# Catalysthost OpenVZ 128MB (TX)



## wlanboy (Oct 11, 2013)

*Provider*: Catalysthost
*Plan*: OpenVZ 128mb VPS
*Price*: 17$ per year
*Location*: Dallas, TX

*Purchased*: 10/2013

*Hardware information:*


cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 45
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 7
cpu MHz : 2000.086
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 pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips : 4000.17
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:


cat /proc/meminfo

```
MemTotal:         131072 kB
MemFree:           19128 kB
Cached:           102784 kB
Active:            10252 kB
Inactive:          98388 kB
Active(anon):       3800 kB
Inactive(anon):     2056 kB
Active(file):       6452 kB
Inactive(file):    96332 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:        131072 kB
SwapFree:         126992 kB
Dirty:                12 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:          5856 kB
Shmem:              2604 kB
Slab:               3292 kB
SReclaimable:       1724 kB
SUnreclaim:         1568 kB
```

df -h

```
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/simfs       50G   19G   31G  38% /
tmpfs            13M   44K   13M   1% /run
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs            52M     0   52M   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, 9.73205 s, 110 MB/s
```

wget

```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2013-10-11 20:47:26--  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  108M/s   in 0.9s

2013-10-11 20:47:27 (108 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```

*What services are running?*


Rsync backup space - 50GB of it!

Git repository

CalDAV server

OpenVPN server

*Support:*

No tickets yet. Maybe I should write a ticket about how good just everything is working.

*Overall experience:*

I am a very happy customer. Network is really good. And throughput is beyond my expectations. Did not have a second vps that can push that much MBs per second. Does reveal the included 1TB of traffic in a different light (a good one).
Ping to europe is 122ms, ping to Atlanta is 20ms, ping to Tampa is 23ms and ping to Buffalo is 39ms. Perfect rsync and vpn machine. Installing and compiling Ruby was snappy too.


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## ryanarp (Oct 11, 2013)

Thanks for the review wlanboy. We appreciate the feedback always


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## HalfEatenPie (Oct 11, 2013)

Thanks wlanboy!


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## peterw (Oct 29, 2013)

Thank you for the review.

Are your openvz containers openvpn as ready?


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## ryanarp (Oct 29, 2013)

Yes, we have a few people using openvpn as.


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## peterw (Oct 29, 2013)

ryanarp said:


> Yes, we have a few people using openvpn as.


Fast. Thank you.


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## ryanarp (Oct 29, 2013)

I do what I can


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## KuJoe (Oct 29, 2013)

My advice is use a test file from outside of their data center for a more accurate view of their network. Their WAN speed is pretty impressive also. 

Here's some tests from outside of their network:

Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 22.5MB/s

Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 8.89MB/s

Download speed from i3d.net, NL: 11.0MB/s

Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 11.0MB/s

Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 6.72MB/s

Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 29.8MB/s

Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 31.4MB/s

Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 34.1MB/s

 

Our test files:

Tampa: 24.1MB/s

Chicago: 10.8MB/s

Denver: 42.7MB/s

Oregon: 6.67MB/s

LA: 36.5MB/s


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## ryanarp (Oct 29, 2013)

Thanks for the feedback Kujoe! Personally I am a huge fan of the network and bandwidth capacity. Lots of room to gallop


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## wlanboy (Nov 19, 2013)

ryanarp said:


> We appreciate the feedback always


Time to add the uptime for this vps too. Waited some weeks to get enough information.



What should I say about these numbers?


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## ryanarp (Nov 19, 2013)

Looks good  Is that the length of your current service? Thanks for the update!


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## wlanboy (Nov 19, 2013)

ryanarp said:


> Is that the length of your current service? Thanks for the update!


Yup - no network downtime since I bought the vps.


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## peterw (Jan 9, 2014)

wlanboy said:


> Yup - no network downtime since I bought the vps.


Can you post the transfer speeds to NL or DE or UK?


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## wlanboy (Jan 11, 2014)

peterw said:


> Can you post the transfer speeds to NL or DE or UK?


Sorry for the late response:


```
wget from NL:
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [text/plain]
Saving to: `file.txt'

100%[================================================================================================================================>] 104,857,600 3.85M/s   in 29s

2014-01-11 13:30:30 (3.41 MB/s) - `file.txt' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Jan 19, 2014)

The last posts updated the date and so I thought that this vps was allready updated.

So time to update the stats

*Congratulations: *

Over 100 days without any issue:


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## wlanboy (Mar 1, 2014)

Well ... some kind of an update ... basically nothing new:



Performance is still great, network is still great, support is still great (and not used).


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## wlanboy (Apr 1, 2014)

Time for the update:



Every node does have a bad day.


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## wlanboy (May 13, 2014)

Time for an update:



I missed the migration of the IP address and also forgot to enter the maintenance window in statuscake.

So the real downtime of the vps is 0 minutes.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network is good.


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## wlanboy (Jun 17, 2014)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of downtime since the last update.

CPU and I/O are good.

Network is - as always - beyond any compare:


--2014-06-17 20:09:53-- 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 80.3M/s in 1.2s

2014-06-17 20:09:54 (80.3 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]

This vps is my mongodb primary for about 6 months.


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## HalfEatenPie (Jun 18, 2014)

Thanks @wlanboy!  

Yeah we had a few tickets asking us about downtime  but they simply blanked the IP change.


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## wlanboy (Jul 18, 2014)

Time for an update:



15 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps itself is 121 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network too.


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-07-18 19:35:21--  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 33.6M/s   in 3.0s

2014-07-18 19:35:24 (33.6 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Sep 28, 2014)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps itself is 121 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network too.


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-09-28 08:49:50--  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 35.9M/s   in 2.8s

2014-09-28 08:49:53 (35.9 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 28, 2014)

Aww yisss


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## AutoSnipe (Oct 21, 2014)

Everytime i see Catalysthost mentioned anywhere i feel like doing the leap to them. 

I suppose if i think really hard i could find an use for another vps 


Great Review Btw


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## wlanboy (Dec 7, 2014)

Time for an update:



0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps itself is 264 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network too.


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2014-12-07 21:16:35--  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 41.5M/s   in 2.4s

2014-12-07 21:16:38 (41.5 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## HalfEatenPie (Dec 7, 2014)




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## wlanboy (Jan 19, 2015)

Time for an update:



5 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps itself is 306 days.

CPU and I/O are great.

Network too:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-01-19 16:32:18--  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 42.0M/s   in 2.4s

2015-01-19 16:32:21 (42.0 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## clownjugglar (Jan 19, 2015)

I had a 96MB special with these guys, and it was a blast. I moved on because I needed more RAM and something closer to home.

The year I was with them the only major disruption was when they swapped IPs out. I believe they bought their own. Plenty of heads up time was given.

I can't provide stats like wlanboy, but I can say I never noticed lag or downtime. I ran murmur, irssi, an xmpp server, and had plenty of RAM to spare. All services worked when I needed them. I'd use them at least once a day if not more. I also heavily used it (and shared with a friend) as a SSH tunnel to use at 'work'.

I've recommended them to others in person so I know they've made at least one or two sales based on that.


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## HalfEatenPie (Jan 19, 2015)

Thanks @wlanboy and @clownjugglar.  We try pretty hard to make sure everything's in tip top shape!


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## wlanboy (Feb 20, 2015)

Time for an update:



7 hours and 19 minutes of downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 17 days.

CPU and I/O are good.

Network is - as always - beyond any compare:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-02-20 15:18:19--  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 96.0M/s   in 1.0s

2015-02-20 15:18:20 (96.0 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## drmike (Feb 22, 2015)

wlanboy said:


> wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
> --2015-02-20 15:18:19-- 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.
> ...


Only one point to pick and that's the speed test. Cachefly like a lot of others is minimally accurate. They are shipping a big empty file and end to end hell there might be compression or other gaming on.   Seems to be.  Reason why they don't want serve a random right sort of file.

Kudos @wlanboy for the updates on your VPS providers.  These are great.

That said, I remain impressed with throughput on Incero's network.   They show good numbers for me more than other networks.  Pretty consistent, day or night, weekday or weekend.

Those Catalyst guys, can't leave them out.  Friendly bunch.  Always down to earth and helpful. Am I an active customer? No, but I have been in past where I needed resources for folks where they are (Dallas).  I am a recovering redneck VPS collector


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## HalfEatenPie (Feb 22, 2015)

Thanks for keeping up with this @wlanboy! Appreciate it! I have a question though...



wlanboy said:


> 7 hours and 19 minutes of downtime since the last update.


From what I can tell, that should be 1 hour and 32 minutes of downtime since the last update. The 1 hour and 17 minutes are from one of the core routers acting up and being replaced immediately (once the problem was found that is) with a spare backup unit. I'm not quite sure where the other 6 or so hours came from, since your last update was from January 19th 



drmike said:


> Only one point to pick and that's the speed test. Cachefly like a lot of others is minimally accurate. They are shipping a big empty file and end to end hell there might be compression or other gaming on.   Seems to be.  Reason why they don't want serve a random right sort of file.
> 
> Kudos @wlanboy for the updates on your VPS providers.  These are great.
> 
> ...


Thanks @drmike! That's the goal here! I hate tooting our own horn since I'm an admin here and conflict of interest and all that, but it's definitely something we're happy about! Ryan's a beast with everything and it's a great pleasure working with him.


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## ryanarp (Feb 22, 2015)

The other 6 or so hours was from forgetting to change IP address when we had cut off for IP migration.  Interesting your monitoring was down for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Network had a 30 minute blip and a 5 minutes follow up blip during the routing engine switch over . Guessing your IP didn't ARP into the switch as the node itself reported 35 minutes total. Make sure to open a ticket so we can check. We did some detailed reporting on twitter about that issue.


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## wlanboy (Feb 23, 2015)

drmike said:


> Only one point to pick and that's the speed test. Cachefly like a lot of others is minimally accurate. They are shipping a big empty file and end to end hell there might be compression or other gaming on.   Seems to be.  Reason why they don't want serve a random right sort of file.


But it is compareable if I am using it for all tests.

I cron the wgets through a whole week and take the result closest to the arithmetic mean value.

Believe me or not if I compare the MongoDB throughput and the wget results the values are compareable. Cachefly is something like the optimum throughput and all other transfers are below that line. But the bare numbers are in relation.



HalfEatenPie said:


> From what I can tell, that should be 1 hour and 32 minutes of downtime since the last update. The 1 hour and 17 minutes are from one of the core routers acting up and being replaced immediately (once the problem was found that is) with a spare backup unit. I'm not quite sure where the other 6 or so hours came from, since your last update was from January 19th.


Thanks for the update. 


I appreciate the feedback of providers explaining what happend - don't have the time to get through all announcements to catch the right date/time combinations.


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## HalfEatenPie (Feb 23, 2015)

wlanboy said:


> Thanks for the update.
> 
> I appreciate the feedback of providers explaining what happend - don't have the time to get through all announcements to catch the right date/time combinations.


Not a problem and I totally understand. You'll setup your monitoring and your service, we'll make sure the server is online, stable, and connected to the internet. Our own calculated network outage during this period was roughly around 35 minutes, so yours going on even longer is something we hope we can investigate later.

Again, thanks a ton for maintaining these rolling updates, we appreciate it.


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## wlanboy (Mar 26, 2015)

Time for an update:



43 seconds of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 52 days.

CPU and I/O are good.

Network is - as always - great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-03-26 21:00:35--  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 97.3M/s   in 1.0s

2015-03-26 21:00:37 (97.3 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Jul 2, 2015)

Time for an update:



16 minutes of network downtime since the last update.

Uptime of the vps is 48 days.

CPU and I/O are good.

Network is - as always - great:


```
wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2015-07-02 07:22:12--  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 88.2M/s   in 1.1s

2015-07-02 07:22:13 (88.2 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
```


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## wlanboy (Nov 18, 2015)

Time for an update:





52 minutes of network downtime since the last update.


CPU and I/O are good.


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## HalfEatenPie (Nov 18, 2015)

holla holla at yo boy!


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## wlanboy (Jan 2, 2016)

Time for an update:





0 minutes of network downtime since the last update.
CPU and I/O are good.


Will update after the migration to the new data center in Dallas on January 4th/5th too.


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## HalfEatenPie (Jan 2, 2016)

Thanks @wlanboy!  Really appreciate you keeping up with this for the while!  


Really excited for the new datacenter migration in Dallas!  It's gonna be fun on the bun!


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## wlanboy (May 27, 2016)

Time for an update:





6 hours and 32 minutes of network downtime since the last update.
CPU and I/O are good.


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## wlanboy (Sep 2, 2016)

Time for an update:





41 minutes of network downtime since the last update.


Uptime of the vps is 477 days.

CPU and I/O are good.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 3, 2016)

You happen to have a total uptime value if possible?  By that I mean uptime percentile (99s?)


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## wlanboy (Sep 3, 2016)

HalfEatenPie said:


> You happen to have a total uptime value if possible?  By that I mean uptime percentile (99s?)



Statuscake says:



> 99.92% all time uptime.


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