmpfs 61M 0 61M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 57M 112K 57M 1% /dev tmpfs 61M 0 61M 0% /dev/shm
And again, the inodes are set to pretty decent values:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/sda1 443520 74002 369518 17% / tmpfs 15499 5 15494 1% /lib/init/rw udev 14388 543 13845 4% /dev tmpfs 15499 1 15498 1% /dev/shm
Uptime shows the node is pretty much idle:
uptime 06:59:49 up 5 days, 22:54, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Which is confirmed again by the output of vmstat:
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 22156 45724 17160 37408 0 0 3 10 23 38 0 0 99 0
CPUInfo shows the VPS was given one processor core, which is running at 3.9GHz:
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 6 model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1 stepping : 3 cpu MHz : 3093.128 cache size : 32 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 4 wp : yes flags : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm up pni hypervisor bogomips : 6186.25 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
And meminfo shows nothing too interesting:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 123996 kB MemFree: 4788 kB Buffers: 6152 kB Cached: 80700 kB SwapCached: 3184 kB Active: 27344 kB Inactive: 81448 kB Active(anon): 8452 kB Inactive(anon): 13500 kB Active(file): 18892 kB Inactive(file): 67948 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 123996 kB LowFree: 4788 kB SwapTotal: 242680 kB SwapFree: 235060 kB Dirty: 0 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 19408 kB Mapped: 5012 kB Shmem: 12 kB Slab: 7344 kB SReclaimable: 4048 kB SUnreclaim: 3296 kB KernelStack: 560 kB PageTables: 696 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 304676 kB Committed_AS: 108624 kB VmallocTotal: 897080 kB VmallocUsed: 5528 kB VmallocChunk: 883824 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 4096 kB DirectMap4k: 12224 kB DirectMap4M: 118784 kB
And the time sync results:
time sync real 0m0.020s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.000s
The disk I/O speed on most of the KVM providers that I have tested before were never too impressive, however, with VMPort, although there is really no major surprise, the I/O is definitely pretty good:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 12.876 s, 83.4 MB/s
And testing again shows similar results:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 13.3474 s, 80.4 MB/s
The ioping output is pretty stable as well, oscillating between 0.4-0.5ms range most of the time:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=1 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=2 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=3 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=4 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=5 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=6 time=0.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=7 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=8 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=9 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=10 time=0.4 ms --- . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9014.2 ms, 2650 iops, 10.4 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/0.4/0.5/0.1 ms
And testing again showed similar output:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=1 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=2 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=3 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=4 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=5 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=6 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=7 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=8 time=1.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=9 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1): request=10 time=0.5 ms --- . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/7501dc9b-7dae-41bc-863a-e12e7be73cd1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9017.1 ms, 1955 iops, 7.6 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/0.5/1.4/0.3 ms
The network speed is pretty good, I was be able to get more than 10MB/s on the Cachefly download test:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-01 09:02:49-- 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 10.8M/s in 9.5s 2012-05-01 09:02:58 (10.5 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Testing again showed similar results as well:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-01 11:59:18-- 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 9.78M/s in 9.6s 2012-05-01 11:59:28 (10.4 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
The upload tests, on the other hand, are less impressive, at least with my Quickweb VPS:
The first one is a Quickweb Xen box located in Chicago, IL, along the east coast:
wget 178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-01 22:28:51-- http://178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 178.239.xxx.xxx:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 780K/s in 96s 2012-05-01 22:30:27 (1.04 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
As you can see, the speed is a little above 1MB/s, which is less than ideal.
The next test VPS is a Quickweb VPS in Los Angeles, CA:
wget 178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-01 22:35:51-- http://178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 178.239.xxx.xxx:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 741K/s in 3m 1s 2012-05-01 22:38:52 (566 KB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
As you can see, the network speed is even worse.
However, it is a completely different picture when it comes to the connection speed in conntinental Europe, with the test VPS that I have in Maidenhead, UK with OpenITC/XenVZ, the speed is close to 6MB/s:
wget 178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-02 02:39:38-- http://178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 178.239.xxx.xxx:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 6.03M/s in 17s 2012-05-02 02:39:55 (5.93 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Just when I was writing this post, I decided to do a test with my Inception Hosting VPS in Neterlands just to see how well it goes, and the speed is definitely much better than what I see with my VPS in US as well:
wget 178.239.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-05-07 03:28:03-- http://178.239.170.87/100mb.test Connecting to 178.239.xxx.xxx:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 3.96M/s in 26s 2012-05-07 03:28:29 (3.90 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
And finally, benchmark time, with barely one CPU core available, I was, quite frankly, a little surprised when this little box managed to score close to 1800 points in the UnixBench tests:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
Version 5.1.3 Based on the Byte Magazine Unix Benchmark
Multi-CPU version Version 5 revisions by Ian Smith,
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
January 13, 2011 johantheghost at yahoo period com
1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Process Creation 1 2 3
1 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: *****: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Mon Mar 26 05:20:33 UTC 2012
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1 (6186.2 bogomips)
x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET
09:04:44 up 59 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.08; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue May 01 2012 09:04:44 - 09:32:55
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 20313842.6 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 3099.4 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 6191.4 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1085511.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 292769.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 2423145.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 2309162.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 419135.6 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 24179.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 8306.5 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1064.2 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 3828172.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 20313842.6 1740.7
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 3099.4 563.5
Execl Throughput 43.0 6191.4 1439.9
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 1085511.1 2741.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 292769.0 1769.0
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 2423145.2 4177.8
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 2309162.9 1856.2
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 419135.6 1047.8
Process Creation 126.0 24179.7 1919.0
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 8306.5 1959.1
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 1064.2 1773.6
System Call Overhead 15000.0 3828172.8 2552.1
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1770.2
Testing again showed similar results:
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Version 5.1.3 Based on the Byte Magazine Unix Benchmark
Multi-CPU version Version 5 revisions by Ian Smith,
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
January 13, 2011 johantheghost at yahoo period com
1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Process Creation 1 2 3
1 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: ******: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Mon Mar 26 05:20:33 UTC 2012
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1 (6186.2 bogomips)
x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET
11:01:14 up 2:56, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue May 01 2012 11:01:14 - 11:29:27
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 20391867.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 3104.3 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 6095.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1046193.9 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 290277.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 2407136.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 2373393.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 430571.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 23483.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 8330.9 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1070.5 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 3753999.6 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 20391867.4 1747.4
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 3104.3 564.4
Execl Throughput 43.0 6095.7 1417.6
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 1046193.9 2641.9
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 290277.3 1753.9
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 2407136.2 4150.2
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 2373393.0 1907.9
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 430571.1 1076.4
Process Creation 126.0 23483.7 1863.8
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 8330.9 1964.8
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 1070.5 1784.2
System Call Overhead 15000.0 3753999.6 2502.7
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1763.2
The Geekbench score is pretty good as well at more than 5500 points:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686
Model: Linux PC (QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 3
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 3.09 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 64.0 KB
L1 Data Cache: 64.0 KB
L2 Cache: 512 KB
L3 Cache: 0.00 B
Bus Frequency: 0.00 Hz
Memory: 121 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 2075 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2228 ||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 2809 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2723 ||||||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 3032 ||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3137 ||||||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 2378 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2345 |||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 2314 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2424 |||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 3982 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3990 |||||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2652 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2709 ||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 4382 |||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4651 ||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5202 ||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 6012 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 3423 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3466 |||||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 4681 ||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3743 ||||||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 10721 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 10780 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 8372 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 8419 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 6419 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 10354 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 4913 |||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 6692 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 9829 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 5015 ||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6354 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 5739 ||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5877 |||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 5482 |||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6222 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 6072 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4566 ||||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 2786 |||||||||||
Floating Point Score: 5658 ||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 7641 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 5665 ||||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 5050 ||||||||||||||||||||
Testing again showed slightly worse score but is still pretty good:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686
Model: Linux PC (QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 3
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 3.09 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 64.0 KB
L1 Data Cache: 64.0 KB
L2 Cache: 512 KB
L3 Cache: 0.00 B
Bus Frequency: 0.00 Hz
Memory: 121 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 2030 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2198 ||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 2773 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2702 ||||||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 2956 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3062 ||||||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 2315 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2285 |||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 2288 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2354 |||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 3874 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3977 |||||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2588 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2631 ||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 4192 ||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4440 |||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5146 ||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 5921 |||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 3446 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3441 |||||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 4633 ||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3735 ||||||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 10496 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 10598 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 8328 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 8368 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 6759 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 10522 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 4975 |||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 6783 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 13109 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 5706 ||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6863 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 5956 |||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6511 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 5725 ||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6546 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 6159 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4868 |||||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 2734 ||||||||||
Floating Point Score: 5568 ||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 8429 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 6041 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 5195 ||||||||||||||||||||
Customer Service and Support
As mentioned above, Ashley and his team does not offer around the clock support. This is probably a factor that some of you will take into consideration, particularly for those who are not living in the European time zones. However, during the regular business hours in UK, Ashley actually respond to tickets really fast. My support ticket regarding the connection speed to US was logged at 3:55AM UK time and was not responded until 10:36AM the next morning, however my reply that was submitted at 13:18 was replied within 4 minutes and Ashley has actually offered me an honest suggestion to ask me to move to the US for better speed in the continental US. As you can see, the tickets would be responded really fast provided if you can ask your question “at the right time”.
Conclusion
There are quite a few great offers out of UK for VPS, all with pretty good reputations and stable servers, making UK definitely one of the most competitive market in Europe. As such, it was definitely an uphill battle for Ashley and VMPort. However, I am pleased that Ashley has run a pretty tight ship even with such presumably thin profit margin. Although it is definitely not perfect – networking speed is less than ideal, at least for the VPS in continental US, for instance, and the supporting hours are not 24×7 which makes the people who are not living in the UK time zone a bit difficult to work with (although I do appreciate Ashley’s honesty in putting out the support hours upfront and also the server status page, which could be nice if it is updated), the VPS I used for testing nonetheless has great I/O and if you are living in the European time zone, VMPort would definitely offer rapid response and great connections.