# RamNode OpenVZ SSD-Cached 256MB (ATL)



## wlanboy (May 19, 2013)

*Provider*: RamNode
*Plan*: OpenVZ SSD-Cached 256mb VPS
*Price*: 12.75$ per quarter
*Location*: Atlanta, GA

*Purchased*: 04/2013

I did a review on the SSD OpenVZ in Seattle and the the SSD OpenVZ in NL offers too.

*Hardware information:*


cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 45
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 0 @ 2.30GHz
stepping : 7
cpu MHz : 2300.069
cache size : 15360 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 12
core id : 0
cpu cores : 6
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 pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes xsave avx lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips : 4600.13
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:


cat /proc/meminfo

```
MemTotal:         262144 kB
MemFree:          174268 kB
Cached:            34820 kB
Active:            23232 kB
Inactive:          57364 kB
Active(anon):       8300 kB
Inactive(anon):    37476 kB
Active(file):      14932 kB
Inactive(file):    19888 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:        262144 kB
SwapFree:         260044 kB
Dirty:                 0 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:         45776 kB
Shmem:              3548 kB
Slab:               7272 kB
SReclaimable:       4220 kB
SUnreclaim:         3052 kB
```

df -h

```
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/simfs       90G   32G   59G  35% /
none            128M  4.0K  128M   1% /dev
none             26M  992K   25M   4% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            128M     0  128M   0% /run/shm
```

dd

```
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && rm -rf test

16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.8499 s, 580 MB/s
```

wget

```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null

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: `/dev/null'

100%[================================================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 52.0M/s   in 1.9s

2013-05-19 02:37:26 (52.0 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```

*What services are running?*


*MySQL *

*Backup space*

*Support:*

Well I did not need support yet. But I am using this vps for only one and a half month.

*Overall experience:*

You get a lot for what you pay. I am a happy customer. I did not trust that "we are fast" but the vps does have a fast I/O. Altlanta has got good routings to Buffalo, NY, Chicago, Austin, etc.

I use it for my own hosted "offloaded" MySQL server and for my encrypted backups of the other vps.


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## Oxide (May 19, 2013)

We've got a KVM VPS with Ramnode for a PowerDNS server. Never had to contact support either. Solid stuff!


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## drmike (May 19, 2013)

Thanks for this one @wlanboy.

Nick runs  some seriously fast servers.  Disk IO  is super.  

I use RamNode in both their locations and haven't had a bad day with them.


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## KuJoe (May 19, 2013)

<3 RamNode! I have a VPS that I don't use but I know if I ever cancel it I'll need it so I keep it around just in case.


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## Tux (May 19, 2013)

I've only contacted support only a few times and those were things I couldn't do myself. 

Also, the SSD nodes have wicked I/O:


```
[email protected]:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && rm -rf test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.52441 s, 704 MB/s
```


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## Nick_A (May 19, 2013)

Thanks guys!


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## Tyler Salwierz (May 19, 2013)

Thank you


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## dominicl (May 19, 2013)

We host our SolusVM master with RamNode. They're great!


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## acd (Jun 10, 2013)

Ran some tests on one of my RamNode ovzs. This one is on atlcvz5 (a CVZ-E3 node), which, from what Nick says, ramnode is phasing out.

wget cachefly:


[email protected]:~# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2013-06-10 15:37:47-- 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: `/dev/null'

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 55.1M/s in 1.8s

2013-06-10 15:37:49 (55.1 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]

dd write test:


[email protected]:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && rm -rf test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 6.88498 s, 156 MB/s

beancounters:



Spoiler



[email protected]:/proc# cat user_beancounters
Version: 2.5
       uid  resource                     held              maxheld              barrier                limit              failcnt
     3652:  kmemsize                  6822485             28995584            134217728            134217728                    0
            lockedpages                     0                  525                32768                32768                    0
            privvmpages                 15654                39424  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            shmpages                     1545                 3625  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            dummy                           0                    0                    0                    0                    0
            numproc                        29                   69  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            physpages                    8728                65529                    0                65536                    0
            vmguarpages                     0                    0  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            oomguarpages                 4526                 6418  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            numtcpsock                     15                   26  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            numflock                        4                   10  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            numpty                          3                    8  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            numsiginfo                      0                   42  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            tcpsndbuf                  263912               477552  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            tcprcvbuf                  245760              4464912  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            othersockbuf                36992               125256  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            dgramrcvbuf                     0               145656  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            numothersock                   52                   82  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            dcachesize                4144518             25840639             67108864             67108864                    0
            numfile                       455                  855  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0
            dummy                           0                    0                    0                    0                    0
            dummy                           0                    0                    0                    0                    0
            dummy                           0                    0                    0                    0                    0
            numiptent                      25                   25  9223372036854775807  9223372036854775807                    0


Interesting things to note:


RamNode doesn't cap proc limits per vm. I assume they have other methods of mitigating crazy forkings in a vm from taking down a whole HN. I did not test this. (a max of 4-5k procs can be expected from the kmemsize limit, but that's a LOT of procs)
Only about half your memory can be used for mlock, If you don't know what this is, you probably don't care.
The amount of disk cache the kernel will hold for the OVZ is limited to 64MiB. On my other ovz providers, this is left to "fill unused ram". Granted, it doesn't appear I've ever hit this limit but I generally only use this ovz for openvpn.

openssl aesni is enabled:


[email protected]:/proc# openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 80523557 aes-256-cbc's in 2.95s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 21962813 aes-256-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 5542420 aes-256-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 1397454 aes-256-cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 175106 aes-256-cbc's in 2.99s
OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012
built on: Tue Mar 19 19:15:10 UTC 2013
options:bn(64,32) rc4(8x,mmx) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Wformat-security -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -DOPENSSL_NO_TLS1_2_CLIENT -DOPENSSL_MAX_TLS1_2_CIPHER_LENGTH=50 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_PART_WORDS -DOPENSSL_IA32_SSE2 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DRMD160_ASM -DAES_ASM -DVPAES_ASM -DWHIRLPOOL_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 436737.94k 470107.03k 474534.96k 478592.94k 479755.30k


That's about as good as it gets for aes. =) Less useful than on KVM w/ dmcrypt, but I suspect the option is available on kvm as well.

I should note that Nick offered to migrate me off this older node onto a newer E5 based node to speed up disk writes, which I declined, as this VM doesn't see heavy disk usage.


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## eva2000 (Jun 11, 2013)

nice review, i have 3x ramnode VPS as well and they definitely perform better than my 4x buyvm VPS. I simultaneously updated Nginx and php via Centmin Mod shell based menu on all 7 VPSes at the same time. All 3x ramnode VPS finished way ahead of time compared to my buyvm VPS. But buyvm has benefits such as internal IP/network usage which I use. Sometimes wish ramnode has such option too


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## Amitz (Jun 11, 2013)

Same plan with RamNode, same great experience here!


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## vanarp (Jun 11, 2013)

eva2000 said:


> All 3x ramnode VPS finished way ahead of time compared to my buyvm VPS


 
Are your Ramnode VPSes with Pure SSD or SSD Caching?

I think BuyVM uses SSD Caching for OpenVZ VPSes.


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## eva2000 (Jun 11, 2013)

vanarp said:


> Are your Ramnode VPSes with Pure SSD or SSD Caching?
> 
> I think BuyVM uses SSD Caching for OpenVZ VPSes.


all my Ramnode VPS are either OpenVZ SSD Cached (2x VPS) or KVM SSD Cached (1x VPS)


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## acd (Jun 11, 2013)

RamNode uses ssd write-back caching whereas BuyVM uses ssd read caching (write-through). This gives RamNode a significant (like 3-4x, depending on the SSD used for caching) write speed advantage. I've been told the reason BuyVM doesn't use write-back is they were noticing problems if the kernel hung, it might leave the backing storage in an inconsistent state. This might not be an issue with a RAID controller supporting ssd write-back cache on-card.

*edit:* added clarification on what that does. Short version, write-back means write to cache then return, controller later flushes cache to disk as IO becomes available, usually in LRU order w/ maxage; write-through means write to both cache AND disk synchronously before returning.

You can read more about cache write policy on wikipedia if you're interested. Wikipedia: Cache#Writing Policies


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## eva2000 (Jun 12, 2013)

acd said:


> RamNode uses ssd write-back caching whereas BuyVM uses ssd read caching (write-through). I've been told the reason BuyVM doesn't use write-back is they were noticing problems if the kernel hung, it might leave the backing storage in an inconsistent state. This might not be an issue with a RAID controller supporting ssd write-back cache on-card.


cheers learn something new today


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## wlanboy (Sep 8, 2013)

Time to update my review.

*What services are running?*


MySQL master
MongoDB cluster node
Backup space
*Support:*

Not a single support ticket needed.

*Overall experience:*

I really enjoy my vps in Atlanta. No hassles, no downtimes, no support needed and fast and solid routings to europe.

It is my US MySQL master getting hit by 4 wordpress blogs and 3 php based galleries. And my US based MongoDB cluster node getting hit by my Twitter archive and my ping database.

Yes it is OpenVZ - but not oversold:


free -m
total used free  shared buffers cached
Mem: 256 224 31 0 0 69
-/+ buffers/cache: 154 101
Swap: 256 88 167


Additionally it is collecting the backups of all of my vps and rsyncing it to my local NAS.

I prefer to have my backups located at two different continents.


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## wlanboy (Sep 15, 2013)

Updated the links to the other two RamNode reviews.


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## wlanboy (Nov 2, 2013)

Want to add the current status report of my vps:







2 hours and 3 minutes of downtime since April the 17th.


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## Pete M. (Nov 21, 2013)

Those benchmark numbers look really good, pretty much in line with I have grown to expect from SSD cached nodes


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## ExonHost (Nov 21, 2013)

I have a vps with them. Overall experience is excellent.


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## mitsuhashi (Nov 21, 2013)

Yup, can't say enough good things about RamNode. I recently screwed up my backup VPS enough that it needed a LiveCD, and Nick helped me move my stuff out safely. ::thumbup::

Great performance is a given with RamNode. That's not something you can apply to many VPS providers.


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## WelltodoInformalCattle (Nov 21, 2013)

It's not just the performance but the vibe of professionalism I don't get from many other providers.


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## wlanboy (Feb 6, 2014)

Time to update the uptime report:



So 1 hour and 19 minutes of downtime since the last update.


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## wlanboy (Mar 13, 2014)

Time for the update:



Nothing happend at all for my vps.

There was a Tinet problem yesterday but I did not notice any network problems.


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## Nick_A (Mar 13, 2014)

The Tinet issue is ongoing. At some point in the last week, our fiber decided it didn't want to work right anymore. Replacing things left and right to fix it. They also accidentally unplugged NTT this morning which was not fun T_T


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## wlanboy (Apr 13, 2014)

Time for an update:



6 minutes of network only downtime, uptime of server is way beyond that.


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## wlanboy (May 17, 2014)

Time for an update:



CPU, I/O is beyond any compare.

Uptime of the network is good but there were some routing issues and pings run up to 2000 ms for four times:


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## wlanboy (Jun 21, 2014)

Time for an update:



4 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 158 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is good.


```
--2014-06-21 13:17:37--  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: `/dev/null'

100%[===========================================================================================>] 104,857,600 18.0M/s   in 6.0s

2014-06-21 13:17:43 (16.6 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Jul 27, 2014)

Time for an update:



12 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 32 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-07-27 13:16:24--  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: `/dev/null'

100%[===========================================================================================>] 104,857,600 67.1M/s   in 1.5s

2014-07-27 13:16:26 (67.1 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Sep 28, 2014)

Time for an update:



17 minutes and 39 seconds of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 95 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-09-28 02:57:45--  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: `/dev/null'

100%[===========================================================================================>] 104,857,600 70.2M/s   in 1.4s

2014-09-28 02:57:47 (70.2 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Dec 11, 2014)

Time for an update:



3 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is169 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-12-11 01:56:44--  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: `/dev/null'

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 42.1M/s   in 2.4s

2014-12-11 01:56:46 (42.1 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Jan 21, 2015)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 24 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-01-21 12:50:53--  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: '/dev/null'

100%[================================================>] 104,857,600 58.6MB/s   in 1.7s

2015-01-21 12:50:54 (58.6 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Feb 20, 2015)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 54 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-02-20 09:21:02--  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: '/dev/null'

100%[========================================================>] 104,857,600 57.6MB/s   in 1.7s

2015-02-20 09:21:04 (57.6 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Mar 26, 2015)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 88 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-03-26 15:58:19--  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: '/dev/null'

100%[========================================================>] 104,857,600 53.4MB/s   in 1.9s

2015-03-26 15:58:21 (53.4 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Jul 2, 2015)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 186 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-07-02 01:18:39--  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: '/dev/null'

100%[=================================================================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 74.1MB/s   in 1.3s

2015-07-02 01:18:41 (74.1 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Sep 28, 2015)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 275 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-09-29 00:12:17--  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: '/dev/null'

100%[===============================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 67.8MB/s   in 1.5s

2015-09-29 00:12:19 (67.8 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Dec 28, 2015)

0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.


CPU and I/O are great.


Network is great.


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## wlanboy (Apr 24, 2016)

1 minute of network downtime since the last update.


CPU and I/O are great.


Network is great.


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## wlanboy (Sep 2, 2016)

4 hours 30 minutes and 51 seconds of network downtime since the last update.


Uptime of the vps itself is 100 days.


CPU and I/O are great.


Network is great.


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