96MB Low End Review Part XXIII – Alvotech
There are definitely not that many providers offering unmetered services and is within the low-end budget type of range, a few of them which claimed to do has either proven not to be the case. However, Alvotech was daring enough to offer such services at a very low price and yet still received quite a few great comments about the services they provide. Is it really as good as many people have claimed them to be? Let’s find out.
General Information and Set Up
By default, Alvotech’s website is in Deutsch, which is understandable since they are, after all, German company. They do have a toggle on their home page for those who are not that efficient with German, although I am not sure how many people will complain when they have to click on an American flag to see the English version:
Jokes aside, unlike many of the other providers who use WHMCS to manage clients and sign ups, Alvotech actually came up with their own sign up form. Once you click on Order Now, this is what you see via their HTTPS page:
Set up is not instant although you do get a confirmation email when the payment is submitted. The VPS is promised to be set up within 12 hours and in my case, it took a little more than 12 hours for the creation of the server after my payment (payment made at 10:11PM and the VPS was set up at 1:45PM next afternoon. Therefore, for those ones who are in a rush, you may have to be a little bit patient when it comes to server set up.
There was no option to specify the root password and therefore it was sent in plain text in the welcome email as well. The control panel link provided in the welcome email is in German, which, again, you can toggle it to English.
Once logged in via HTTPS interface with your client ID and password, you are presented with a rather simple control panel page:
The settings area is where you change your personal information, view your invoice and change your control panel password, but the vServer is the really interesting part.
Once you click on OverView and click on the Options for the corresponding VPS, a window that resembles the following shows:
As you can see, there are quite a few options, and besides the ones that you frequently see in popular control panels such as SolusVM, there is a few unique ones:
- Bandwidth: Has detailed usage graph as well as daily and monthly bandwidth usage
- Firewall: Allows you to enable and disable specific ports on specific machines that are connecting to the VPS
- rDNS: Needless to say, this set up the rDNS for the VPS
Few OS are available when you select Reinstall options:
By default, “Debian Lenny Minimal 64 Bit” was installed and it was mentioned in the welcome email that customer service could do OS installation for you.
The translated control panel sometimes still shows traces of German though, for example, here is the message that I have received after changed the rDNS:
Without checking Google translate or anything (allow me to be lazy for once), I guess it roughly means you will need to wait for up to 24 hours for the rDNS settings to take effect. (For those who can read German, please correct me if I am wrong.)
Test on the VPS
The VPS that I have set up for testing is the smallest vServerL in Amsterdam, Netherlands (in TeleCity Group DC as per this post), with the following specifications:
note that the traffic is throttled once you reach 1TB per month according to this fine print:
The server is using Linux VServer virtualization technology, which is rare among the low end providers but does provide full virtualization. Correction: As per rm in the comment here, this is incorrect, it does NOT provide full visualization.
The minimal template that they have provided is a truly “minimal” one, producing numbers that I even won’t believe myself:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 512 136 375 0 0 135
-/+ buffers/cache: 1 510
Swap: 2048 0 2048
The top output shows that I was not on drug when I saw the numbers:
top - 18:49:14 up 4 min, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.02, 0.00
Tasks: 6 total, 1 running, 5 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.2%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.2%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 524288k total, 140220k used, 384068k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 2097152k total, 0k used, 2097152k free, 138464k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
13595 root 20 0 8300 2832 2312 S 0 0.5 0:00.09 sshd
13604 root 20 0 4532 1760 1428 S 0 0.3 0:00.00 bash
13131 root 20 0 19148 1328 1020 S 0 0.3 0:00.00 rsyslogd
15568 root 20 0 2376 980 796 R 0 0.2 0:00.00 top
13502 root 20 0 5536 948 560 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd
1 root 20 0 10364 748 616 S 0 0.1 0:02.35 init
Even with the full LNMP stack installed and loaded, the memory usage is still relatively low:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 512 450 61 0 0 422
-/+ buffers/cache: 27 484
Swap: 2048 19 2028
And the corresponding top output:
top - 22:05:55 up 9 days, 7:21, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 2.79, 4.59
Tasks: 31 total, 1 running, 30 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 26.5%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 70.9%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 524288k total, 461252k used, 63036k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 2097152k total, 20020k used, 2077132k free, 432628k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
20214 root 20 0 24220 3488 332 S 0 0.7 0:35.83 php-cgi
20215 www 20 0 24220 3472 284 S 0 0.7 0:00.00 php-cgi
20216 www 20 0 24220 3472 284 S 0 0.7 0:00.00 php-cgi
20217 www 20 0 24220 3472 284 S 0 0.7 0:00.00 php-cgi
20218 www 20 0 24220 3472 284 S 0 0.7 0:00.00 php-cgi
20219 www 20 0 24220 3464 276 S 0 0.7 0:00.00 php-cgi
9914 root 20 0 8432 2920 2340 S 0 0.6 0:00.42 sshd
10711 root 20 0 8432 2876 2332 S 0 0.5 0:00.26 sshd
9923 root 20 0 4560 1784 1428 S 0 0.3 0:00.05 bash
18196 www 20 0 14952 1084 552 S 0 0.2 0:10.51 nginx
3378 root 20 0 2376 992 796 R 0 0.2 0:00.00 top
18053 mysql 20 0 35332 956 368 S 0 0.2 0:00.62 mysqld
18197 www 20 0 14888 936 584 S 0 0.2 0:17.05 nginx
18198 www 20 0 14888 844 620 S 0 0.2 0:22.98 nginx
10715 root 20 0 1972 768 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 sftp-server
13131 root 20 0 19148 764 588 S 0 0.1 0:00.18 rsyslogd
1 root 20 0 10364 716 584 S 0 0.1 0:08.70 init
Close to 2G of disk space was taken after the LNMP stack was installed:
df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hdv1 30G 1.9G 27G 7% / tmpfs 2.0M 0 2.0M 0% /dev/shm
And Inode was set to pretty high value:
df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/hdv1 1966080 63882 1902198 4% / tmpfs 1024431 1 1024430 1% /dev/shm
vmstat does not seems to show, and gives an error mesaage:
vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
Error: /proc must be mounted
To mount /proc at boot you need an /etc/fstab line like:
/proc /proc proc defaults
In the meantime, run "mount /proc /proc -t proc"
Although I was able to run uptime to show the node is barely used:
uptime 19:05:43 up 9 days, 4:21, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
The error message on vmstat is interesting because apparently proc was mounted at boot as I was able to run both CPU info, which shows the VPS comes with 4 Xeon cores (not throttled):
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2666.738 cache size : 3072 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority bogomips : 5333.47 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2666.738 cache size : 3072 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 1 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 1 initial apicid : 1 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority bogomips : 5333.68 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 2 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2666.738 cache size : 3072 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 2 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 2 initial apicid : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority bogomips : 5333.71 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 3 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2666.738 cache size : 3072 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 3 cpu cores : 4 apicid : 3 initial apicid : 3 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority bogomips : 5333.71 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
And meminfo as well:
cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 524288 kB MemFree: 60320 kB Buffers: 0 kB Cached: 430992 kB SwapCached: 38776 kB Active: 3967676 kB Inactive: 2737576 kB Active(anon): 1783240 kB Inactive(anon): 343296 kB Active(file): 2184436 kB Inactive(file): 2394280 kB Unevictable: 8 kB Mlocked: 8 kB SwapTotal: 2097152 kB SwapFree: 2077132 kB Dirty: 272 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 2085652 kB Mapped: 205692 kB Shmem: 9240 kB Slab: 1215108 kB SReclaimable: 1011460 kB SUnreclaim: 203648 kB KernelStack: 10896 kB PageTables: 65236 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 11913208 kB Committed_AS: 9034840 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB VmallocUsed: 290632 kB VmallocChunk: 34359329528 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB DirectMap4k: 2760 kB DirectMap2M: 8384512 kB
Disk I/O is in the usable range:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 22.415 s, 47.9 MB/s
And testing again actually shows better I/O:
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, 20.5982 s, 52.1 MB/s
The 1Gbit port is definitely showing off its power when downloading file from Cachefly:
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-08-22 19:14:12-- 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 86.2M/s in 1.2s 2011-08-22 19:14:13 (86.2 MB/s) - “/dev/nullâ€
I have tried to use aget to download the file as well, and needless to say, with 10 concurrent threads, the download was completed within a second:
aget -n 10 http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test Attempting to read log file aget-100mb.test.log for resuming download job... Couldn't find log file for this download, starting a clean job... Head-Request Connection established Downloading /100mb.test (104857600 bytes) from site cachefly.cachefly.net(205.234.175.175:80). Number of Threads: 10 .. [4% completed] ..... [9% completed] ....... [14% completed] .......... [19% completed] ............ [24% completed] ............... [29% completed] ................. [34% completed] .................... [39% completed] ...................... [44% completed] .......................................... [49% completed] ........ [49% completed] ........................... [54% completed] .............................. [59% completed] ................................ [64% completed] ................................... [69% completed] ...................................... [74% completed] .................................... [74% completed] ........................................ [79% completed] .......................................... [84% completed] ............................................. [89% completed] ............................................... [94% completed] .................................................. [99% completed] .................................................. [100% completed] Download completed, job completed in 1 seconds. (102400 Kb/sec)
Even with the 1GB file from thinkbroadband, the speed was still pretty good:
aget -n 10 http://download.thinkbroadband.com/1GB.zip Attempting 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 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 47 seconds. (22310 Kb/sec) Shutting down...
Upload speed seems pretty good too:
First, my BuyVM VPS from San Jose, CA, which is supposed to have the “worst” connection to Europe among all my 3 test VPS:
wget 91.203.212.13/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-08-22 23:16:42-- http://91.203.212.13/100mb.test Connecting to 91.203.212.13:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 6.66M/s in 18s 2011-08-22 23:17:01 (5.44 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Nix Communication’s VPS in Montreal, Canada gave an even better speed:
wget 91.203.212.13/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-08-23 10:08:11-- http://91.203.212.13/100mb.test Connecting to 91.203.212.13:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 9.94M/s in 13s 2011-08-23 10:08:24 (7.90 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Finally, and most surprisingly, my Quickweb VPS in London, UK, actually gave the lowest speed, which really made me wondering if it is based in Europe at all:
wget 91.203.212.13/100mb.test -O /dev/null --2011-08-22 23:07:12-- http://91.203.212.13/100mb.test Connecting to 91.203.212.13:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `/dev/null' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 8.52M/s in 34s 2011-08-22 23:07:46 (2.98 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
As for the benchmarks, I was pretty surprised when the UnixBench score did not go above 1000, given everything for the box seems to be pretty good:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
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
4 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Process Creation 1 2 3
4 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
4 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: vs1429.ams2.alvotech.de: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.36.1-vs2.3.0.36.38.build1-cti -- #5 SMP Fri Jul 29 16:54:05 EDT 2011
Machine: x86_64 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.5 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 2: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 3: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
19:31:29 up 9 days, 4:47, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.00; runlevel 3
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Mon Aug 22 2011 19:31:29 - 19:59:43
4 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 10083482.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 1998.8 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3528.0 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 375937.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 118210.7 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 882344.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 793975.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 195507.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 9246.2 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4436.1 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 562.8 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 650460.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 10083482.9 864.1
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 1998.8 363.4
Execl Throughput 43.0 3528.0 820.5
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 375937.0 949.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 118210.7 714.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 882344.0 1521.3
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 793975.9 638.2
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 195507.5 488.8
Process Creation 126.0 9246.2 733.8
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4436.1 1046.3
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 562.8 938.1
System Call Overhead 15000.0 650460.1 433.6
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 737.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Mon Aug 22 2011 19:59:43 - 20:33:51
4 CPUs in system; running 4 parallel copies of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 9966870.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 7344.9 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3543.0 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 379596.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 117231.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 883001.7 KBps (30.1 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 790522.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 175325.0 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 8965.0 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4329.2 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 548.0 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 649982.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 9966870.5 854.1
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 7344.9 1335.4
Execl Throughput 43.0 3543.0 823.9
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 379596.0 958.6
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 117231.0 708.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 883001.7 1522.4
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 790522.2 635.5
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 175325.0 438.3
Process Creation 126.0 8965.0 711.5
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4329.2 1021.0
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 548.0 913.4
System Call Overhead 15000.0 649982.3 433.3
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 808.3
Repeating the test again does not seems to be a lot better:
# # # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
# # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # # #
# # # # # # ## ##### ##### # # # # ######
# # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # #
# # # ## # # # # # # # ## # # # #
#### # # # # # ##### ###### # # #### # #
Version 5.1.3 Based on the Byte Magazine Unix Benchmark
Multi-CPU version Version 5 revisions by Ian Smith,
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
January 13, 2011 johantheghost at yahoo period com
1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
1 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Process Creation 1 2 3
1 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
4 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Double-Precision Whetstone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Execl Throughput 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1 2 3
4 x Pipe Throughput 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Pipe-based Context Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Process Creation 1 2 3
4 x System Call Overhead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 1 2 3
4 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 1 2 3
========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
System: vs1429.ams2.alvotech.de: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.36.1-vs2.3.0.36.38.build1-cti -- #5 SMP Fri Jul 29 16:54:05 EDT 2011
Machine: x86_64 (unknown)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.5 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 2: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
CPU 3: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz (5333.7 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
20:55:05 up 9 days, 6:10, 1 user, load average: 0.93, 0.74, 2.13; runlevel 3
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Mon Aug 22 2011 20:55:05 - 21:23:18
4 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 10074456.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 1892.0 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3526.2 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 377610.0 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 118985.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 895598.1 KBps (30.1 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 795781.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 196634.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 9165.0 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4435.2 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 561.9 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 650272.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 10074456.3 863.3
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 1892.0 344.0
Execl Throughput 43.0 3526.2 820.0
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 377610.0 953.6
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 118985.3 718.9
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 895598.1 1544.1
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 795781.7 639.7
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 196634.9 491.6
Process Creation 126.0 9165.0 727.4
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4435.2 1046.0
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 561.9 936.5
System Call Overhead 15000.0 650272.1 433.5
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 735.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Mon Aug 22 2011 21:23:18 - 21:57:28
4 CPUs in system; running 4 parallel copies of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 9951860.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 7668.4 MWIPS (10.2 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3524.6 lps (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 379597.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 116882.1 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 889780.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 788264.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 175078.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 9087.9 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 4349.7 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 549.4 lpm (60.3 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 649816.7 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 9951860.4 852.8
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 7668.4 1394.3
Execl Throughput 43.0 3524.6 819.7
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 379597.2 958.6
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 116882.1 706.2
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 889780.8 1534.1
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 788264.1 633.7
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 175078.8 437.7
Process Creation 126.0 9087.9 721.3
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 4349.7 1025.9
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 549.4 915.7
System Call Overhead 15000.0 649816.7 433.2
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 812.2
GeekBench results shows somewhat better score with above 2000 points:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.36.1-vs2.3.0.36.38.build1-cti x86_64
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2 .66GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10
Logical Processors: 4
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.67 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 0.00 B
L1 Data Cache: 0.00 B
L2 Cache: 3.00 MB
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 X3330 @ 2.66GHz
Processor Cores: 4
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1426 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1526 ||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1612 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1552 ||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1463 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1503 ||||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1383 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1360 |||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1214 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1247 ||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2684 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2648 ||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1494 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1519 ||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2736 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2901 |||||||||||
single-threaded vector 1967 |||||||
multi-threaded vector 2301 |||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 1717 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1780 |||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2342 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1877 |||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 4878 |||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4920 |||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 3542 ||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3563 ||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3791 |||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3800 |||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 1817 |||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 1894 |||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 3590 ||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2312 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2458 |||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2444 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2363 |||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2448 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2665 ||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2663 ||||||||||
single-threaded vector 1938 |||||||
Integer Score: 1634 ||||||
Floating Point Score: 2681 ||||||||||
Memory Score: 2978 |||||||||||
Stream Score: 2411 |||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 2346 |||||||||
Running it later on, strangely, gave exactly the same overall score, which at least shows the performance is consistent:
System Information
Platform: Linux x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
Operating System: Linux 2.6.36.1-vs2.3.0.36.38.build1-cti x86_64
Model: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz)
Motherboard: Unknown Motherboard
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10
Logical Processors: 4
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.67 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 0.00 B
L1 Data Cache: 0.00 B
L2 Cache: 3.00 MB
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 X3330 @ 2.66GHz
Processor Cores: 4
Integer
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1424 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1526 ||||||
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1613 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1551 ||||||
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1461 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1499 |||||
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1383 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1359 |||||
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1216 ||||
multi-threaded scalar 1248 ||||
Lua
single-threaded scalar 2677 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2649 ||||||||||
Floating Point
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1495 |||||
multi-threaded scalar 1519 ||||||
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 2735 ||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 2900 |||||||||||
single-threaded vector 1968 |||||||
multi-threaded vector 2303 |||||||||
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 1718 ||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1786 |||||||
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 2342 |||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 1878 |||||||
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 4872 |||||||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 4922 |||||||||||||||||||
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 3543 ||||||||||||||
multi-threaded scalar 3562 ||||||||||||||
Memory
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3786 |||||||||||||||
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3808 |||||||||||||||
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 1822 |||||||
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 1890 |||||||
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 3609 ||||||||||||||
Stream
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2288 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2444 |||||||||
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2393 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2377 |||||||||
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 2416 |||||||||
single-threaded vector 2764 |||||||||||
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2588 ||||||||||
single-threaded vector 1931 |||||||
Integer Score: 1633 ||||||
Floating Point Score: 2681 ||||||||||
Memory Score: 2983 |||||||||||
Stream Score: 2400 |||||||||
Overall Geekbench Score: 2346 |||||||||
Customer Service And Support
If you have looked at the screenshots taken in the control panel above, you probably have noticed that there is nowhere for you to submit a ticket. In fact, only the following contact methods are available during the “working hours”:
Although it seems that they have an internal ticketing system since every time I have send support an email, there is always a ticket number in the reply, quite frankly speaking, I prefer to just reply emails for support questions rather than having to log into the provider’s WHMCS site every time I get a reply notification and find the ticket in question and reply it back. Unfortunately, majority of the providers using WHMCS do not offer that feature (Quickweb is one that I know does, and may be a few others), and it would be great if WHMCS could make it an default option.
Anyways, the ticket reply time varies for Alvotech, one of my ticket send in at 11:53AM was responded at 12:35PM, barely 42 minutes, and another one that I have sent in at 3:32AM was not replied at 5:24PM the next day. Having said that, considering these are all budget plans, I think the response time are definitely reasonable.
Conclusion
The network provided by Alvotech is definitely great, and unmetered bandwidth definitely make it useful for tasks that requires heavy uploading and downloading. The minimal OS template indeed use a minimal amount of resources, which, although we have 512MB of RAM to play around with even with the smallest plan, is always a good to have. Although the benchmarks scores are not that high because disk I/O is perhaps at the low end of acceptable range, I would still think it is a good VPS for tasks that require heavy usage of the Internet.
> The server is using Linux VServer virtualization technology, which is rare among the low end providers but
>does provide full virtualization.
This is incorrect, it does not.
@rm: You are correct, sorry I made a mistake there:
here is what I see on http://linux-vserver.org/Welcome_to_Linux-VServer.org
utilize available resources efficiently, as they run on the same kernel.
Right 🙂
People diss Linux-VServer (and even OpenVZ, but that’s another story), calling it “glorified chroot”, but while it has some limitations (mostly network-wise) it does allow very efficient use of node’s RAM and CPU, much more so than Xen or KVM.
@rm: that is interesting, do you know what are the advantages and disadvantages of OVZ as compered to vServer?
OpenVZ
+ can request proper tun device and use sit IPv6 tunnels and PPTP or other types of VPN
– most OVZ hosters use the ancient 2.6.18 kernel
– memory limiting model (userbeancounters) is bad and means you sometimes can’t fully utilize all of your guaranteed memory; this is solved only with the new OpenVZ vswap, but afaik just one LEB provider implemented it yet (QualityServers).
VServer
– very limited tun device, IPv6 tunnels can’t be used
– doubt that even PPTP/VPN can be used easily
– programs which need raw sockets (like mtr) can’t be used
– ifconfig eth0 shows traffic usage for the whole node (can’t use programs like vnstat)
– dunno what else. Mostly the limited access to low-level networking.
@rm: You are correct, I just ran the ifconfig on this box out of curiosity:
And modprobe does not show anything as well, so I guess you are correct with the TUN devices, wondering when would people able to put openVPN on it 🙂
Linux Vserver is just like BSD Jails or OpenVZ or Virtuozzo (the OpenVZ commercial brother) just an OS-Virtualisation. In contrast to Xen which is a classic hypervisor. However, OS-Virtualisation safes ressources. And the Vserver allowes in detail management of ressources.
Btw, you are right with your assumption concerning the German text.
@Skagerrak: Thanks, I was just guessing based on the 24, so I figured there might be a good chance I am wrong, but I guess I was just lucky on the translation part 🙂
On the detail management of resources point, is it from the node perspective or from the individual VPS user’s perspective? I have not found too much differences as an individual user, so I guess basically you mean on the node, you can pretty much tweak anything you like?