# New here, am i allowed to ask for input/reviews of my service?



## tonysala87 (Jul 28, 2013)

Hi,

I've been a long time lurker but only just signed up. I signed up in the hope that some of the more experienced vps providers and users here could give me some feedback on my service. it's a BETA free vps service for educational use.

My questions are:

1. am I allowed to post the site?

2. if so, is the reviews section an acceptable place to ask for reviews instead of making reviews?

Thanks,

Tony


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## NodeBytes (Jul 28, 2013)

Should be fine. You can PM @manndude or one of the other moderators and ask. 

Interested to see what this is and would be interested in helping test.


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## MannDude (Jul 28, 2013)

Hmmm...

Since you were kind enough to ask, and concerned enough to care, I'll allow it.

Just tell us more about yourself and the company you're working on before accepting beta orders.


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## shawn_ky (Jul 28, 2013)

Educational use sounds interesting... I have been wanting to get my students involved more with Linux and this could be a good opportunity.


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## johnlth93 (Jul 28, 2013)

Educational use? I am a student, would that consider educational use?


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## tonysala87 (Jul 28, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Hmmm...
> 
> Since you were kind enough to ask, and concerned enough to care, I'll allow it.
> 
> Just tell us more about yourself and the company you're working on before accepting beta orders.






shawn_ky said:


> Educational use sounds interesting... I have been wanting to get my students involved more with Linux and this could be a good opportunity.





johnlth93 said:


> Educational use? I am a student, would that consider educational use?


@manndude, well there's no company it's just me. I've been working on linux systems for about 6 years, I would say im an intermediate sysadmin. The site is http://eduvps.net there aren't any "orders" as it's a free service intended to help those who want to learn to program or learn linux. When i started learning linux i had to keep reloading my home computer 

@shawn_ky yes that is exactly the idea, though I wouldnt suggest hosting critical data on it, it's more of a "need a vps for a 60 minute class?" sort of thing.

@johnith93 yes if you use it to learn more about linux, programming, or something else. There aren't set rules, however the service is intended to help people who have the desire to learn, not to run gameservers or mine bitcoins 

please excuse the design, I'm not a frontend guy. Someone from facebook offered to make a bootstrap based front end for it though, so that should be up in a couple of weeks.

Functionality is quite basic right now, but I plan to add the option to back and download the containers. I'm not sure what else might be though, so i'm looking for feedback.

Please keep in mind that this is a beta!


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## shawn_ky (Jul 29, 2013)

Very cool. I have a couple of students that would love learning Linux and this could be a good opportunity.. I'll make sure they realize it's BETA!


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## NodeBytes (Jul 29, 2013)

How long do these VPS last? Would I be able to spin it up and then shutdown then resume the next day?


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## Awmusic12635 (Jul 29, 2013)

Ah I saw incero link to this on their facebook


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## Ivan (Jul 29, 2013)

Fliphost said:


> Ah I saw incero link to this on their facebook


Now I remember where I saw it from on Facebook! Haha, when I saw this thread, I kept thinking "I've seen this before yesterday on Facebook, a page posted it" but I can't seem to recall what page posted it


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## tonysala87 (Jul 29, 2013)

Thanks for testing it out. I have to run to work, but a few questions and comments:

- @bcarlsonmedia: the vps will last "forever" (that's the intention. Im hoping to get other server donations to expand the service. My host said they would provide me with free IPs if i can keep the spam and other abuse to a very minimum. So I'm going to spend the next few days trying to detect various abuse (spam is the main one I guess?) and prevent it. 

@fliphost: yes, that's my host. They gave me a discount and free ips. I'm hoping to find other hosts who will do the same, preferably hosts with ipv6. But for now I'm going to work on perfecting the service before trying to expand it.

suggestions received:

- start/stop/reboot (if you stop for extended periods of time do you expect to keep the same ip? that would tie up valuable ips, maybe a 4 hour lease for ips on stopped machines?)

- disable smtp on the switch (host said we should probably do this), do you think this will turn away legitimate users?

- ipv6 (will do when i have another host, current host also "working on it")

- remove USA/CA phone verification (im not sure i can do this without inviting a flood of abuse, thoughts? Plan to expand to all countries though but keep phone verification)

Thanks for any suggestions, I'll be back in ~10 hours.


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## Awmusic12635 (Jul 29, 2013)

tonysala87 said:


> Thanks for testing it out. I have to run to work, but a few questions and comments:
> 
> - @bcarlsonmedia: the vps will last "forever" (that's the intention. Im hoping to get other server donations to expand the service. My host said they would provide me with free IPs if i can keep the spam and other abuse to a very minimum. So I'm going to spend the next few days trying to detect various abuse (spam is the main one I guess?) and prevent it.
> 
> ...


I would think disabling smtp would probably cut down on your abuse a lot. It shouldn't be needed to learn linux


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## egihosting (Jul 29, 2013)

Very cool service. Once users graduate from the free service. they'll need something faster and more powerful and you can help them with that.

I would suggest posting certain "projects" or "guides" to give some direction.


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## tonysala87 (Jul 29, 2013)

@fliphost, yeah I'm going to send a ticket for that now.

@egihosting, good idea, I think a wiki might work, as I dont have time to put all the content together.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 1, 2013)

I found some users were able to beat the phone verification system (using the same number by registering all at the same time), so I've deleted the vps under the accounts of users who intentionally bypassed the phone verification system (approx 70 users from vietnam).


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## tonysala87 (Aug 2, 2013)

I just added uk, australia, and indonesia to the phone verification system. Is there anyone here from any of those countries that can try signing up for me? I've verified the process is still working with USA/CA, so it should work with the other countries, but have no way of testing it.

thanks,

tony


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## splitice (Aug 2, 2013)

Ill test it for you (Australia), please delete my account after.


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## splitice (Aug 2, 2013)

Review:

After login "Your phone number is currently unverified. you must verify a USA or Canadian phone number before using our service." needs to be changed.

Other than that it worked fine.

In case you need to know my number is on the Telstra Wholesale (resold) network.

Please delete my account, don't want to be telemarketed too if your db gets hacked / leaks or anything.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 3, 2013)

thanks! I reworded that text. I also deleted your account. I'll add a feature for account deletion in the future.


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## Jeffrey (Aug 3, 2013)

6GB of Ram for free? Wow.  What providers are you using to keep this alive? Also, where's your TOS?


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## notFound (Aug 3, 2013)

I would test it from the UK, but both my phones decided to die on me last week.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 3, 2013)

@Jeffrey:

Im using Incero right now but hoping to add other providers (preferably with ipv6), They gave me deal (free ips, free bandwidth, and low cost h/w) on a old dual xeon e5620 machine with 96gb ram and h/w raid 4x 15k sas and gig unmetered, however they said they wont accept any SPAM abuse at all (so Im going to send a smtp block request ticket to them soon). There are ~50 vps deployed right now with 0 iowait, and 0.00 cpu load. 

There's no TOS yet, I need to add one.

I'm working with another guy (on here?) to redo the design (actually he's doing the design, i just need to setup a test bed for him to implement it).

My plan is to encourage user feedback, try and get some people working on cool projects highlighted on facebook and the homepage. So if anyone is using it for any cool projects please let me know. Then it should be easier to get other providers to donate resources. I asked Incero if I could get another machine and they said they had donated as much as they could. So I need more hosts, but for now we have plenty of resources


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## tonysala87 (Aug 3, 2013)

@infinity, thanks, overnight i see some people from the uk signed up and verified! so it should be working fine. There was a bug for about 20 minutes where i wasnt actually sending the texts to the uk but that was fixed shortly after i asked for people to test on here!

eager for more site feedback (other than design)


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## Jeffrey (Aug 3, 2013)

Can't wait to see where this project will go.


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## Jeffrey (Aug 3, 2013)

Is this OpenVZ, XEN, KVM?


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## tonysala87 (Aug 3, 2013)

@jeffrey it's openvz with vswap. If in future I get more machines I can add kvm, etc.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 9, 2013)

i'd appreciate any feedback now that the new design is live. I still need to ajaxify the vps status' e.g. when deployed it should change to green without reloading the page...



http://www.EduVPS.net


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## drmike (Aug 9, 2013)

Pretty interesting.

I don't think it will fly though.  Gordon / Incero doesn't deal with abuse very well.  Not big enough to have staff to deal with issues.

That said, it is interesting and unsure what terms of service, but should tighten the use up massively.  Otherwise the free vps mentalities will be ticking the service in and will be fulltime job just to police new accounts.

I recall Incero offering a free beta test of their cloud/VPS and massive signups and quick deletions and withdraw of the offer.  Just saying.


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## drmike (Aug 9, 2013)

Facebook support = bad.  Just throw forums up on your site.  

It's interesting and idealistic.  Just too many fools when things are free.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 9, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Pretty interesting.
> 
> I don't think it will fly though.  Gordon / Incero doesn't deal with abuse very well.  Not big enough to have staff to deal with issues.
> 
> ...


respectfully disagree.... they host simplenode, catalysthost, fliphost, and some other vps providers from what i see on their facebook

I used to do remote hands at a dc here in chicago, ive always loved tech stuff. The way I ended up with an incero server is by meeting them at sxsw (music festival in atx). this is me in the backpack: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=542950889077843

They were launching their cloud beta there for sxsw visitors only and then robert clarke posted it on LET ( http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/8752/free-4gb-vps-from-incero ) telling people to signup with fake emails and abuse the service, so they killed all the signups from people who signed up from LET. 

They seem to have a decent sized team (8 or 9) with their own office inside the datacenter, one in austin, and one in the uk: http://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=476965

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=592656900773908

https://www.facebook.com/Incero/photos_stream

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=562077947165137   << UK

their abuse system has been fully automated since dec 2012: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=507615402611392

i already got some abuse tickets in the first 24 hours (after posting here) for sending spam and they automatically blocked smtp on the affected ips, then we later agreed to block smtp on the whole port.


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## drmike (Aug 9, 2013)

Incero is a small business and especially compared to the number of servers and clients and clients of clients.  Lots of VPS providers are with them and I've used oh, three resellers there I think 

I like Incero, so no harm meant whatsoever.  Gordon just is a frazzled over worked Type-A personality.  Good dude, but when the blood pressure goes up, random happens and he's quick to cut customers loose.

Total blocking SMTP, yeppers, wise.  DDoS attacks will be the next issue.


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## tonysala87 (Aug 9, 2013)

I wouldnt say an 80gig network and thousands of physical servers is small, presumably you mean they're small compared to softlayer but massive compared to everyone on this board. Personally I like being able to talk to a ceo of a small company, but maybe im biased because he bought me a beer at sxsw when the booth was empty. Im sure not planning on having lots of abuse tickets, that would tick off any provider. at my last job we were told to pull the power on any server that got more than one spam complaint while working the overnight shift. if that happened on friday night the boss wouldnt be back until monday to approve reconnecting them

what do you mean about ddos? why would that be a problem? I only have a gig port.


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## drmike (Aug 9, 2013)

Gordon is Gordon.  He's legendary in this segment of the industry.  Some decent folks ran his wrong side and some idiots ran that side too.  I like him   We go back informally probably 4+ years.

80Gig network + thousands of servers(?) + 8 staff.   Yeah, small, too small to cope with issues and bugged people.  He has the right prices and selling lots.

Trouble tickets, abuse, etc. just happen with free services.   Monster public at times.

A full weekend disconnect for a single spam complaint?  That's a bad policy.  Especially these days where taking sites down seem to be a sport.

You may only have a single Gbit port, but an attack can throw way more than that at the upstream network.  It's fairly common hazard in free land.

I think the project is admirable.  Lock the use cases down and who can sign up.  Watch the overall packet and network traffic.


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## Jade (Aug 9, 2013)

That's awesome. 6 GB RAM for free, truly amazing. Probably best offer I've seen xD


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## gordonrp (Aug 10, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Gordon is Gordon.  He's legendary in this segment of the industry.  Some decent folks ran his wrong side and some idiots ran that side too.  I like him   *We go back informally probably 4+ years.*
> 
> 80Gig network + thousands of servers(?) + 8 staff.   Yeah, small, too small to cope with issues and bugged people.  He has the right prices and selling lots.


Sorry, remind me how we know each other? I don't believe we've ever had a beer, talked on a phone call, nor ever met in person. Correct me if I'm wrong 

As our servers are unmanaged 8 staff is more than enough for thousands of servers. 50% of our staff are full time developers, focused on automating every aspect of our business. On typical days we handle less than 3-5 support tickets. (sales tickets, setup tickets, etc are in the hundreds each week). I personally spend about 90% of my time on the phone, on skype, and on our website chat offering custom solutions for our clients.

Also as Tony pointed our our abuse system is largely automated, which our VPS provider customers praise us for. We also host two of the largest VPN companies in the USA, so we're well versed in automatically detecting abuse, letting our clients know about it, and keeping our clients happy. 

It would be awesome if people would talk to me in person before having an opinion about me, but I realize that's a tall dream.

Cheers,

Gordon


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## gordonrp (Aug 10, 2013)

tonysala87 said:


> i'd appreciate any feedback now that the new design is live. I still need to ajaxify the vps status' e.g. when deployed it should change to green without reloading the page...
> 
> http://www.EduVPS.net


tony, I signed up, i like it, and quickly sent a udp flood . I would suggest you limit pps per IP on iptables:

http://openvz.org/Traffic_shaping_with_tc#Limiting_packets_per_second_rate_from_container

Something like 200-500pps per IP would be more than enough for any legit use, even small gameservers.


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## HalfEatenPie (Aug 10, 2013)

And... Gordon's here!  Hello!  

*Edit:*  Also, the way you said you sent a UDP flood with a smile.  Spooky.


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## Awmusic12635 (Aug 10, 2013)

gordonrp said:


> tony, I signed up, i like it, and quickly sent a udp flood . I would suggest you limit pps per IP on iptables:
> 
> http://openvz.org/Traffic_shaping_with_tc#Limiting_packets_per_second_rate_from_container
> 
> Something like 200-500pps per IP would be more than enough for any legit use, even small gameservers.


Welcome to the forum


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## drmike (Aug 10, 2013)

About time we lured Gordon over here 

I'll PM you in a bit Gordon.


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## drmike (Aug 10, 2013)

gordonrp said:


> tony, I signed up, i like it, and quickly sent a udp flood . I would suggest you limit pps per IP on iptables:
> 
> http://openvz.org/Traffic_shaping_with_tc#Limiting_packets_per_second_rate_from_container
> 
> Something like 200-500pps per IP would be more than enough for any legit use, even small gameservers.


Told you someone would be doing bad packet floods   Didn't see that free user doing it


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## tonysala87 (Aug 11, 2013)

lol thanks Incero.


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## gordonrp (Aug 14, 2013)

Thanks all for the welcome. 

@tony, you're welcome happy to help you find security issues on your server anytime.


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