ServerMania’s New SSD Cached Linux VPS Review

I bought a 2GB RAM VPS at the Los Angeles Data Center with the following specifications:

2GB RAM VPS specifications:
• 2 GB Guaranteed RAM
• 2 GB vSwap RAM
• 100 GB SSD RAID-10
• 4 IP Addresses
• 3000 GB Bandwidth
• 100 Mbps Network Speed

The price is $56 per year

Here is a quick review of the various parameters of the VPS (the VPS is empty as of now):

To check the load on the VPS and whether it is oversold:


root@xyz:~# top
top - 07:18:00 up 26 days, 6:35, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 32 total, 1 running, 31 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.0 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni,100.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem: 2097152 total, 175192 used, 1921960 free, 0 buffers
KiB Swap: 2097152 total, 28172 used, 2068980 free, 69944 cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1 root 20 0 24168 1572 896 S 0.0 0.1 0:17.28 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd/3094
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper/3094
95 root 20 0 17192 440 340 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 upstart-udev-br
126 root 20 0 50008 1120 1008 S 0.0 0.1 1:15.52 sshd
129 root 20 0 21532 772 664 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 udevd
163 messageb 20 0 23768 528 360 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 dbus-daemon
167 root 20 0 21528 296 252 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 udevd
168 root 20 0 21528 296 252 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 udevd
228 root 20 0 15148 320 216 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 upstart-socket-
364 postfix 20 0 44264 2720 2136 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 smtp
367 postfix 20 0 27168 1648 1360 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 bounce
368 root 20 0 17560 1376 1040 R 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 top
525 root 20 0 14932 740 732 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 xinetd
534 root 20 0 19072 840 720 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.96 cron
567 syslog 20 0 12712 744 616 S 0.0 0.0 1:21.79 syslogd
592 bind 20 0 234m 4772 2156 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.54 named

To check the RAM usage:


root@xyz:~# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2048 170 1877 0 0 68
-/+ buffers/cache: 102 1945
Swap: 2048 27 2020
root@xyz:~# ^C

Lets see the CPU processor:


root@xyz:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 60
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1270 v3 @ 3.50GHz
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 2188.125
cache size : 8192 KB
cpu cores : 4

Lets see how fast the disk is (I/O):


root@xyz:~# 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, 2.5785 s, 416 MB/s

Checking the download speed of the VPS using wget:


root@xyz:~# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2014-07-05 07:20:28-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (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 84.7M/s in 1.2s

2014-07-05 07:20:29 (84.7 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]

Checking the Upload & Download Speeds using the python tool:


root@xyz:~# python speedtest-cli
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from B2 Net Solutions (23.236.252.34)...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Internode (Los Angeles, CA) [1.21 km]: 6.676 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 884.02 Mbits/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 139.96 Mbits/s
root@xyz:~#

All-in-one-test using the automated script:


root@xyz:~# bash bench.sh
CPU model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1270 v3 @ 3.50GHz
Number of cores : 2
CPU frequency : 500.000 MHz
Total amount of ram : 2048 MB
Total amount of swap : 2048 MB
System uptime : 26 days, 6:56,
Download speed : (93.1MB/s)
I/O speed : 370MB/s
root@xyz:~#

There is some discrepancy in the parameters. However, it is normal for the readings to fluctuate within limits from minute to minute.

Conclusion: I think it is an extraordinarily good deal for the price. I also have the 4GB RAM VPS at New York (then $88, now $97) which I have covered in this article. If you don’t have one, you should seriously consider it before they raise the price again.

4 thoughts on “ServerMania’s New SSD Cached Linux VPS Review

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *