96MB Low End VPS Review Part 47 – RocketVPS
Knownhost is probably one of the most well-known brand in the VPS community for their managed VPS services. The services that they have provided is really second to none and have received quite a few positive feedbacks on WebhostingTalk. The only problem? They are too expensive to the budget VPS community. In fact, even with the heavy discount that they have posted here, even their cheapest VPS plan is way beyond the acceptable range of the budget VPS, which is typically set to below 7USD per month. Therefore, when Knownhost opened up their budget hosting division, RocketVPS, and offered a really sweet deal on WebhostingTalk, which even brought down their most basic VPS to within the budget VPS limit, I immediately took the dive and signed up for one of those boxes (Fortunate enough for me, I was able to be one of the first 50 lucky customers to get a 50% off for life discount) and let’s see if RocketVPS would stay up to the great reputation from Knowhost.
Basic Information and Set Up
As mentioned in the posting on WebhostingTalk here, here is the specification of the VPS that I have purchased:
As you can see, the original price is 9.99 however with the 50% off coupon, I managed to lower the price down to 4.99USD per month, which is still not too cheap for a 256MB VPS, however is at least in the reasonable range. One thing worth noticing is that although it is not as cheap as the 5USD CPanel license that Knownhost offers, it is still at a relatively cheap price of 8.50 per month, which is less than what you could get from the outside vendors most of the time:
RocketVPS made use of the trendy slider bar when selecting VPS:
However the interesting bit is that after you select the VPS with the right specifications, you are still asked to input an domain, which is something that many customers would rather not see:
However I will give them the credit for hiding the other two options when inputting the domain, which sort of make your life a little easier. Of course, you can always put in any domain your like, aaa.com worked for me.
There are only two options available, either monthly or annual billing, with slight discount on the annual terms:
However, I do appreciate the fact that they are at least putting the monthly cost for the annual billing term so that I can roughly figure out how much I am saving by paying for a longer term. Many times I have to take out the calculator and divide the price by 12 just to see how much I can save by commit myself to a longer term, which is somewhat inconvenient.
By default, the host name is host, although you can definitely change it to anything you like:
Several options for operating systems are available to choose during the sign up, and as mentioned before, CPanel is available as an addon for 8.50 per month, which is definitely a huge plus. Interestingly, other control panels such as Plesk and DirectAdmin are not even being listed. Just curious, how many people would actually use DirectAdmin and Plesk over CPanel? I personally have used Plesk before, and give up after 2 days and used CPanel again whenever I need a control panel ever since.
Provision was not instant but it was close enough, I have received my payment receipt at 6:46pm and the VPS Welcome email arrived 6 minutes later, with the root password showing in plain text and the SolusVM control panel on port 5656. Interestingly, they actually masked the password for the user forum they have. Quite frankly speaking, I would be more concerned if anyone seeing my root password for my VPS than finding out what my password for the support forum is.
Note that the SSH on the VPS is not on port 22 by default, which is something that really gave me a little headache, however a little search on their knowledgebase shows up this article, which tells me the default port is 2200. Although it is definitely a great security measure, I think it would be a lot easier if they could state such in the welcome email.
WHMCS is actually having a HTTP page for login, however once you are logged in, you are automatically forwarded to the HTTPS protocol, which is pretty interesting as I thought the whole purpose of HTTPS protocol is to encrypt the password during the transmission.
All buttons in the Control Panel in WHMCS is working and all three graphs are shown:
and as an example, the pop-up is shown when you click on the console password:
You can also click on the Upgrade/Downgrade button to upgrade to change the package:
There is also a Upgrade/Downgrade options button for you to change the OS template as well as to get CPanel installed. This is much more convenient way to reload the VPS without actually logging into the control panel.
The SolusVM control panel is under HTTPS interface on port 5656, with a user name that is assigned to you. Once logged in, a pretty standard interface is shown:
There are many more OS templates available for install:
As you can see, they do have many Ubuntu templates available, as well as the latest Debian templates.
Instant rDNS is available as well, which is a big plus:
However, there is no central backup location as far as I can see.
Test on the VPS
As mentioned above, the VPS that I have signed up has 256MB of RAM (512MB burstable) and 10 GB of hard drive with 500GB of monthly bandwidth. The VPS is based in the net2EZ IAD 3 Data Center in Reston, Virginia according to their network page (thanks so much for making my life easier on trying to trace down the data centre) and I have installed Debian 6 32 bit (unfortunately the minimal template was not available when I set up the VPS) for testing purposes. Note that by default, the port speed is 10mbit, however you can always request a free bump up to 100mbit port once you order the service.
For this particular OS template, even after a fresh install, the resource usage is pretty high, due to the fact that it is actually running a complete LAMP stack rather than just a bare metal Debian 6 template.
As you can see, the free –m output is really high:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 512 118 393 0 0 32
-/+ buffers/cache: 85 426
Swap: 0 0 0
Which made me initially almost thought there was “something wrong” with the OS template until I saw the processes running:
top - 00:15:28 up 38 min, 1 user, load average: 0.21, 2.06, 1.58 Tasks: 24 total, 1 running, 23 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: 524288k total, 121176k used, 403112k free, 0k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 33652k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 465 mysql 20 0 35996 6364 2040 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.00 mysqld 482 root 20 0 21356 6364 3380 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.03 apache2 550 root 20 0 22616 4548 1408 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.27 php-cgi 551 www 20 0 22616 4144 1004 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi 552 www 20 0 22616 4144 1004 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi 553 www 20 0 22616 4144 1004 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi 554 www 20 0 22616 4144 1004 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi 555 www 20 0 22616 4144 1004 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi 502 www-data 20 0 21356 3608 608 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 apache2 504 www-data 20 0 21356 3600 600 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 apache2 506 www-data 20 0 21356 3600 600 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 apache2 507 www-data 20 0 21356 3600 600 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 apache2 508 www-data 20 0 21356 3600 600 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 apache2 574 root 20 0 8252 2828 2316 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.07 sshd 577 root 20 0 2960 1644 1320 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 bash 331 root 20 0 33440 1384 1044 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 rsyslogd 7301 root 20 0 2328 1096 900 R 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 top
And htop output for the htop fans:
And the disk space usage is a little higher than the “normal” Debian 6 template as well, sitting at close to 1GB of hard drive space:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/simfs 10G 911M 9.2G 9% / tmpfs 256M 0 256M 0% /lib/init/rw tmpfs 256M 0 256M 0% /dev/shm
However, fortunately the INodes are set to pretty high values:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/simfs 5242880 35575 5207305 1% / tmpfs 65536 4 65532 1% /lib/init/rw tmpfs 65536 1 65535 1% /dev/shm
As this is a production VPS with websites running on it, I did not get to take an accurate reading of system resources after the LNMP stack was installed.
Uptime shows some pretty good numbers for this VPS:
uptime 22:42:58 up 51 days, 2:43, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
Which was 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 0 251504 0 95608 0 0 10 9 0 3 3 1 96 0
Beancounters are set to some pretty reasonable values:
cat /proc/user_beancounters
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
151: kmemsize 10686085 120496128 2147483646 2147483646 0
lockedpages 0 5 999999 999999 0
privvmpages 59271 98646 131072 131072 0
shmpages 1538 8834 65536 65536 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numproc 29 123 999999 999999 0
physpages 68183 131551 0 131072 0
vmguarpages 0 0 65536 2147483647 0
oomguarpages 41722 45998 65536 2147483647 0
numtcpsock 15 90 7999992 7999992 0
numflock 1 11 999999 999999 0
numpty 2 5 500000 500000 0
numsiginfo 0 66 999999 999999 0
tcpsndbuf 322640 16489520 214748160 396774400 0
tcprcvbuf 245760 6122768 214748160 396774400 0
othersockbuf 18496 4249240 214748160 396774400 0
dgramrcvbuf 0 13080 214748160 396774400 0
numothersock 78 127 7999992 7999992 0
dcachesize 7122405 116001175 2147483646 2147483646 0
numfile 483 910 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
And there is no sign of overselling from the output of vzfree:
vzfree
Total Used Free
Kernel: 2048.00M 10.21M 2037.79M
Allocate: 512.00M 231.53M 280.47M (256M Guaranteed)
Commit: 256.00M 173.21M 82.79M (70.4% of Allocated)
Swap: -339.50M (-208.3% of Committed)
Note that however this is the first time I see the swap having a negative value, which is pretty interesting. Could someone explain to me why that is the case?
There is one CPU core assigned to this VPS, and it is not throttled:
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 44 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 2400.185 cache size : 12288 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 12 core id : 0 cpu cores : 6 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 11 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida arat epb dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid bogomips : 4800.37 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
Meminfo output is a bit unsual:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 524288 kB MemFree: 16928 kB Cached: 329844 kB Active: 163228 kB Inactive: 333632 kB Active(anon): 130752 kB Inactive(anon): 36264 kB Active(file): 32476 kB Inactive(file): 297368 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB Dirty: 8 kB AnonPages: 167016 kB Shmem: 6152 kB Slab: 10452 kB SReclaimable: 6980 kB SUnreclaim: 3472 kB
As you can see, the output is a bit shorter and I am not sure what things like Dirty and AnonPages represent.
And the output of time sync:
time sync real 0m0.136s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.106s
The network is pretty good, I was able to get 13MB/s consistently while doing the download test, which is close to the line speed considering it is a 100mbit port.
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-04-28 23:37:49-- 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 13.1M/s in 7.9s 2012-04-28 23:37:57 (12.7 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Testing again showing similar results:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-04-28 23:38:24-- 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 13.0M/s in 7.7s 2012-04-28 23:38:32 (13.0 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
The upload speed is pretty good as well, with the best speed showing along the west coast:
First download test is done on a Quickweb VPS in Chicago, IL:
wget 173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-04-28 23:56:00-- http://173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.245.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 3.35M/s in 31s 2012-04-28 23:56:31 (3.24 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Next is another Quickweb VPS in Los Angeles, CA
wget 173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-04-28 23:58:33-- http://173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.245.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 7.19M/s in 15s 2012-04-28 23:58:48 (6.51 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
As you can see, the speed along the west coast almost doubled the upload speed along the east coast.
The last VPS used for testing is located in Maidenhead, UK, with XenVZ/OpenITC:
wget 173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-04-29 03:57:52-- http://173.245.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.245.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 4.33M/s in 27s 2012-04-29 03:58:19 (3.68 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
The disk I/O speed is really what is remarkable though, with some really good dd output:
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, 3.66166 s, 293 MB/s
As you can see, the disk I/O is close to 300MB/s, which is truly remarkable.
Testing again showing similar amazing 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, 4.21175 s, 255 MB/s
IOPing is really consistent as well, with the ioping time mostly around 0.1ms.
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=1 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=2 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=3 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=4 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=5 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=6 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=7 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=8 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=9 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=10 time=0.1 ms --- . (simfs /vz/private/151) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9002.2 ms, 8711 iops, 34.0 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/0.1/0.2/0.0 ms
Testing again shows very consistent results as well:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=1 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=2 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=3 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=4 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=5 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=6 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=7 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=8 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=9 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (simfs /vz/private/151): request=10 time=0.1 ms --- . (simfs /vz/private/151) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9002.1 ms, 9756 iops, 38.1 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/0.1/0.2/0.0 ms
Finally, the benchmark tests, with just one CPU core available, the VPS was unfortunately penalized a little during 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: host: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-042stab049.6 -- #1 SMP Mon Feb 6 19:17:43 MSK 2012
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz (4800.4 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
03:35:25 up 3:58, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Wed Mar 07 2012 03:35:25 - 04:04:55
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 12714562.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 2453.7 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 2551.5 lps (29.7 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 496953.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 131995.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1265546.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 774787.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 90796.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 7366.8 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4363.6 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 561.5 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 632849.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 12714562.3 1089.5
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 2453.7 446.1
Execl Throughput 43.0 2551.5 593.4
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 496953.6 1254.9
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 131995.8 797.6
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 1265546.0 2182.0
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 774787.0 622.8
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 90796.9 227.0
Process Creation 126.0 7366.8 584.7
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4363.6 1029.1
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 561.5 935.8
System Call Overhead 15000.0 632849.0 421.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 725.2
Testing again showed slightly better results as well:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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: host: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-042stab049.6 -- #1 SMP Mon Feb 6 19:17:43 MSK 2012
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz (4800.4 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
23:43:36 up 6 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Mar 06 2012 23:43:36 - 00:12:06
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 12784701.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 2443.1 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 2542.1 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 503010.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 133901.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1329418.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 772465.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 92837.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 8521.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4350.6 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 557.7 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 634346.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 12784701.4 1095.5
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 2443.1 444.2
Execl Throughput 43.0 2542.1 591.2
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 503010.0 1270.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 133901.0 809.1
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 1329418.2 2292.1
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 772465.5 621.0
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 92837.3 232.1
Process Creation 126.0 8521.7 676.3
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4350.6 1026.1
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 557.7 929.5
System Call Overhead 15000.0 634346.4 422.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 739.3
The Geekbench results shows a better picture:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-042stab049.6 i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.40 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: 512 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1684 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2855 |||||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1865 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1872 |||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1912 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2039 ||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1581 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3083 ||||||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1478 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 3000 ||||||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2952 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3058 ||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2009 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2283 |||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3273 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4662 ||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3889 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 8921 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 2038 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4307 |||||||||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 3263 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2746 ||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5502 ||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 10988 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 5012 ||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 5695 ||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4873 |||||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 8285 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 3660 ||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3035 ||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 3295 |||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 5073 ||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6724 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3333 |||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4316 |||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 4908 |||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 7496 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 5475 |||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5515 ||||||||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 2281 |||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4613 ||||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 4629 ||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 5355 |||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3874 |||||||||||||||
With more than 3800 points on this little machine, I have to say it is pretty good.
Testing again shows similar results:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-042stab049.6 i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.40 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: 512 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1682 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1895 |||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1871 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2033 ||||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1905 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2082 ||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1585 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3102 ||||||||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1485 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 2993 |||||||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2958 |||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2970 |||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2009 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2323 |||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3274 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4993 |||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3897 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 8989 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 2122 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4237 ||||||||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 3267 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2723 ||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5490 |||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 6805 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 4973 |||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 6193 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4908 |||||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 6567 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 3631 ||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3062 ||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 3429 |||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 3865 |||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4466 |||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3190 ||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4339 |||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 3828 |||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6083 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 3721 ||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4492 |||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 2213 ||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4378 |||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 4319 |||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 4248 ||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3595 ||||||||||||||
Overall, the VPS has really good disk I/O as well as network connection speed. One CPU core might be a slight drawback on the VPS and as a results, the benchmark tests are not necessarily that great. However, overall I can definitely say this VPS is fast and stable as well.
Customer Service and Support
I do not really think I have had any problem with the VPS that warrants me to send in a ticket so far, and my only ticket sent to their technical support department was to ask about the port speed, the ticket was sent in at 8:23am and was responded by 8:25am, barely 2 minutes later, and best of all, when I confirmed I would like a port speed upgrade for free at 9:04am, the ticket was responded by both Paul and Vince from their technical support 2 minutes later at 9:06am. For an self-managed VPS service, I have to say their speed of support is definitely at the premium level.
Conclusion
Fast and stable VPS, together with really speedy support. I have to say that RocketVPS has continued the legacy of its parent company, Knownhost. I am pleased with the service so far with RocketVPS and have put up some of my production websites to this little VPS after testing them for a while (I have set up a UptimeRobot monitoring on the VPS and I have yet to receive any downtime alert on the VPS) . For a premium service at such low price, I definitely have the intention to stay with them for a long time.