# iwStack 4 month review



## fisle (Jul 30, 2014)

In March I decided to cancel my Prometeus KVMSSD2 deal and migrate to iwStack because I needed more RAM so I thought, 'Why not iwStack?' aaand here we are.

*Provider:* Prometeus

*Plan:* iwStack

*Price:* ~7€ / month

*Location:* Milan, Italy

*Purchased:* 2014/03/18

*Features:*


2 cores @ 2GHz
1024MB RAM
10GB root disk (included free) + extra 20GB disk
1 IPv4 and /64 IPv6
Unmetered incoming traffic & 1TB/month outgoing
Free DNS hosting with Rage4
*What the instance is doing:*


Private email server
My website (static site generated)
2 small PHP webapps with MySQL
IRC bouncer (znc)
Squid private proxy
*How it is doing the job:*

The VPS is doing its job just fine with no issues. Only time when it felt slow was when my webapp was eating all the ram accidentally 

Uptime is currently rocking at 133 days. This month I installed uptime monitoring service on a Kimsufi box which reports 99.991% availability with downtime of 4 minutes. (Might have been caused by the kimsufi box and its network though  )

The latency from my location (Finland) is 49ms which to me is completely acceptable considering my usage.

*Support:*

I've needed a ticket to set a reverse DNS entry for my domain. I set my ticket as low priority and it got answered in an hour, which I find good for low priority tickets. As a previous customer of Prometeus I've noticed that all the replies are very polite.

*Hardware Information:*


cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model : 13
model name	: QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
stepping	: 3
microcode	: 0x1
cpu MHz : 1999.999
cache size	: 4096 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 4
wp : yes
flags : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm nopl pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm
bogomips	: 3999.99
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:


dd


```
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, 3.56492 s, 301 MB/s
```

bench.sh


```
CPU model :  QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
Number of cores : 2
CPU frequency :  1999.999 MHz
Total amount of ram : 1002 MB
Total amount of swap : 465 MB
System uptime :   133 days, 22:35,       
Download speed from CacheFly: 54.5MB/s 
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 3.69MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 3.55MB/s 
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 1.73MB/s 
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 17.8MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 13.2MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.70MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 2.93MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 2.54MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 4.42MB/s 
I/O speed :  278 MB/s
```
Summary:

Prometeus - rock solid as usual. Uncle is running a great show. Very stable server. Absolute uptime without it costing an arm and a leg. 5/5 would host business critical apps with.


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## Kayaba Akihiko (Jul 30, 2014)

I'm confused, are you reviewing Prometheus or iwStack?


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## wcypierre (Jul 30, 2014)

Kayaba Akihiko said:


> I'm confused, are you reviewing Prometheus or iwStack?


iwstack is Prometeus's cloud service line  basically he's reviewing iwstack but iwstack is by Prometeus so yeah


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## Kayaba Akihiko (Jul 30, 2014)

wcypierre said:


> iwstack is Prometeus's cloud service line  basically he's reviewing iwstack but iwstack is by Prometeus so yeah


My bad, sorry I'm stupid xD


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## yomero (Jul 30, 2014)

I've been a customer of these brands too for several years.

As always, consistent performance and solid network.

And if I must say something bad, I have too things.

First, like a week ago I started my first iwstack instance at USA for production use. Previously it was just for tests and so. And I had a mysterious shutdown like a week ago. No idea what happened, but I booted my machine manually.

Second, my first support ticket (notice the first, so I never required support until now, which is great) was left unanswered after a little bit of conversation. Maybe they just forgot to answer it and got closed automatically or something. Not a big deal since isn't an important issue to be honest.

Overall, I am happy. The service is really good for the price, and I am looking forward to see new features in their offerings. Mainly, I hope to get the Milan features at Dallas, like true HA, or native IPV6 and so on.

Edit:

@fisle The 10GB disk isn't free AFAIK. Or it is? I can see the costs of all my volumes in the billing details.


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## fisle (Jul 31, 2014)

yomero said:


> Edit:
> 
> @fisle The 10GB disk isn't free AFAIK. Or it is? I can see the costs of all my volumes in the billing details.


Hmm, at least this tutorial mentions "all VMs come with a root disk of 10GB" so perhaps it's a cost you cannot remove.  Perhaps I should reword it better


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## yomero (Aug 1, 2014)

fisle said:


> Hmm, at least this tutorial mentions "all VMs come with a root disk of 10GB" so perhaps it's a cost you cannot remove.  Perhaps I should reword it better


Well, you should assign a root volume to your instance. So, it can be even 1GB if you want. The tutorial is an example I guess. And if you use the templates provided, you are forced to use an specific root volume size.


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