My Review For The Cheap VPS From Veggiehost

First to clarify, I am a user without any association from any VPS providers.

Originally I was looking for a cheap $15 / 384MB / 10:1 solution from Leeware, while he is no longer providing new slots for Debian, it was dropped from my consideration. (Though I am still interested if I can get one from the "waiting queue")

The only option I left with comparable price and configuration is from Veggiehost:

$14 / month
256MB guaranteed memory
24GB storage
300GB bandwidth

This sounds comfortable for me except I have no information on the CPU share ratio, while as I only run small sites, from my previous server co-location experience, CPU usage is usually less than 1% with my old slow server (Duron 800MHz), this should not have any problem for me. After fine tuning for a month of time, the server is now running Debian Etch perfectly.

The following pros were encountered after switching to its VPS:

1. The network speed is fast, I from Hong Kong and my friend from Japan can reach the server with low ping time.

2. The response time of support is fast. I sent about 6 tickets in the past month and every time I get the problem solved within 24 hours. I did not send "urgent ticket" yet as for an un-managed solution I do not think of any "urgent ticket" is required unless your machine is totally unable to visit.

The following problems were encountered though:

1. System time is always lagging. After few support tickets, the problem should have been solved as the support staffs replied that a script was applied to sync the time.

2. The system did not fine tuned yet. TUN/TAP module and openvz parameters were not fine tuned, so that I found problem when configuring OpenVPN and eaccelerator. This either mean there was no client complaint about it before, or the solution only apply to the machine who complaint but not apply in batch.

3. Disk access is _VERY_ slow. Unixbench result is about 26 (Refer to my reply post in the VPS benchmark thread). While looking in deep, the problem was found due to extrodinary slow file access. An obvious example is I can get a median total time of "3ms" to access a static webpage while the maximum time (obviously the first time) is about "1800ms". Definitely, IO usage is still an issue that could not be monitored in OpenVZ yet.

4. For some CPU hungry users, this may be a cons, the system is reported running Opteron 285 (supposingly 2600MHz) under /proc/cpuinfo, while I merely get 96MHz, which can also project the system is about 27:1. When compared with that offered by Leeware (10:1), twice to third times slower. This was also reflected from its unixbench results. But I have to highlight again, this is not the cons for me, I still use less than 1% CPU power even I got 96MHz now.

Recommendation to potential subscribers:

- Think what suits your needs, the network speed of Veggiehost is fast, Leeware may be slow (refer other thread). While Leeware 10:1 and faster IO is definitely an advantage.

Recommendtation to Veggiehost:

- Though IO usage could not be monitored, it should be able to improve a lot when compared with results from other VPS providers. This can immediately improved the overall system performance and the unixbench.