96MB Low End VPS Review Part XXXX – DotVPS
Back in November, DotVPS was featured in LEB for a really sweet deal of getting a 512MB dedicated memory (1024MB burstable memory) VPS for under 5 USD per month. The best part? The Netherland location has a 1Gbps unmetered bandwidth. Yes, I have to say although I have not been in the Low End VPS community for a long time, this is, as far as I can remember, the first(second at most) time that I have seen a 512MB unmetered bandwidth VPS for under 5 USD per month. Little surprise that their stock vanished in just one day. Since then, there were several “incidents” happened to them, such as understaffed, and died hard disks at various times. Nonetheless, Jack has added a few more stocks in the days after the initial stock ran dry and I have decided to pick one up to see how well it works for me.
General Information and Set Up
As per LEB’s post, here is what you are getting for 4.98USD per month:
Note that only the Amsterdam location offers unmetered bandwidth at 1Gbit port, the Jacksonville, Florida location only offers 100Mbit port, but both have the same price tag (however the port speed was capped in several occasions due to abuse).
The WHMCS system is using the HTTPS protocol, and the set up was instant, I received the VPS login detail the moment I received the confirmation of payment from Paypal. Payment was made to Jack himself rather than the company. Personally I do not care who is receiving the money on the other end, however a company name and a business Paypal account would definitely be more professional-looking in this case.
The set up email was heavily customized and by no means it looks like the standard email that you will get from SolusVM:
Once you have received the set up email, login into the WHMCS system and you get to see the control panel of the VPS under My Services. The three standard bars and graphs all appear to be working properly and the buttons to control the VPS appears to work as well, I was able to shutdown and boot the VPS, as well as change the root password, through the WHMCS interface, which was something convenient.
The URL of SolusVM was actually not listed on the welcome email directly, instead, a hyperlink link was provided and it is actually running on a standard port on HTTP interface. Yes, you read it correctly, they are actually running SolusVM on port 80! I am not sure why most of the VPS providers do not seems to like the idea of having the SolusVM control panel on port 80, is it really a lot of work to do? I have to say a lot of public Internet (such as the one I used in the airport last month) blocked out most of the non-standard port for safety reasons and having a SolusVM control panel that works on port 80 so that I can control my VPS even when I am running my laptop on public Internet would be really helpful.
In any case, once logged into the SolusVM control panel using the user name assigned by DotVPS, you are greeted by a pretty standard SolusVM interface. Note that there is no IPv6 address available at the moment as I was told that they are still waiting for the upstream to get IPv6 working. Furthermore, apparently you won’t be able to run SIT interface to make use of the IPv6 tunnel by Hurricanes Electric since the interface was not enabled.
However, there is a highlight though, the Central Backup is enabled in the SolusVM control panel and DotVPS was generous enough to offer not just one, but two, central backup slots. Although this feature does require more hard drive space, which is a cost to the VPS providers, and many of us tend to have our own nightly cron jobs, it is still a feature that is really nice to have. Believe it or not, I am always unlucky enough to have a broken backup on my own NAS at home whenever I am having issue getting 96MB running. In fact, Anthony from InceptionHosting has already seen his comments removed twice due to such issues, and no, I do not hate anyone by the name Anthony.
Instant rDNS is not available though, although I would imagine that it takes just a ticket to get the rDNS set up and running.
There are quite a few Linux OS distributions available for install, which covers pretty much all the relatively popular Linux distributions that I can think of, best of all, they have several Ubuntu templates with applications such as file server and PHPBB preinstalled, which is really convenient. However those are based on Ubuntu 8.4, which is rather outdated.
Test on the VPS
As mentioned above, the VPS that I have signed up for has 100GB of hard drive space, an amazing 100GB of hard drive space and it is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, I have installed Debian 6 32 bit for testing purposes.
With the fresh OS installation, the VPS uses less than 20MB of memory, which is standard for the OpenVZ VPS.
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1024 17 1006 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 17 1006
Swap: 0 0 0
Top output showing the processes running:
top - 00:02:03 up 22 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 13 total, 1 running, 12 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1048576k total, 16944k used, 1031632k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1693 root 15 0 8540 3020 2468 S 0 0.3 0:00.08 sshd
1410 root 15 0 5132 2428 1180 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
1411 www-data 25 0 5132 1840 584 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2
1734 root 16 0 2956 1608 1288 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
1627 root 18 0 9984 1540 500 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 sendmail-mta
1771 root 15 0 2324 1064 872 R 0 0.1 0:00.00 top
1642 root 18 0 5484 968 576 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 sshd
1432 root 15 0 2284 852 664 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 cron
1581 root 18 0 2388 832 668 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 xinetd
1381 root 18 0 8664 788 448 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 saslauthd
1 root 15 0 2024 676 584 S 0 0.1 0:00.19 init
1396 root 15 0 1732 628 504 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 syslogd
1382 root 18 0 8664 504 164 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 saslauthd
And the htop output:
About 400MB of hard drive space was used after the fresh OS intallation:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/simfs 100G 413M 100G 1% / tmpfs 512M 0 512M 0% /lib/init/rw tmpfs 512M 0 512M 0% /dev/shm
And the iNodes values are set to pretty high as well:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/simfs 52428800 26125 52402675 1% / tmpfs 131072 4 131068 1% /lib/init/rw tmpfs 131072 1 131071 1% /dev/shm
With the full LNMP stack installed, 64MB of RAM was used:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1024 64 959 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 64 959
Swap: 0 0 0
Top output showing the processes running:
top - 08:52:18 up 1 day, 4:12, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Tasks: 23 total, 2 running, 21 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: 1048576k total, 65836k used, 982740k free, 0k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 18185 www 15 0 14996 11m 776 S 0 1.1 0:00.48 nginx 5916 mysql 15 0 34236 4872 2216 S 0 0.5 0:00.00 mysqld 18167 root 15 0 22612 4524 1380 S 0 0.4 0:00.82 php-cgi 18170 www 18 0 22612 4136 992 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 php-cgi 18172 www 18 0 22612 4136 992 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 php-cgi 18175 www 18 0 22612 4136 992 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 php-cgi 18176 www 18 0 22612 4136 992 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 php-cgi 18177 www 25 0 22612 4136 992 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 php-cgi 11775 root 16 0 8540 3012 2468 R 0 0.3 0:00.09 sshd 1846 root 15 0 2972 1648 1308 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash 11777 root 16 0 2956 1612 1288 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash 1627 root 18 0 9984 1540 500 S 0 0.1 0:00.49 sendmail-mta 1845 root 18 0 3048 1352 852 S 0 0.1 0:01.51 screen 5813 root 18 0 2680 1212 1000 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 mysqld_safe 11783 root 15 0 2324 1068 876 R 0 0.1 0:00.00 top 1642 root 15 0 5484 968 576 S 0 0.1 0:00.12 sshd 1432 root 15 0 2284 852 664 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 cron
And the htop output:
2.7GB of hard drive space was used to run the stack:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/simfs 100G 2.7G 98G 3% / tmpfs 512M 0 512M 0% /lib/init/rw tmpfs 512M 0 512M 0% /dev/shm
Vmstat shows the box is mostly idle:
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 1031596 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5432 0 0 100 0
As well as the uptime output:
uptime 10:04:21 up 5:24, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Beancounters were set to pretty high values:
cat /proc/user_beancounters
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
793: kmemsize 3064566 3158165 2147483646 2147483646 0
lockedpages 0 0 999999 999999 0
privvmpages 16720 16696 262144 262144 0
shmpages 642 658 131072 131072 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numproc 25 26 999999 999999 0
physpages 7210 7671 0 2147483647 0
vmguarpages 0 0 131072 2147483647 0
oomguarpages 7210 7671 131072 2147483647 0
numtcpsock 7 7 7999992 7999992 0
numflock 5 6 999999 999999 0
numpty 2 2 500000 500000 0
numsiginfo 0 2 999999 999999 0
tcpsndbuf 124856 124856 214748160 396774400 0
tcprcvbuf 114688 114688 214748160 396774400 0
othersockbuf 11640 29096 214748160 396774400 0
dgramrcvbuf 0 8472 214748160 396774400 0
numothersock 15 18 7999992 7999992 0
dcachesize 0 0 2147483646 2147483646 0
numfile 568 594 23999976 23999976 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numiptent 24 24 999999 999999 0
CPUInfo shows there are two Xeon E5506 cores assigned to the VPS and none of them are throttled:
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 26 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz stepping : 5 cpu MHz : 2133.463 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 11 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc nonstop_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm bogomips : 4266.92 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: [8] processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 26 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz stepping : 5 cpu MHz : 2133.463 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 1 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 11 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc nonstop_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm bogomips : 4312.64 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: [8]
The output of meminfo does not show anything new:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 1048576 kB MemFree: 982864 kB Buffers: 0 kB Cached: 0 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 0 kB Inactive: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 1048576 kB LowFree: 982864 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB Dirty: 1040 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 0 kB Mapped: 0 kB Slab: 0 kB PageTables: 0 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB CommitLimit: 0 kB Committed_AS: 0 kB VmallocTotal: 0 kB VmallocUsed: 0 kB VmallocChunk: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
And vzfree, which I belive is derived from the beancounters, does not show any signs of memory overselling:
vzfree
Total Used Free
Kernel: 2048.00M 2.92M 2045.08M
Allocate: 1024.00M 64.20M 959.80M (512M Guaranteed)
Commit: 512.00M 32.05M 479.95M (45.4% of Allocated)
Swap: 0.00M (0.0% of Committed)
Time sync output is pretty “normal” as well:
time sync real 0m0.101s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.004s
Disk I/O is actually pretty low, however still within the usable range:
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, 29.5791 s, 36.3 MB/s
Testing again has once again disappointed me, especially when the disk I/O was in three digit range in the last review:
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, 26.9211 s, 39.9 MB/s
The ioping is similar to the dd output as well, which shows a long roundtrip time and very unstable readings:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=1 time=97.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=2 time=197.6 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=3 time=33.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=4 time=144.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=5 time=78.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=6 time=79.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=7 time=81.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=8 time=59.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=9 time=84.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=10 time=18.0 ms --- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9881.4 ms, 11 iops, 0.0 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 18.0/87.4/197.6/49.1 ms
Testing again did not show anything better:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=1 time=43.7 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=2 time=76.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=3 time=109.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=4 time=124.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=5 time=71.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=6 time=154.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=7 time=226.8 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=8 time=216.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=9 time=204.0 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=10 time=154.9 ms --- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 10387.8 ms, 7 iops, 0.0 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 43.7/138.2/226.8/60.9 ms
The network speed is pretty unstable as well, although I do not really see it is on the Gbit port from the Cachefly download test:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-12-30 11:17:54-- 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 3.18M/s in 16s 2011-12-30 11:18:10 (6.31 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Testing again, and the results is more or less similar.
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-12-30 11:23:37-- 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 9.46M/s in 25s 2011-12-30 11:24:02 (4.03 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Quite frankly speaking, it looks to me more like a 100mbit port than a 1Gbit port.
Uploading tests hardly show anyting impressive as well, first from BuffaloVPS in Chicago,IL:
wget 94.102.55.170/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-12-30 14:58:28-- http://94.102.55.170/100mb.test Connecting to 94.102.55.170:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 2.52M/s in 33s 2011-12-30 14:59:02 (3.03 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Next, BuyVM in San Jose, CA:
wget 94.102.55.170/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-12-30 19:26:30-- http://94.102.55.170/100mb.test Connecting to 94.102.55.170:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 2.25M/s in 38s 2011-12-30 19:27:08 (2.66 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Finally, Quickweb in London, UK:
wget 94.102.55.170/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-12-30 19:48:19-- http://94.102.55.170/100mb.test Connecting to 94.102.55.170:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 3.35M/s in 30s 2011-12-30 19:48:49 (3.33 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
As you can see, none of them was more than 4MB/s, which is pretty bad.
Finally, the UnixBench tests, even with two CPU cores that are pretty powerful, barely managed to climb through 1000 points:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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
2 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Process Creation 1 2 3
2 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
2 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: ******: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-274.7.1.el5.028stab095.1 -- #1 SMP Mon Oct 24 20:49:24 MSD 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz (4266.9 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz (4312.6 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
11:28:14 up 6:48, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.05, 0.01; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Dec 30 2011 11:28:14 - 11:56:57
2 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 11262162.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 2206.2 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3242.5 lps (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 381729.5 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 111409.4 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 826808.5 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 743841.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 130842.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 10409.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4130.5 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 842.5 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 554891.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 11262162.4 965.1
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 2206.2 401.1
Execl Throughput 43.0 3242.5 754.1
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 381729.5 964.0
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 111409.4 673.2
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 826808.5 1425.5
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 743841.7 597.9
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 130842.9 327.1
Process Creation 126.0 10409.7 826.2
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4130.5 974.2
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 842.5 1404.2
System Call Overhead 15000.0 554891.2 369.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 727.8
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Dec 30 2011 11:56:57 - 12:25:23
2 CPUs in system; running 2 parallel copies of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 22238872.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 4414.8 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 4317.7 lps (29.7 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 215584.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 75353.7 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 551178.7 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 1476554.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 458690.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 19649.3 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 6299.2 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 885.5 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 1089185.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 22238872.5 1905.6
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 4414.8 802.7
Execl Throughput 43.0 4317.7 1004.1
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 215584.6 544.4
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 75353.7 455.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 551178.7 950.3
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 1476554.1 1186.9
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 458690.7 1146.7
Process Creation 126.0 19649.3 1559.5
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 6299.2 1485.7
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 885.5 1475.9
System Call Overhead 15000.0 1089185.8 726.1
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1016.9
Testing again is only slightly better:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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
2 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
2 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Process Creation 1 2 3
2 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
2 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: *****: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-274.7.1.el5.028stab095.1 -- #1 SMP Mon Oct 24 20:49:24 MSD 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz (4266.9 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz (4312.6 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
12:26:12 up 7:46, 1 user, load average: 5.03, 5.84, 3.68; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Dec 30 2011 12:26:12 - 12:54:30
2 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 11203884.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 2207.7 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3232.6 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 374614.7 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 116016.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 891727.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 736536.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 133382.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 10051.6 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4051.1 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 849.2 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 579163.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 11203884.1 960.1
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 2207.7 401.4
Execl Throughput 43.0 3232.6 751.8
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 374614.7 946.0
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 116016.1 701.0
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 891727.3 1537.5
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 736536.7 592.1
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 133382.9 333.5
Process Creation 126.0 10051.6 797.7
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4051.1 955.4
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 849.2 1415.3
System Call Overhead 15000.0 579163.2 386.1
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 733.6
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Dec 30 2011 12:54:30 - 13:22:34
2 CPUs in system; running 2 parallel copies of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 21707006.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 4410.9 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 4164.8 lps (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 236158.3 KBps (30.1 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 76955.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 590499.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 1447286.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 466715.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 19115.1 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 6564.6 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 949.6 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 1085338.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 21707006.5 1860.1
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 4410.9 802.0
Execl Throughput 43.0 4164.8 968.6
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 236158.3 596.4
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 76955.1 465.0
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 590499.2 1018.1
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 1447286.5 1163.4
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 466715.7 1166.8
Process Creation 126.0 19115.1 1517.1
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 6564.6 1548.3
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 949.6 1582.6
System Call Overhead 15000.0 1085338.3 723.6
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1033.8
At more than 3000 points, the GeekBench results is actually not too bad, presumbly because it does not occupy the CPU for too long and measures more the “burst” result rather than the output over a long period:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-274.7.1.el5.028stab095.1 i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
Logical Processors: 2
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.13 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 0.00 B
L1 Data Cache: 0.00 B
L2 Cache: 256 KB
L3 Cache: 0.00 B
Bus Frequency: 0.00 Hz
Memory: 11.7 GB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz
Processor Cores: 2
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1502 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3100 ||||||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1692 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2953 |||||||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1496 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 3030 ||||||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1265 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 2412 |||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1184 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 2316 |||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2373 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4728 ||||||||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1616 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3116 ||||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2903 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 5911 |||||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3417 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 7242 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 2038 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2063 ||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2924 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4561 ||||||||||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 4343 |||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 8874 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 3988 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 7912 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 2778 |||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4474 |||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 2804 |||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 2108 ||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 4281 |||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2371 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2640 ||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2399 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2494 |||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2029 ||||||||
single-threaded vector 2446 |||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2151 ||||||||
single-threaded vector 1918 |||||||
Integer Score: 2337 |||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4350 |||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 3289 |||||||||||||
Stream Score: 2306 |||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3228 ||||||||||||
Testing again is almost the same:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-274.7.1.el5.028stab095.1 i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
Logical Processors: 2
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.13 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 0.00 B
L1 Data Cache: 0.00 B
L2 Cache: 256 KB
L3 Cache: 0.00 B
Bus Frequency: 0.00 Hz
Memory: 11.7 GB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5506 @ 2.13GHz
Processor Cores: 2
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1487 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 2725 ||||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1682 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2986 |||||||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1718 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3393 |||||||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1408 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 2530 ||||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1304 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 2516 ||||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2660 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 5164 ||||||||||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1787 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3533 ||||||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2673 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 5472 |||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3214 ||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 7144 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 1897 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1973 |||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2677 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4190 ||||||||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 4423 |||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 8488 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 4051 ||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 8004 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 2868 |||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4743 ||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 2864 |||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 2167 ||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 4365 |||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2389 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2850 |||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2388 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2559 ||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2359 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2755 |||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2490 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2121 ||||||||
Integer Score: 2464 |||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4251 |||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 3401 |||||||||||||
Stream Score: 2488 |||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3279 |||||||||||||
Overall, the performance of the VPS is far from impressive, although for such a low price, it is already quite good when the VPS is online and running and is usable to perform basic functions as a server.
Customer Service and Support
Although DotVPS advertise 24/7 support on their web page, I believe it just means you can submit the ticket at any time, however when the support would reply is when they get to work in Europe. My first ticket sent at 10:44am was responded at 7:47am the next day, and the ticket sent at 11:54am was responded at 10:41am the next day, almost 24 hours, although the reply of that ticket, which I sent at 9:28pm on the same day, was responded by 2:30AM the next morning, which was pretty quick. As such, I can only suggest that unless it is a high priority ticket, you should prepare for at least several hours of response time.
Conclusion
If something is too good to be true, it probably is, and this theory is applicable everywhere, including VPS market. What DotVPS has presented was a cheap VPS solution with generous resources at an incredible low price. As such, the VPS itself is able to run most of the time (I have got several notifications from UptimeRobots on different days to inform me the VPS is down, one of them actually happened on the day I signed up), however the disk I/O and network are low and the customer support, although reasonable, is definitely not very fast. Hence, if you are looking for a large VPS to play with, or just looking for a VPS that is just for yourself with no uptime requirements and performance requirements, this is something that is completely fine, otherwise, spending a bit more or try to find a smaller box with less resources is perhaps what I would do.
Would you be willing to review us again after we move to our new netherlands locations?
@Jack: Sure, I will sign up as a regular customer as soon as I get through the list. Thanks a lot for the update!
It will be a few weeks yet.. hoping for around 23rd.
@Jack: Not a problem, I have enough work to keep me busy until June or July at least at the moment 🙂 Thanks for the update once again!