96MB Low End VPS Review Part 56–VM Storm VPS
My previous review was about a “cloud” VPS provider, VPS.NET, which is probably one of the largest “cloud” providers in the relatively budget market with 15 locations throughout the world. The VPS provider that I am going to review today, VMStorm, is a much smaller one but has some pretty good reviews and reputations in the community. Are they really as great as they seem to be? Let’s take a look.
Basic Information and Set Up
As per their advertisement on LowEndTalk, here is what is offered:
The signup page is almost a piece of art:
As you can see, everything was listed in one page and straight-forward, which is something really great. They have also listed their helpline number and email for you to contact them.
Note that on the sign up page, there is no cost for extra IPv4 addresses, I have confirmed with David that IPv4 is FREE with VMStorm as long as justification is given, that is very rare among the VPS providers these days, particularly those in the budget market.
The other pretty unique feature with VMStorm is the fact that you can also pay more to “upgrade” your SLA. The base SLA for VMStorm is 99.9%, which is already pretty good, however you can “upgrade” to 100% SLA if your life depends on your website and you do not mind paying an extra $15/month. You can also purchase phone support, priority RAM and CPU access for extra as well.
Payment via Paypal was sent to FlashPoint Informatics, which I can only assume is the parent company of VMStorm.
I have submitted my instant payment via Payapal at 8:00AM and unlike other providers, I have received an email reminding me the VPS is on its way at 8:01AM and then the same email four minutes later. Finally, the VPS was created at 8:05AM, barely five minutes after the payment was submitted.
One of the things that I would like to look into for the cloud providers is their user interface. Unlike the traditional VPS providers who mostly use SolusVM as their control panel, and hence becomes a little boring after a while, most of the cloud VPS providers uses their own panels. In that regard, I have to say the VMStorm control panel is no less than a piece of art.
Here is the login screen of the control panel, which, for some reason, reminded me of the login page of WordPress, and I actually emailed Dave to ask if the control panel was developed using WordPress as the front-end:
Once logged in, the VPS information is shown immediately on the first page, which is a lot more convenient compare to the SolusVM interface. I could understand the rationale of having a list of VPS if you have multiple ones, but it would be a really good idea, if you have only one VPS with a particular provider, to have the SolusVM interface going directly to the main management interface of that particular VPS.
On the top portion of the page, it pretty much listed out all of the resources assigned to the VPS, as well as links to the other tabs that you can perform further actions:
Scrolling down the page, you see the resource usage of the VPS, such as CPU, RAM and disk usage. Note that the CPU usage is taken across a period of time while the RAM and disk usage is just a snapshot of the current usage. However, this does make sense as it is rather meaningless, in my opinion, to give a snapshot of the CPU usage unless the VPS is consistently using a certain amount of CPU.
Going to the Networking tab, you see the IP addresses as well as the reverse DNS entry:
At the bottom of the page is the bandwidth summary by day. It is interesting to see that there is actually statistics in terms of the number of packets as well:
The format tab is obviously where you can install/reload the OS, and from here you can see there are quite a few of templates available, including Windows 2003 and 2008 templates as well as a few pre-packaged Turnkey templates for easy deployment:
Even more templates by scrolling down the dropdown menu:
I tried to select the Windows 7 template and I was automatically charged an extra $6 per month for the license. VMStorm does have Windows 7 Enterprise available as well, which is rare among the providers. Interestingly enough, all their Windows license cost 6 USD per month, regardless of whether it is Windows 2003 or Windows 7.
Clicking on the upgrade button you will be brought to the upgrade/downgrade page where you can freely choose the package you would like to have and you will be billed accordingly.
If you choose a separate package, note that you can pay for 90 days and get 5% off or pay for a year and get 10% off. Also, you can manually set the next billing date you would like to be, which I thought is a pretty good feature. There are also options there for you to purchase extra hard drive size.
Finally, the “Cancel” tab, as the name suggest, is for cancellation:
Test on the VPS
As mentioned above, the VPS that I have bought for testing has 1CPU core, 512MB of RAM and 20GB of hard drive space, the VPS is based in their “wholy-owned, private, carrier-neutral facility in State College, Pennsylvania” as per their advertisement on WHT.
I have installed 32 bit Debian template for testing in this case:
uname -a Linux xxxxxx 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Mon Jun 13 04:13:06 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux
When the VPS was first installed, almost 32MB of RAM was used, which is quite a lot compare to the standard Debian OVZ/Xen template, which typically used only 17MB.
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 502 476 26 0 335 107
-/+ buffers/cache: 32 469
Swap: 1023 0 1023
I was pretty surprised with that too but the answer becomes more apparent as I started to look at the top output:
top - 11:31:33 up 26 days, 20:43, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 66 total, 1 running, 65 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 514652k total, 487476k used, 27176k free, 343556k buffers
Swap: 1048568k total, 0k used, 1048568k free, 110336k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1527 root 20 0 13848 3008 2412 S 0.0 0.6 18:42.83 vmtoolsd
32750 root 20 0 5692 2992 1456 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.16 bash
32748 root 20 0 8260 2860 2332 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.07 sshd
955 root 20 0 27580 1800 1044 S 0.0 0.3 0:08.36 rsyslogd
300 root 20 0 2332 1124 900 R 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 top
346 root 16 -4 2436 1032 452 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 udevd
1904 root 20 0 5496 984 588 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.01 sshd
1684 root 18 -2 2544 940 360 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udevd
1339 Debian-e 20 0 6516 936 624 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.26 exim4
1685 root 18 -2 2432 808 232 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udevd
808 statd 20 0 1936 768 640 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 rpc.statd
1127 root 20 0 3784 768 604 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.49 cron
1873 root 20 0 2332 728 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:04.26 dhclient
1059 root 20 0 1876 724 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:02.37 mpt-statusd
1 root 20 0 2032 720 624 S 0.0 0.1 0:15.01 init
981 root 20 0 1704 584 480 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
1550 root 20 0 1708 552 472 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
As well as the output of htop:
As you can see, the VPS is VMWare based and the vmtools alone ate quite a bit of memory. However, it has to be there in order for the VPS to be controlled remotely via the control panel.
Close to 1GB of hard drive space was used as well, which is again a little more compare to a “standard” Debian installation. The interesting bit here is that they seems to have a seperate partition for dev and boot, which is not common among small VPS:
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1
19G 861M 17G 5% /
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 247M 96K 247M 1% /dev
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 241M 21M 208M 9% /boot
And there does not seem to be a limit on the inodes:
df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1
1245184 40813 1204371 4% /
tmpfs 64331 5 64326 1% /lib/init/rw
udev 63118 526 62592 1% /dev
tmpfs 64331 1 64330 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 63488 222 63266 1% /boot
After the full LNMP stack was installed, about 58MB of RAM was used:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 502 488 13 0 24 405
-/+ buffers/cache: 58 443
Swap: 1023 0 1023
Top output showing the processes running:
top - 00:04:52 up 26 days, 21:18, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.22, 0.43
Tasks: 76 total, 1 running, 75 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: 514652k total, 501016k used, 13636k free, 25328k buffers
Swap: 1048568k total, 44k used, 1048524k free, 415428k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
32729 www 20 0 15004 10m 432 S 0.0 2.2 0:00.00 nginx
32706 mysql 20 0 33948 4644 2040 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.00 mysqld
32717 root 20 0 24124 4552 1412 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.05 php-cgi
32719 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
32720 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
32721 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
32722 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
32723 www 20 0 24124 4156 1016 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
32750 root 20 0 5692 2708 1172 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.18 bash
1527 root 20 0 13848 1836 1240 S 0.0 0.4 18:43.87 vmtoolsd
955 root 20 0 27580 1508 752 S 0.0 0.3 0:08.37 rsyslogd
32748 root 20 0 8396 1308 760 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.80 sshd
304 root 20 0 2440 1144 904 R 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 top
346 root 16 -4 2436 908 368 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 udevd
1684 root 18 -2 2544 864 320 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udevd
1339 Debian-e 20 0 6516 844 532 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.26 exim4
1904 root 20 0 5496 820 424 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.01 sshd
1685 root 18 -2 2432 816 276 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udevd
32727 root 20 0 4792 720 272 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 nginx
1873 root 20 0 2332 712 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:04.26 dhclient
1059 root 20 0 1876 628 364 S 0.0 0.1 0:02.38 mpt-statusd
1 root 20 0 2024 612 528 S 0.0 0.1 0:15.02 init
1127 root 20 0 3784 604 440 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.49 cron
32604 root 20 0 1752 564 480 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mysqld_safe
808 statd 20 0 1936 532 404 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 rpc.statd
981 root 20 0 1704 460 356 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
32767 root 20 0 1688 444 388 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 sleep
796 daemon 20 0 1808 420 324 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 portmap
1550 root 20 0 1708 412 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1551 root 20 0 1708 412 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1552 root 20 0 1708 408 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1553 root 20 0 1708 408 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1554 root 20 0 1708 408 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
1555 root 20 0 1708 408 332 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
988 daemon 20 0 2160 376 248 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 atd
1056 root 20 0 2152 376 232 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.13 daemon
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kthreadd
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
And 2GB of hard drive space was used:
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1
19G 2.0G 16G 12% /
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 247M 96K 247M 1% /dev
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 241M 21M 208M 9% /boot
And the inodes:
df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1
1245184 84895 1160289 7% /
tmpfs 64331 5 64326 1% /lib/init/rw
udev 63118 526 62592 1% /dev
tmpfs 64331 1 64330 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 63488 222 63266 1% /boot
Uptime shows the VPS is idle:
uptime 11:31:39 up 26 days, 20:43, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
And there is no iowait in the VPS as well:
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 20348 334236 125604 0 0 0 1 15 10 0 0 100 0
I actually left the VPS running for a while and it has been really stable during its whole lifetime:
uptime 02:52:36 up 28 days, 5 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
CPU info shows that the Intel i7 CPU is used, which some people have argued that it is a desktop VPS and not something for the server, however, it is definitely a very powerful CPU and the fact that it is not throttled makes it really great for a small VPS like this:
cat cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 30 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz stepping : 5 cpu MHz : 2942.521 cache size : 8192 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no 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 nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt hypervisor lahf_lm ida bogomips : 5885.04 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
Meminfo and time sync did not show anything too interesting:
cat meminfo MemTotal: 514652 kB MemFree: 11752 kB Buffers: 27180 kB Cached: 429196 kB SwapCached: 52 kB Active: 79224 kB Inactive: 403064 kB Active(anon): 11688 kB Inactive(anon): 14332 kB Active(file): 67536 kB Inactive(file): 388732 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 514652 kB LowFree: 11752 kB SwapTotal: 1048568 kB SwapFree: 1048516 kB Dirty: 0 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 25864 kB Mapped: 8872 kB Shmem: 108 kB Slab: 15232 kB SReclaimable: 10684 kB SUnreclaim: 4548 kB KernelStack: 632 kB PageTables: 784 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 1305892 kB Committed_AS: 117884 kB VmallocTotal: 503800 kB VmallocUsed: 6872 kB VmallocChunk: 485952 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 4096 kB DirectMap4k: 16384 kB DirectMap4M: 507904 kB
And time sync:
time sync real 0m0.020s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
The disk I/O is pretty reasonable at 80MB/s, here is something I have noticed among the cloud VPS providers, for some reason none of their disk I/O is as impressive as those traditional VPS providers, which I can only assume is because the SAN has much longer latency:
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, 13.2883 s, 80.8 MB/s
Testing again showed somewhat better 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, 11.9527 s, 89.8 MB/s
IOPing is actually fairly consistent, which is good:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=1 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=2 time=0.8 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=3 time=1.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=4 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=5 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=6 time=1.0 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=7 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=8 time=0.7 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=9 time=2.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=10 time=0.8 ms --- . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9010.6 ms, 1125 iops, 4.4 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.4/0.9/2.5/0.6 ms
And testing again:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=1 time=1.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=2 time=0.6 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=3 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=4 time=2.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=5 time=0.4 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=6 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=7 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=8 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=9 time=0.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1): request=10 time=0.9 ms --- . (ext4 /dev/mapper/ubuntu-disk1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9009.4 ms, 1290 iops, 5.0 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.4/0.8/2.1/0.5 ms
I am not sure what the network port speed is for this VPS, but it definitely looks like it is on a shared 1Gbit port, since I was able to push for close to 25MB/s (200mbit/s) downloading the Cachefly test files:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-07-09 02:58:37-- 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: a€?/dev/nulla€ 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 26.6M/s in 4.2s 2012-07-09 02:58:42 (23.5 MB/s) - a€?/dev/nulla€
Testing again showed similar results:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-07-09 02:59:56-- 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: a€?/dev/nulla€ 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 26.1M/s in 4.3s 2012-07-09 03:00:01 (23.1 MB/s) - a€?/dev/nulla€
In order to prove my suspicion that I could push for a bit more on the network speed, I decided to use the aget test to download some 1Gbit files. First is the test file from ThinkBroadBand in London, UK:
aget http://ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com/1GB.zip -n 10Attempting to read log file aget-1GB.zip.log for resuming download job... Couldn't find log file for this download, starting a clean job... Head-Request Connection established Downloading /1GB.zip (1073741824 bytes) from site ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com(80.249.99.148:80). Number of Threads: 10 .. [4% completed] ..... [9% completed] ....... [14% completed] .......... [19% completed] ............ [24% completed] ............... [29% completed] ................. [34% completed] .................... [39% completed] ...................... [44% completed] ......................... [49% completed] ........................... [54% completed] .............................. [59% completed] ................................ [64% completed] ................................... [69% completed] ..................................... [74% completed] ........................................ [79% completed] .......................................... [84% completed] ............................................. [89% completed] ............................................... [94% completed] .................................................. [99% completed] .................................................. [100% completed] Download completed, job completed in 192 seconds. (5461 Kb/sec) Shutting down...
As you can see, the speed is probably less impressive than the Cachefly results, but considering how slow ThinkBroadBand normally is, I would say the speed is actually pretty reasonable.
And the results for testing again:
aget http://ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com/1GB.zip -n 10Attempting to read log file aget-1GB.zip.log for resuming download job... Couldn't find log file for this download, starting a clean job... Head-Request Connection established Downloading /1GB.zip (1073741824 bytes) from site ipv4.download.thinkbroadband.com(80.249.99.148:80). Number of Threads: 10 .. [4% completed] ..... [9% completed] ....... [14% completed] .......... [19% completed] ............ [24% completed] ............... [29% completed] ................. [34% completed] .................... [39% completed] ...................... [44% completed] ......................... [49% completed] ........................... [54% completed] .............................. [59% completed] ................................ [64% completed] ................................... [69% completed] ..................................... [74% completed] ........................................ [79% completed] .......................................... [84% completed] ............................................. [89% completed] ............................................... [94% completed] .................................................. [99% completed] .................................................. [100% completed] Download completed, job completed in 328 seconds. (3196 Kb/sec) Shutting down...
I have also tried to test against the files from DimeNOC in Florida, which is a lot closer physically to the VPS, and the speed is somewhat better in this case:
aget -n 10 http://72.29.70.131/1gbfile.tgzAttempting to read log file aget-1gbfile.tgz.log for resuming download job... Couldn't find log file for this download, starting a clean job... Head-Request Connection established Downloading /1gbfile.tgz (1023410176 bytes) from site 72.29.70.131(72.29.70.131:80). Number of Threads: 10 .. [4% completed] ..... [9% completed] ....... [14% completed] .......... [19% completed] ............ [24% completed] ............... [29% completed] ................. [34% completed] .................... [39% completed] ...................... [44% completed] ......................... [49% completed] ........................... [54% completed] .............................. [59% completed] ................................ [64% completed] ................................... [69% completed] ..................................... [74% completed] ........................................ [79% completed] .......................................... [84% completed] ............................................. [89% completed] ............................................... [94% completed] .................................................. [99% completed] .................................................. [100% completed] Download completed, job completed in 116 seconds. (8615 Kb/sec) Shutting down...
For some reason, the second time of the aget test is worse than the first time in both of my aget tests on this VPS:
aget -n 10 http://72.29.70.131/1gbfile.tgzAttempting to read log file aget-1gbfile.tgz.log for resuming download job... Couldn't find log file for this download, starting a clean job... Head-Request Connection established Downloading /1gbfile.tgz (1023410176 bytes) from site 72.29.70.131(72.29.70.131:80). Number of Threads: 10 .. [4% completed] ..... [9% completed] ....... [14% completed] .......... [19% completed] ............ [24% completed] ............... [29% completed] ................. [34% completed] .................... [39% completed] ...................... [44% completed] ......................... [49% completed] ........................... [54% completed] .............................. [59% completed] ................................ [64% completed] ................................... [69% completed] ..................................... [74% completed] ........................................ [79% completed] .......................................... [84% completed] ............................................. [89% completed] ............................................... [94% completed] .................................................. [99% completed] .................................................. [100% completed] Download completed, job completed in 170 seconds. (5878 Kb/sec) Shutting down...
For the upload tests, the VPS showed pretty impressive results as well, first with my QuickWeb VPS in Chicago, IL, which, for some reason, showed the slowest upload speed among the three test VPS:
wget 173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-07-09 03:01:28-- http://173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.189.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 3.95M/s in 25s 2012-07-09 03:01:54 (3.93 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Suprisingly, with my Quickweb VPS in Los Angeles in CA, which is along the west coast, I was able to get a better test speed:
wget 173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-07-08 15:02:14-- http://173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.189.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 7.91M/s in 17s 2012-07-08 15:02:32 (5.72 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
And finally, my XenVZ VPS in Maidenhead, UK:
wget 173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2012-07-09 03:01:35-- http://173.189.xxx.xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 173.189.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 3.38M/s in 25s 2012-07-09 03:01:59 (4.05 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Remember that I have mentioned the i7 is a really powerful CPU? My point was actually proven in the Unixbench test, when this single-core VPS was able to give a quite impressive score of more than 1300 points:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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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: xxxxx : GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Mon Jun 13 04:13:06 UTC 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz (5885.0 bogomips)
x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
23:08:18 up 27 days, 20:21, 1 user, load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sun Jul 08 2012 23:08:18 - 23:36:26
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 14616255.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 3091.4 MWIPS (9.5 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 4863.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 612141.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 200241.5 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1431848.5 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 1816507.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 370124.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 17476.3 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 5723.0 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 728.9 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 3374368.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 14616255.7 1252.5
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 3091.4 562.1
Execl Throughput 43.0 4863.7 1131.1
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 612141.1 1545.8
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 200241.5 1209.9
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 1431848.5 2468.7
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 1816507.0 1460.2
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 370124.1 925.3
Process Creation 126.0 17476.3 1387.0
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 5723.0 1349.8
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 728.9 1214.8
System Call Overhead 15000.0 3374368.1 2249.6
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1309.5
I was able to get even better results doing the test again:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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: xxxxxx: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Mon Jun 13 04:13:06 UTC 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz (5885.0 bogomips)
x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
23:38:42 up 27 days, 20:51, 1 user, load average: 0.80, 2.73, 1.77; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sun Jul 08 2012 23:38:42 - 00:06:51
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 14800731.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 3096.1 MWIPS (9.6 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 5212.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 655408.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 212875.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1448424.5 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 1737235.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 360053.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 17621.9 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 5773.7 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 745.2 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 3334786.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 14800731.9 1268.3
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 3096.1 562.9
Execl Throughput 43.0 5212.7 1212.3
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 655408.2 1655.1
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 212875.8 1286.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 1448424.5 2497.3
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 1737235.1 1396.5
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 360053.1 900.1
Process Creation 126.0 17621.9 1398.6
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 5773.7 1361.7
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 745.2 1241.9
System Call Overhead 15000.0 3334786.2 2223.2
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 1329.2
Geekbench is also able to show me some pretty good results:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 30 Stepping 5
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.94 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: 503 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 2013 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2132 ||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1999 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1907 |||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 2105 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2088 ||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1869 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1791 |||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1603 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1633 ||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 3144 ||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3071 ||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2630 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2666 ||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3797 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3995 |||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4467 |||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 5088 ||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 2491 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2905 |||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 3746 ||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2977 |||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 6232 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 6524 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 5927 |||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 5991 |||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4203 ||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 6694 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 3939 |||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3437 |||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 6779 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 3242 ||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3943 |||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3273 |||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3435 |||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2822 |||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3833 |||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 3065 ||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 2532 ||||||||||
Integer Score: 2112 ||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4245 ||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 5010 ||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 3268 |||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3553 ||||||||||||||
And the second test again give me better benchmarks, close to 4000 points, which is rare for a single core CPU VPS:
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 (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 30 Stepping 5
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.94 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: 503 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 2004 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2071 ||||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1850 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1941 |||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 2078 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2123 ||||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1926 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1805 |||||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1663 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1680 ||||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 3193 ||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3108 ||||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2631 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2689 ||||||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3799 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4200 ||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4560 ||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 5264 |||||||||||||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 3022 ||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2738 ||||||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 3823 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3002 ||||||||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 6546 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 6382 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 5902 |||||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 6197 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4380 |||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 7260 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 4047 ||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3505 ||||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 7006 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 3211 ||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4033 ||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3382 |||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3521 ||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2990 |||||||||||
single-threaded vector 3803 |||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2992 |||||||||||
single-threaded vector 2578 ||||||||||
Integer Score: 2120 ||||||||
Floating Point Score: 4339 |||||||||||||||||
Memory Score: 5239 ||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 3313 |||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 3639 ||||||||||||||
Overall, I have to say that I am really impressed with the performance of this VPS, although the price is probably one of the cheapest that I have seen among the “cloud” VPS providers, performance-wise it is definitely “high-end”.
Customer Service and Support
Other than a solid VPS, I am also impressed by the customer service and support offered by VMStorm. Although there is not exactly a formal ticket system which had me worried initially, Dave seems check emails pretty frequently, particularly during the day in the North American time, which worked out well for me. For example, an email I sent to them at 1:07AM EST was not responding until 7:44AM EST, however the reply I sent at 10:22AM was replied in two minutes at 10:24AM. Two days later, an email I sent to their help desk at 8:12AM was responded a single minute later!
Conclusion
Fast VPS and network, free IPv4 addresses and a really friendly and fast support, those are common features that we only seem to be available for the high-end VPS providers that are primarily catered towards business clients. However, VMStorm VPS has provided all these at an incredibly cheap cost. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of their service and would definitely recommend VMStorm VPS to anyone who is looking for a cloud VPS.
can you try to ask for free IPs?
@jcaleb: Unfortunately I no longer have the account with them so I can not ask for it anymore, however Dave has stated to me in email that they have free IPv4 as long as justification is there, so I doubt it has changed since then.
Their support is not so fast on my account. I have to wait for hours just for their reply.
I had a problem once on my vm and it took almost a week for them to fix it 🙁
@vpn: sorry to hear about your experience, when I had them it was fairly quick and I was, honestly, pretty impressed. Is there any other VMStormVPS user have similar experience recently? Please kindly share with us.