96MB Low End VPS Review Part 67–Virpus Xen
One of the trends that I noticed among many VPS providers with large client base is always they have more negative reviews. I guess one could always attribute that to “it is easier to make one person happy but difficult to make a million”, or, from the customers’ perspective, “when a VPS provider gets too large, they don’t care about each individual customer, since 1/10 is a huge loss but 1/1,00,000 loss of customer is next to none. For example, Googling “Burst.NET negative reviews” and I am sure you will be able to find quite a few of them. Virpus, which is based in WholeSale Internet in Kansas City (but has recently expanded to other cities as well), is another VPS with quite a large client base and obviously, searching for their reviews shows more negative reviews than the positive one.
At 96MB, I try not be driven by the what others think of the services of VPS providers, rather, I would focus everything solely on my own experience and investigations. As such, with some curiosity, I decided to sign up for one of the Virpus Xen VPS and review them.
Background Information and Sign Up
As per their advertisement on Webhostingtalk, this is what you get for equivalent for 5USD per month:
The biggest selling point, though, is the fact that they offer free DirectAdmin license if you are willing to pay for longer period:
In fact, Wholesale Internet, being one of the earlier client of DirectAdmin, is able to issue DirectAdmin license to their own clients for VPS and dedicated servers, which is a plus for those who need a control panel within the VPS. Furthermore, Virpus will install the control panel for you as well, which is good.
Their order/client management system is on standard WHMCS interface:
Other than the standard input, there are a few options that could be chosen from.
Extra IPv4 address cost 1.5 USD per month per address, which is not exactly cheap.
For the location, you can choose between Kansas City and Los Angeles, however LA seems to have a longer wait time as stated in the order form:
For the OS, there is only a single selection available, however you can always change the OS selection later on in the SolusVM panel:
You can also choose to add DirectAdmin or CPanel as the control panel. The DirectAdmin panel is 7 USD per month (free if you pay semi-annually or annually), and the CPanel cost 12 USD per month, which is still cheaper than the typical cost of the panel (15 USD per month).
You can also choose to have Virpus install the control panel for you or have it installed by yourself. I would assume the advantage of installing it yourself is you’ll have the VPS up and running immediately (using the trial license until Virpus gives you the actual license) rather than wait for the panel to be installed (which took a bit longer than a day in my case).
You can also make the VPS to be a fully managed one, although at 20 USD a month, I would probably think twice before going for the management option with them (and you’d miss all the fun of configuring and messing up the VPS yourself!):
The activation of the VPS was not instant due to the location I picked, however obviously the installation of DirectAdmin is not (which surprised me considering the number of installations they have to do). Once logged into their WHMCS interface via the secured HTTPS link, you could see the active service with all the details listed:
Scrolling down you would be able to see the integrated control panel to perform various actions on the VPS, as well as the address and the IPv4 and IPv6 address. Although not listed, there are 3 IPv6 address that comes with the VPS:
Their SolusVM interface is accessed via the unsecured HTTP protocol and appear to use the new Bootstrap SolusVM interface, with the username assigned automatically by the system:
Strictly a matter of personal preference, but for some reason I always thought the initial SolusVM interface is a lot better than this one, as the old one had everything on one page and was quite intuitive. The new ones certainly have the more “modern” look due to the Bootstrap interface, but is probably not as functional as the old one.
The only option in Settings tab is the network card, and you have three options to choose from:
All of the tests done in the next section were using the Realtek 8139 card, which was the default option.
The OS reinstallation options are somewhat limited compare to many other providers, covering only the basic OS distribution templates without any of the application stacks. However there are quite a few varieties of CentOS templates being covered, and for the Debian 7 templates, only 64 bit is available:
Test on the VPS
As mentioned above, the VPS that I have signed up has 512MB of RAM and 1024MB of swap space, 20GB of hard drive space and 1.5TB of bandwidth, the VPS also comes with 2 IPv4 addresses and 3 IPv6 addresses and is located in QuadraNet datacenter in Los Angeles, CA and I have installed Debian 6 32 bit for testing purposes.
When the VPS was first installed, about 10MB of RAM was used:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 501 27 473 0 1 14
-/+ buffers/cache: 10 490
Swap: 1023 0 1023
Top showing the processes running:
top - 00:19:18 up 3 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 47 total, 1 running, 46 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.3%st
Mem: 513028k total, 27708k used, 485320k free, 1300k buffers
Swap: 1048568k total, 0k used, 1048568k free, 15204k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
894 root 20 0 8264 2844 2324 S 0.7 0.6 0:00.06 sshd
897 root 20 0 3948 2640 1332 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.25 bash
562 root 20 0 27320 1472 1032 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.01 rsyslogd
916 root 20 0 2340 1120 900 R 0.7 0.2 0:00.01 top
738 root 20 0 5500 972 584 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd
863 Debian-e 20 0 6500 920 620 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 exim4
600 root 20 0 2300 860 672 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 cron
146 root 16 -4 2264 748 416 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.03 udevd
1 root 20 0 2040 728 628 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.24 init
176 root 18 -2 2260 628 300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd
181 root 18 -2 2260 628 300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd
598 root 20 0 1692 564 464 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 anacron
883 root 20 0 1712 556 476 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
884 root 20 0 1712 556 476 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
886 root 20 0 1712 556 476 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
887 root 20 0 1712 556 476 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
882 root 20 0 1712 552 476 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 getty
And htop output:
About 800MB of hard drive space was used:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 20G 801M 18G 5% / tmpfs 251M 0 251M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 241M 24K 241M 1% /dev tmpfs 251M 4.0K 251M 1% /dev/shm
The iNode limit is set to pretty standard values:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 2621440 24939 2596501 1% / tmpfs 64128 4 64124 1% /lib/init/rw udev 61479 390 61089 1% /dev tmpfs 64128 3 64125 1% /dev/shm
When the full LNMP stack was loaded, 51MB of RAM was used, which is a little less than the usual memory usage for such a template:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 501 491 9 0 21 419
-/+ buffers/cache: 51 449
Swap: 1023 0 1023
Top showing the processes running:
top - 09:21:56 up 1:06, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.46, 0.72
Tasks: 55 total, 1 running, 54 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.2%st
Mem: 513028k total, 503624k used, 9404k free, 21792k buffers
Swap: 1048568k total, 108k used, 1048460k free, 429480k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
6500 www 20 0 15024 10m 436 S 0.0 2.2 0:00.01 nginx
18995 mysql 20 0 33948 4620 2020 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.01 mysqld
6490 root 20 0 22640 4552 1412 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.06 php-cgi
6491 www 20 0 22640 4136 996 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
6492 www 20 0 22640 4136 996 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
6494 www 20 0 22640 4136 996 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
6495 www 20 0 22640 4136 996 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
6497 www 20 0 22640 4136 996 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 php-cgi
897 root 20 0 3952 2292 980 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.29 bash
894 root 20 0 8404 1652 1096 S 0.0 0.3 0:02.23 sshd
6522 root 20 0 2344 1128 904 R 0.2 0.2 0:00.01 top
562 root 20 0 27320 1060 632 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.01 rsyslogd
6498 root 20 0 4812 736 272 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 nginx
738 root 20 0 5500 712 324 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 sshd
863 Debian-e 20 0 6500 656 356 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 exim4
1 root 20 0 2024 588 504 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.27 init
18893 root 20 0 1760 556 464 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 mysqld_safe
And htop output:
About 2.1GB of hard drive space was used:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 20G 2.1G 17G 11% / tmpfs 251M 0 251M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 241M 24K 241M 1% /dev tmpfs 251M 4.0K 251M 1% /dev/shm
And about 3% of iNodes:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 2621440 73638 2547802 3% / tmpfs 64128 4 64124 1% /lib/init/rw udev 61479 390 61089 1% /dev tmpfs 64128 3 64125 1% /dev/shm
CPUInfo shows there is a single core assigned to this VPS and it is a E5-2620 CPU:
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 45 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz stepping : 7 cpu MHz : 1999.999 cache size : 15360 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu de tsc msr pae cx8 sep cmov pat clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht nx constant_tsc up nonstop_tsc pni pclmulqdq ssse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes avx hypervisor bogomips : 3999.99 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
Meminfo output:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 513028 kB MemFree: 11144 kB Buffers: 18920 kB Cached: 441712 kB SwapCached: 108 kB Active: 62816 kB Inactive: 420608 kB Active(anon): 11088 kB Inactive(anon): 11744 kB Active(file): 51728 kB Inactive(file): 408864 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 513028 kB LowFree: 11144 kB SwapTotal: 1048568 kB SwapFree: 1048460 kB Dirty: 0 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 22724 kB Mapped: 6020 kB Shmem: 40 kB Slab: 14616 kB SReclaimable: 12252 kB SUnreclaim: 2364 kB KernelStack: 456 kB PageTables: 860 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 1305080 kB Committed_AS: 104776 kB VmallocTotal: 335864 kB VmallocUsed: 1036 kB VmallocChunk: 334756 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB DirectMap4k: 524288 kB DirectMap2M: 0 kB
And time sync:
time sync real 0m0.016s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.004s
Download test from Cachefly showed pretty decent results:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2013-04-30 09:25:14-- 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 7.67M/s in 11s 2013-04-30 09:25:25 (8.91 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Testing again showed pretty consistent results:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test --2013-04-30 09:29:55-- 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: `100mb.test' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 9.04M/s in 11s 2013-04-30 09:30:07 (8.89 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]
As for the upload, it was pretty interesting that to see that my test VPS from ChicagoVPS that is located in the same city to the physical location of this VPS actually gave the slowest upload test speed:
wget 198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2013-04-30 09:30:40-- http://198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 198.167.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 1.68M/s in 57s 2013-04-30 09:31:37 (1.75 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
My Quickweb test VPS located in Chicago, IL, showed better upload speed than this one:
wget 198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2013-04-30 01:33:14-- http://198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 198.167.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 1.65M/s in 61s 2013-04-30 01:34:15 (1.65 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
And finally, my test VPS with Prometeus, in Milan, Italy, which is the furthest from this VPS in terms of physical distance, actually gave the best test speed:
wget 198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2013-04-29 21:34:54-- http://198.167.xxx,xxx/100mb.test Connecting to 198.167.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 2.87M/s in 62s 2013-04-29 21:35:56 (1.61 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
The dd test actually revealed pretty good disk I/O speed:
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, 6.77652 s, 158 MB/s
Testing again showed similar results, which is pretty impressive:
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, 7.61619 s, 141 MB/s
IOPing showed fairly consistent disk I/O speed, in fact, all but the last reading had slightly higher than ususal IO ping, showing that in general the disk is performing pretty good:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=1 time=0.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=2 time=0.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=3 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=4 time=0.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=5 time=0.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=6 time=0.6 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=7 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=8 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=9 time=0.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=10 time=3.6 ms --- . (ext3 /dev/xvda1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9007.8 ms, 1620 iops, 6.3 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/0.6/3.6/1.0 ms
The results for the same test was a little disappointing when I tried it again:
ioping -c 10 . 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=1 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=2 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=3 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=4 time=8.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=5 time=21.5 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=6 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=7 time=6.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=8 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=9 time=0.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/xvda1): request=10 time=0.2 ms --- . (ext3 /dev/xvda1) ioping statistics --- 10 requests completed in 9040.2 ms, 262 iops, 1.0 mb/s min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/3.8/21.5/6.6 ms
With a single CPU core, it is difficult to expect any good Unixbench score, but I was still a little surprised to see that in the end, the score was a little above 300, considering that E5-2620 is a pretty powerful CPU:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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: xxxxxxx: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem -- #1 SMP Mon Oct 3 05:03:32 UTC 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz (4000.0 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
09:37:09 up 1:21, 1 user, load average: 0.08, 0.04, 0.26; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Apr 30 2013 09:37:09 - 10:05:09
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 7814464.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 1655.9 MWIPS (10.3 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 1058.1 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 186602.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 53175.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 618814.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 344959.6 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 42426.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 1715.9 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1800.3 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 238.7 lpm (60.2 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 395911.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 7814464.7 669.6
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 1655.9 301.1
Execl Throughput 43.0 1058.1 246.1
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 186602.3 471.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 53175.6 321.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 618814.8 1066.9
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 344959.6 277.3
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 42426.5 106.1
Process Creation 126.0 1715.9 136.2
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 1800.3 424.6
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 238.7 397.8
System Call Overhead 15000.0 395911.0 263.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 325.8
Testing again showed similar results:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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: xxxxxxxx: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem -- #1 SMP Mon Oct 3 05:03:32 UTC 2011
Machine: i686 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz (4000.0 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
12:31:12 up 4:15, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00; runlevel 2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Apr 30 2013 12:31:12 - 12:59:10
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 8186740.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 1727.6 MWIPS (10.4 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 1040.9 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 192154.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 51725.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 625464.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 344245.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 42321.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 1866.4 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1928.2 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 242.4 lpm (60.2 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 398695.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 8186740.8 701.5
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 1727.6 314.1
Execl Throughput 43.0 1040.9 242.1
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 192154.1 485.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 51725.8 312.5
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 625464.3 1078.4
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 344245.8 276.7
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 42321.9 105.8
Process Creation 126.0 1866.4 148.1
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 1928.2 454.8
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 242.4 404.0
System Call Overhead 15000.0 398695.4 265.8
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 332.8
Geekbench showed slightly above 2700 points, which is probably average at best:
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-bigmem i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 45 Stepping 7
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.00 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: 501 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1139 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1158 ||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1164 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1196 ||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1416 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1532 ||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1171 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1172 ||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1025 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 955 |||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 1850 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1784 |||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1598 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1594 ||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2229 ||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2535 ||||||||||
single-threaded vector 2926 |||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 2957 |||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 1377 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1384 |||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2439 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1908 |||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5267 |||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4649 ||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 3488 |||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3834 |||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3835 |||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 5887 |||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 1821 |||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3491 |||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 6279 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 3333 |||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5809 |||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3675 ||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5471 |||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 4164 ||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5798 |||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 3841 |||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4378 |||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 1296 |||||
Floating Point Score: 2727 ||||||||||
Memory Score: 4262 |||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 4558 ||||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 2716 ||||||||||
However at least from this, we can see that the CPU is not throttled, which is good.
Testing again showed somewhat better 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-bigmem i686
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 45 Stepping 7
Logical Processors: 1
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.00 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: 501 MB
Memory Type: N/A
SIMD: 1
BIOS: N/A
Processor Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
Processor Cores: 1
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1204 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1249 ||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1433 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1380 |||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1534 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1453 |||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1065 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1028 ||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 932 |||
multi-threaded scalar 936 |||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 1787 |||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1771 |||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1563 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1582 ||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2366 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2538 ||||||||||
single-threaded vector 2682 ||||||||||
multi-threaded vector 2828 |||||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 1524 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1402 |||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2355 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1912 |||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5297 |||||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4902 |||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 3993 |||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4033 ||||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 4201 ||||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 6035 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 2166 ||||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3957 |||||||||||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 7312 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 4445 |||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 7265 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 3653 ||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 5446 |||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 3944 |||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 6283 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 5069 ||||||||||||||||||||
single-threaded vector 4446 |||||||||||||||||
Integer Score: 1314 |||||
Floating Point Score: 2784 |||||||||||
Memory Score: 4734 ||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score: 5068 ||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 2887 |||||||||||
As you can see, the overall specifications of this VPS is not very in the “high-end” of the spectrum and even though the disk I/O as shown by dd test is impressive, for some reason the ioping output was less than ideal.
Customer Service and Support
There seem to be quite a few complaints on the support of Virpus team, however I have actually had pretty decent interaction with them. The WHMCS system in Virpus is set up to allow clients responding to the tickets via email, which is a feature that, surprisingly, many providers are lacking, but it is something that I personally love since I always consider it a trouble that I have to log into the providers’ client management system every time I need to send in a ticket or reply to one.
My first ticket was regarding the install of DirectAdmin and was sent in at 15:46 on a Tuesday and the initial response from Virpus was made 8 minutes later (and it is not a “we are working on it” type of response but an actual request for further information) and other than the installation issues which took a bit longer, most of the replies were made within an hour. For some reason the DirectAdmin installation on my original VPS did not work after several attempt and Virpus has moved the VPS to another node for me as well.
My second interaction with them was actually over an abuse complaint that Virpus has received from my VPS the day after DirectAdmin was installed and before I even get to log in to the VPS (so someone actually hacked into the VPS and put up a phishing site there) and I have responded the complaint in about 30 minute, explaining to them there is no way I could have logged in, let alone setting up a phishing website. Jeremy from Virpus has responded within 2 minutes and helped me to reload the OS since I was not able to SSH into my server at that time.
Overall, I think the customer service is quite prompt, and is in line with what I would expect from a big provider like Virpus. They obviously have to follow their rules but as long as I am willing to provide instructions and solutions, they are more than willing to help me.
Conclusion
Just like some of the other large budget VPS providers I have reviewed before (Burst.Net Review for example), the performance of the VPS itself is probably not the best that we have ever seen even among the budget providers. For example, the ioping may be a little inconsistent from time to time and the benchmark, having a single core CPU, is not all that impressive. However, the VPS is in general pretty stable and at least from my interaction with Virpus, the customer support seems to be pretty professional and prompt. Granted that for a large company like Virpus, it is difficult to convince them to offer any sort of “favor” to a particular client and they may seem to be quite strict about the rules; however to me, these are really good things considering the number of clients they will have to offer favors on and how much it would impact others. Of course, the final bonus feature they have is the free DirectAdmin license, which is always good for those who would like to learn more about the DirectAdmin package.
Another good post 96mb! Hope you get to review more frequently!
@grails tutorial Thanks for your support, I will try to keep up with the pace.
it is also nice that XEN people are still doing great!
Virpus is a hit or miss company