I am new to VPS and am trying to get my head around it. What I am trying to figure out now are the pros and cons of Guaranteed and Burstable memory.
Assuming everything else is equal, and both options are in the budget, and that there is a requirement (at least at times) for more than 768mb of RAM, which option is better:
1152mb Guaranteed (SLM)
or
768mb Guaranteed / Burstable to 2048mb
Obviously, a big factor would be whether or not their is RAM available to burst to, and as I understand it, that is completely dependant on the server, other VPS's running, number of VPS's, etc.
However, what I am trying to figure out is which approach is typically better. If for the same money you can get 768mb w/2048mb burst or 1152mb SLM w/no burst which is the best option.
If my current requirements are important, then I listed them in a thread titled: "If I go with VPS would vB performance suffer greatly if I add multiple sites to VPS?"
I can't truely link to it, because I have less than five posts, but here is a quote of that thread, so you can hit the button in the quote to go there:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnedator
I am leaning towards one of these three VPS accounts that all cost roughly the same:
I would like to write a review about Sharktech.net. Well first of all I am on there hot deal plan 3. I have been with them for a few days. The server took about 50 hours to be set up, and then another hour to deliver my server login information. However, today when I got back from school I was suspended. The message is as follows;
We have temporarily suspended your service due to AUP violation of unauthorized IP usage. Your server has been using 208.98.1.66 & 208.98.1.67 IPs that do not belong to you. Once you confirm this incident, we'll unsuspend your service and you'll have to immediately unassign these 2 IPs.
Additionally, your mainIP is 208.98.1.12 and according to activation e-mail, your extra IPs were 208.98.31.64/26 (208.98.31.66-126). However, due to some problem that occurred with your IP range, we're forced to replace these IPs.
This is your new IP allocation: (IP Address removed)
Please make sure you will never use again any unauthorized IPs, other than 208.98.1.12 and 64.32.31.66-126. If you have any further questions feel free to ask. Thank you.
I was so angry after reading this. There welcome email clearly stated that I could use those IP's, so why should I suffer because of a mistake made by sharktech? This effects me in many ways. First of all my cPanel licence is licenced to the IP which I was suspended for using. Second, now I will have to reinstall cPanel giving me a large amount of downtime. Third, I have already lost a client during the 50 hours wait for the server (I have to cancel my old one so I don't get billed for it again). And lastly, I have to do my school work already since I am waiting for my server to be reactivated, during in which time I could have been importing accounts.
Speed-wise the server is OK. I ran a few tests on the server and the quality is good. You can certainly trust this company, but be sure to verify everything with them. Sharktech, if you are reading this please do not think that this is a negative review, I am just really unhappy about this.
kindly post your reviews for Sharktech's VPS services and for their services in general.If negative please suggest another provider that can offer around 30 ips and allows irc access on a vps or be appropriate for a shell provider ( one with real customer support unlike...).
Sharktech's plans are relevant to my current needs. I read a lot of "Sharktech has a reputation of being down more than up"; can anyone confirm or deny that from personal experiences?
Sharktech is hit and miss. They are not professional or courteous at all. Everything is done THEIR way or the highway. You either love them or you hate them. It's just the way it is.
Anyone who is truly business-minded and has a grasp on how the real world works will not like them. Dealing with them will NOT be like dealing with a "real" company like the cable company or phone company, even IF you're paying Sharktech MORE per month than you pay for your utility bill.
If you're just looking for the cheapest option for your side-business that you don't really care about too much, and you can tolerate the occasional email from Sharktech that makes you go "WHOA!", then use them.
if anyone has a 10mb or larger testfile on a Hetzner.De server. We need a couple of new servers, for two unrelated projects. Looking at Hetzner.De it seems to be perfectly suited for our needs on one project, just wanting to see what the bandwidth is like coming through to Australia.
I have Hetzner server, this was my first time to reset the hardware and it won't boot, the OS is SUSE, I contacted the support and they have no software support and that i need to fix it my own.
I use their Rescue-system to access the server but i do not know where, what and how to fix the boot problem.
I remember when I mounted the 2nd harddisk, and in the Partition it ask something about boot and I answer Yes, I don't know if this might be the cause.
i and some other people were scammed under Hetzner servers. Please avoid hetzner. I found out its not the first time they were used by Scammers, and im sure it wont be the last.
Maybe you have some nice memories with hetzner, well i cant deny that, but wait until you get into a messy situation, you will see the true color of this company.
When I smell something not right about Hannes, I immediately seeked their assistance to move in my data to their server. But Hetzner, didnt care.
Someone told me, in a similar incident few months ago, they were scammed by some guys selling Hetnser colo. This person contacted Hetzner and Hetzner didnt care. Its true. Hetzner didnt care. I contacted them so to get assistant to move my data into their servers. I told them I want to be their customer, but they simply told me to rent a server and move the data myself.
This is the true Hetzner!! It has been home of few or maybe dozens of Scammers. And time has proven itself, be careful of hetzner.
Some people will say, its not Hetzner's fault, but remember this its not the first time, hetzner's used by Scammers. In reality, if you keep a Scammer in your home and he scammed the society using ur name, in some countries, you can be liable too.
What Im saying is, avoid hetzner before you ended up in trouble, because then only you will see their true color. By then its too late.
Theres nothing much I can do now.. But you can... Avoid Hetzner.. But the choice is yours.
I am currently planning to move from my current provider to Hetzner.de, and wanted to synchronize this in a way that would avoid too much overlay, basically don't want to double pay for a whole month.
I asked hetzner.de support how long it takes to setup a root server, and their answer was "up to 3 weeks", and asking for the average did not help.
how long it usually takes to setup a server there? Isn't 3 weeks too long?
i'v sent to sharktech.net - rackvibe.com / an emails since a week about an illegal hosting on thier ircd services, but can i know why the identity theft irc servers is still running?
i have sent to both abuse emails to: abuse@rackvibe.com abuse@sharktech.net,
from a differnt email addresses with a hope to see a responce, but they never did.
i wounder how the both companies feel when people credit cards and thier bank accounts are being sold and traded under thier service.
i'v sent to sharktech.net - rackvibe.com / an emails since a week about an illegal hosting on thier ircd services, but can i know why the identity theft irc servers is still running?
i have sent to both abuse emails to: abuse@rackvibe.com abuse@sharktech.net,
from a differnt email addresses with a hope to see a responce, but they never did.
i wounder how the both companies feel when people credit cards and thier bank accounts are being sold and traded under thier service.
time to write few words about the providers I've been working with. I was with Hetzner for about a year (2007-ish). Initially I've been reluctant a bit to go with them because of a high setup fee, but after exploring other options I've decided to give them a shot.
For those interested, all my correspondance with them was in English.
Ordering process was easy and painless. Initially I'd ordered DS3000 server, and in less than 24 hours I got login credentials for it. Due to some last-minute business changes I have made some calculations and realized that DS5000 would have fitted my needs better, and I asked whether it's possible to "upgrade" my account to DS5000 before any work has been done on DS3000. They politely replied I should cancel my old order within 14 days and I'll be given a full refund on "no questions asked" policy stipulated by a german trade law, I suppose, which gives you right to cancel (within 2 weeks) any contract that has been arranged remotely.
Now that felt good. The only catch is that the cancellation letter had to be in writing, so I had to find a fax machine from which it could be sent to their billing dept.
In the meantime I have ordered a DS5000 and again received a fully provisioned box in less than 24 hours. Few days after I received my first invoice, stating 83.19 EUR setup fee and 49.58 monthly recurring fee. Huh? Only then I've realized that their stated prices include VAT which can't be billed to non-EU residents. Excellent!
Now, to the service provided. Over a year long period, I only had two downtimes: one planned and one uplanned. The unplanned one was a half-hour long network outage. The planned downtime was due to the power lines work in the datacenter my box was in. It had been announced 2 weeks in advance, and the downtime was about 2 hours.
It is worth noting that all automated emails I've received from Hetzner were bilingual (German/English).
I had nothing but praise for their services/price ratio. Their network is excellent, and the hardware is top-notch. Keep in mind that my bandwidth requirements were low, as I have never used more than 500 GB/month.
To summarize:
For: excellent hardware deal, network (for European users), remote reboot and network rescue system provided free of charge
Against: if you need more than 1 TB/month, you should look elsewhere. KVM/IP charged extra.
Does anyone have contact info for the hetzner.de manager/supervisor? I am currently having an urgent issue that I would like to discuss with their manager directly but cannot find his/her contact info.
We brought a RootServer with Hetzner after being recommended them. We did research on the service and they seemed to get positive review and the fact we are ordering from New Zealand we do not have to pay VAT.
We ordered our EQ 4 Server on 16/09/2009 and it was provisioned on the same day.
We were billed on the 2nd week of October which was fine. In the 3rd week of October the server exceeded 2TB and therefore it was reduced to 10Mbit/s which is fine.
It's now November and we expected the server to return to 100Mbit/s as per the definition on their website stating the following:
Quote:
Traffic Usage is for free. We will restrict the connection speed to 10 MBit/s if more than 2000 GB/month are exceeded. Optional, a permanent 100 MBit/s-bandwidth will be charged 14,90 € (incl. VAT) per additional TB.
Well of course my monthly bandwidth was reset to 0MB on November 1st and therefore we have not exceeded our usage for the month.
We emailed Hetzner Technicial Support with the following:
Quote:
Our server EQ 4 #XXXXX exceeded 2TB by roughly 650GB last month and was restricted to 10mbit/s as per Hetzner's policy.
It is now November 2nd and our server still remains restricted to 10mbit/s.
Can Hetzner please have a look into why this is the case and resolve the issue?
We received the following reply from Hetzner
Quote:
Your network connection has been throttled. Please contact our product advice. This will tell you everything about your options.
This was not the response I expected, therefore I emailed their Technical Product Advice team with the following:
Quote:
Our server EQ 4 #XXXXX should not be throttled as it is November now.
Your website states "Traffic Usage is for free. We will restrict the connection speed to 10 MBit/s if more than 2000 GB/month are exceeded."
The Hetzner Robot states our usage is 10GB for the current month. Therefore it should not be throttled as we have not exceeded 2000 GB for the current month.
In turn I received the following response which was very unexpected response by Hetzner
Quote:
if a server is reduced once it stays "for ever" on 10 mbps or you agree paying overusage over 2 TB for the future with 14.90 Euro/TB or you remove traffic intensive application from server.
I have read and screenshot all their terms and conditions and also system policies which does not state any where that I agreed to stay on 10mbps once going over the 2TB/month.
Since Hetzner Online AG operates out of Germany, And since Germany is a member state of the European Union. It is bound by the Consumer Protection Directives of the European Union.
My question is have I interprated what Hetzner are offering/selling incorrectly or they have mislead me?
If they have mislead me then some of following rights and responsibilities apply, these apply everywhere in the EU.
Quote:
If the item you bought does not look or function as it was advertised, or if it is not satisfactory, you have the right to have the item replaced at no extra cost or to get your money back if the replacement was not completed in a reasonable time. If you buy goods that turn out to be faulty, manufacturers must compensate you for any personal injury or damage caused to property. When you buy goods or services by post, telephone, fax or through the Internet from a professional trader, you have the same rights in relation to guarantees as if you had bought them in a shop.
If they have mislead me I will be asking for a full refund of my last invoice which included setup costs and have no additional charges added to my account as I will be terminating my service with them asap and start searching for a new provider.
Could someone explain in layman's terms a point on RAM for VPS? I always understood that you are allocated an amount of RAM with each plan. For example, 256MB on most lower packages. You are then allowed to reach some limit in case their is some spike and memory is required. That is called Burst RAM limit/amount. Like 1GB. I asked about this to my new host and they responded below. I'm not following it.
Quote:
SLM is a method of using dedicated physical RAM (RSS) versus a guaranteed (unknown) / burst (VSIZE). SLM is only accounting physical memory usage and you are silently swapping on the host (the VSIZE) -- in short, if you are running out of RAM it is because your VPS is physically trying to use more than your dedicated RAM limit.
SLM implements a 2nd-level out of memory (OOM) manager. In the event a VPS uses all of its physical RAM SLM will first delay the execution of processes to wait for more RAM to become available. After this it intelligently decides which processes to kill to maintain a running system.
On the kernel level it decides itself what should be preempted to swap in the system and which data is most rarely used. This is more efficient from overall performance point of view than having a separate swap space assigned to each VPS and used when VPS has exceeded their RAM limit which cause disk I/O bandwidth which is used for swapping is a scare resource, therefore it is not worth swapping out something when there is global RAM available still.
It had an Abuse Incident over the last 24 hours and missed the deadline they gave to clean it up. Being in Australia the time differences can make it difficult to always catch an Abuse Incident. Anyway so the server is disconnected and we have to pay a reconnection fee, ok fair enough.
As soon as the server went offline I became aware of the issue and contacted their support.
They said I need to pay the Abuse Invoice, so I said ok and went to my Client Area and there was no Abuse Invoice. So I tell the technician that there is no invoice in my account, he says, oh ok there must be a billing problem and passes it over to "Customer Service".
Hours later there is still no response from customer service and my server is still offline.
I shouldn't have my server OFFLINE while waiting for them to sort out their billing problem. Them getting their Abuse Invoice paid is NOT A TIME CRITICAL matter.
A server outage is a TIME CRITICAL MATTER.
Here I am still waiting and nothing is being done, my server is still OFFLINE. I have no problem paying the Abuse Invoice, but the server outage just goes on and on because they can't seem to generate the Abuse Invoice that they require me to pay.
Is anyone else having trouble with name resolution at Nocster being really wonky? Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it times out, sometimes it takes a couple seconds.
is anyone else having trouble with burst.net at the moment? from two locations, i'm having problems where anything that will elicit a large response just hangs indefinitely. i can ping my server just fine, i can shell into it... if i do "top" or "dmesg" or anything else that might dump back more than a few lines of response at a time, the ssh session hangs. i can do "ps x" as a regular user, because i only have two processes running. "ps ax" will hang ssh.
none of my websites work, and i can't get on the burst.net website from either location. i tried calling but no matter what sequence i try for (even tried reboots) i can't get ahold of a live person, but then again it is almost midnight.
I do alot of reading of select forums and contribute here and there, I am a huge contributor on Digital point. With lots of Itraders. I came here to try and find some info as to what was going on with burst.net when I stumbled across the merged thread here and started seeing what was going on.
I don't want to say it's typical but more often than not these days the server have been more miss than hit. Coupled with the fact that things like RAM upgrades carry a setup cost and a higher than avereage monthly fee. 512mb costs more than what 1GB does at most hosts.
On top of that, the upgrade time is 1-3 DAYS not hours, DAYS. My Ip address have to change for a bandwidth upgrade which caused 24 hours of downtime as the DNS propagated again.
Server was suspended 9 hours into an abuse report when it is promised 24 hours to solve the issue and I had agreed that the account needed to be suspended. We went back and forth with them about replying to the ticket that referenced the abuse issue. I was told that I needed to reply to the ticket. If they had bothered to look at the ticket themselves then they would have seen that I had a 3 to one ratio of my posts to theirs in trying to get this solved. $50 abuse fee talk about nickel and dimeing a guy. I know, I have heard it before, read the tos, aup, billing, and privacy policies. It's all in there somewhere but you just get to that point where if they charge you one more little BS fee then I'm going to go postal. Plus they can't keep their end of the bargain up when it comes to the network. Received a cpu / mobo upgrade expected upgrade time48-72 hours, after it was all said and done now the server sits still with 4GB or ram that it can not full recognize. On a happier note I did have other servers there (that's not the happy part) I knew in my gut that something had to be done. I've spent alot of time getting quotes with other providers, I even added one to my contact list from here on WHT, it was sales@hivelocity.net. I got several quotes from them and never pulled the trigger on a configuration on any of them, I tried out a few other smaller hosting companies with no luck and finally after a month or two of Dave asking how I was doing on a daily basis, I decided to go with a test server. Setup was decent, I had a problem with my ip when I first signed up, but the support staff is great, no hassles no fuss, no paying to upgrade, unless there is a price difference, NO DOWNTIME, NO ABUSE FEES (never had an abuse case yet) but it's not in any of their policies that I can read. All the chips seem to have fallen into place for me when I signed up with them.
I call Dave on a regular basis I get calls from him every so often. My server is up and better than ever. I get answers to my questions that are beyond the normal realm of technical support which I find odd because I see all over WHT that they are an unmanaged host. There are no per incident fees or nickle or dimeing. I was told by a tech that there would be a $65 per hour fee to install a 3rd party piece of software that they did not support but that to me is in the same realm of taking your car to the shop when you want a performance part installed. You want it done right and you want it quick. I still have a server with burst that I am almost finished with. I'm glad I had the courage to follow my instinct when it came time to switch or else I would be completely stuck. I ended up with burst because I was re-acuired through a reseller named Vagu. I am starting to see that there were problems between Vaguhost and Burst some time ago, about the time of that switch is when I started having second thoughts that I may need to add another provider. I am happy referring people to Hivelocity and I also resell their services. I am not too familiar with the other account representatives for Hivelocity, I believe that there are 4 total, but if you have been left high and dry by burst then give them a shout. I believe that one person even called themselves a "refugee."
I've come across a XEN based plan that offers additional 256MB swap space, and a few others Virtuozzo based plans that offer bursting capability (some even upto 8GB).
Which would be the better option?
Also, in Virtuozzo, will SLM allocation be significantly more beneficial than UBC for a small VPS?
Another question ... DirectAdmin officially claims to be able to run on a minimum of 64MB RAM. How would it perform on a 128 MB VPS ? I'm not really looking to do much, only to host a few (5-6) small sites along with some other non-webhosting applications (which is the reason for getting a VPS instead of a reseller).
I've seen most people suggest atleast 256MB for DirectAdmin, but that is beyond my budget. (I'm also seriously considering the option of employing vi as a control panel to further conserve my limited resources)
