Kitz Forum

Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: Weaver on April 08, 2017, 03:53:26 PM

Title: Cheap VPS
Post by: Weaver on April 08, 2017, 03:53:26 PM
I'm wondering about getting a really cheap virtual *nix or Windows server. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would need full admin access and be able to install software on it. Ideally it would be very close to A & A in terms of hops, I assume that would mean London or Maidenhead then. I don't suppose anyone does BSD?

AA do co-location but not virtual servers, but it's really expensive.

An aside: If you want to set up an ISP-side firewall or a VPN, then AA will host a Firebrick for you for a special price, but even though that is a lot cheaper, it's still expensive because you end up paying three times for your normal internet access traffic, once into the fb and then again when it comes back out and then a third time when it goes down your line(s). I don't know if they could be persuaded to do a cheaper deal for just handling your own internet access traffic.
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: NEXUS2345 on April 08, 2017, 06:26:07 PM
I would highly recommend OVH. Even though their servers for the most part are in France, the latency from my Zen connection never exceeds 20ms (ADSL2+). They have a range of prices and are all quite low, and they give you full root access. You can choose Windows Server or from a range of Linux distros, just be aware that Windows costs more (due to the license). They also do not charge for network ingress or egress.

If you would like to ping one of their servers in France, you can ping the address test.nexusgaming.org.uk as that is my own personal server.
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: roswellgrey on April 09, 2017, 08:20:14 AM
Not sure about your definition of "really cheap" :)

I ask because there are some seriously cheap options available (https://www.lowendtalk.com/  is a good place to look for these ) , but assuming around £5 pm for a reasonable price/service point, some popular options are:
 - OVH
 - DigitalOcean
 - Linode
 - Ramnode
 - and Vultr seem to be becoming popular thesedays
and there are quite a few others .... these are just ones that spring to mind.

DigitalOcean, Ramnode and Vultr definately offer BSD variants. And most offer hourly billing - for literally a few pence you can create and test a server to see if it meets requirements, with no ongoing commitment if it doesn't.

I have personally used DigitalOcean for a few years now. They are easy to deal with, have had no billing issues, and have a nice range of locations to choose from (inc London) ....

Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: Chrysalis on April 09, 2017, 09:09:56 AM
linode have a uk location, and its where I host a uk vps.
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: highpriest on April 09, 2017, 09:28:33 AM
I have personally used DigitalOcean for a few years now. They are easy to deal with, have had no billing issues, and have a nice range of locations to choose from (inc London) ....

Me too, but I'm in the process of migrating to a $5 VPS from Linode as they are offering 1 GB RAM at that price point. Bit of a no brainer :)
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: Weaver on April 09, 2017, 11:01:39 AM
How much cpu performance do you typically get in these deals?
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: Chrysalis on April 09, 2017, 11:13:03 AM
for linode at this pricepoint its one cpu core (I have the old linode 1024 which is now offering me a free upgrade to linode 2048), both are one cpu core.  On the product page the spec of the core is not disclosed. But I have got this info from the OS running on my linode.

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz

A cpu with a RRP of 1700USD

Its turbo clock hits 3.6ghz, 25meg cache, and 10 cores, 20 threads, pretty beefy chip. 

Bear in mind with a vps, they not typically aimed at people who are going to be chewing up cpu cycles, they good for stuff that will use low cpu cycles but still needs good connectivity.  Also useful of course for development purposes or testing.  The cpu core is unlikely to not be contended with other users so if you pegging the cpu for long periods you could get kicked off.

I took a different approach in some newer machines, in france I am actually leasing a dedicated machine for about £25 month, which is a xeon 32 gig of ram, the xeon not as beefy as this chip but is still nice, and I run vmware esxi on it so have effectively unlimited virtual machines for that price. Since I admin the physical machine I can do things like allocate all cpu cores to any vps I like.

By comparison renting or colocating a physical machine and installing an OS directly onto it feels antiquated now, I lease a server in america that costs me over £70 month, the spec of the entire machine is weaker than a VPS I run on my £25 french box. Upgrading ram or cpu resources on a VPS is a very quick process vs a physical machine.  Not to mention the benefits of snapshots, remote consoles etc.

I can confirm linode does not have any BSD images. 
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: celso on April 10, 2017, 02:51:19 PM
Some numbers from a $5 Linode London vps:

Code: [Select]
Benchmark started on Mon Apr 10 12:58:59 UTC 2017
Full benchmark log: /root/bench.log

System Info
-----------
Processor       : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
CPU Cores       : 1
Frequency       : 2800.000 MHz
Memory          : 988 MB
Swap            :  MB
Uptime          : 2 days, 15:50,

OS              : Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Arch            : x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel          : 4.9.7-x86_64-linode80
Hostname        : xxxxxx


Speedtest (IPv4 only)
---------------------
Your public IPv4 is x.x.x.x

Location                Provider        Speed
CDN                     Cachefly        132MB/s

Atlanta, GA, US         Coloat          149KB/s
Dallas, TX, US          Softlayer       12.7MB/s
Seattle, WA, US         Softlayer       11.1MB/s
San Jose, CA, US        Softlayer       10.6MB/s
Washington, DC, US      Softlayer       3.96MB/s

Tokyo, Japan            Linode          9.14MB/s
Singapore               Softlayer       8.61MB/s

Rotterdam, Netherlands  id3.net         53.1MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands    Leaseweb        113MB/s


Disk Speed
----------
I/O (1st run)   : 403 MB/s
I/O (2nd run)   : 583 MB/s
I/O (3rd run)   : 563 MB/s
Average I/O     : 516.333 MB/s

We can use BSD, but it's not officially supported by them: https://www.linode.com/docs/tools-reference/custom-kernels-distros/install-freebsd-on-linode

Supported distros: https://www.linode.com/distributions

 Edit: Just noticed that this was my first post since I created my account 2 years ago. Hi guys  :)
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: burakkucat on April 10, 2017, 09:55:27 PM
Edit: Just noticed that this was my first post since I created my account 2 years ago. Hi guys  :)

Welcome to the Kitz forum . . . as a contributor.  :D
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: Chrysalis on April 10, 2017, 10:25:11 PM
nice post celso

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: Weaver on April 11, 2017, 01:40:50 AM
Welcome celso!  :)
Title: Re: Cheap VPS
Post by: WWWombat on April 13, 2017, 03:09:03 AM
We always used a NZ outfit called RimuHosting, in either the UK or US base.

The price isn't as low as some places are going (especially that $5 Linode pricepoint), but you get very knowledgeable support.

Alongside Linode and Digital Ocean, Amazon are involved too - with their Lightsail products. Their 5$ product might have prompted Linode to add theirs.

Amazon's "simple" Lightsail VPS is really a fixed combination of some of their more complex products, based on EC2, If you are after something with distinct compute, memory, storage or database requirements, you might want to investigate EC2 or Google's compute engine.