D. Strout
Resident IPv6 Proponent
Crissic Solutions, run by Skylar, is another of my favorite providers, winning my business with competitive prices, top-notch support, and reliability. In this post I'm reviewing another of my DNS VPSes, although this one is my master DNS server that also serves as the development platform for my domain/server manager (out by Christmas...maybe!). The key feature here is reliability - my main website's DNS runs through this server, and if it goes down, within a few hours most of my sites are down. With Crissic, though, I'm never worried about that. They are online. Period.
When it comes to prices, Crissic wins in my book. The server in question is a 512MB box with 50GB HDD and 2TB bandwidth - for $15/year. The only way you can go wrong at those prices is if the support is terrible or the VPS is slow - neither of which is the case. Even though the disk is HDD, dd speed tests show 172MB/s. Support is very fast too, response times of a minute or two are common. Skylar is always friendly and solves the problem very quickly.
Last thing I'd like to mention is the network. Crissic operates their own AS, AS62639, which has some pretty good peering set up. The DC blend, through Nodes Direct in Jacksonville, peers with PCCW, Tinet, and HE. AS62639 also peers with TripartZ B.V., who peer with NTT, Cogent, Level3, and others. Crissic is also connected to the Jacksonville Internet Exchange and the Atlanta Internet Exchange, so they've got a decent blend of bandwidth on the wire.
All in all, I feel I can really count on Crissic to host my DNS and applications without hassle, excessive cost, or sloppy service. Here are some benchmarks.
When it comes to prices, Crissic wins in my book. The server in question is a 512MB box with 50GB HDD and 2TB bandwidth - for $15/year. The only way you can go wrong at those prices is if the support is terrible or the VPS is slow - neither of which is the case. Even though the disk is HDD, dd speed tests show 172MB/s. Support is very fast too, response times of a minute or two are common. Skylar is always friendly and solves the problem very quickly.
Last thing I'd like to mention is the network. Crissic operates their own AS, AS62639, which has some pretty good peering set up. The DC blend, through Nodes Direct in Jacksonville, peers with PCCW, Tinet, and HE. AS62639 also peers with TripartZ B.V., who peer with NTT, Cogent, Level3, and others. Crissic is also connected to the Jacksonville Internet Exchange and the Atlanta Internet Exchange, so they've got a decent blend of bandwidth on the wire.
All in all, I feel I can really count on Crissic to host my DNS and applications without hassle, excessive cost, or sloppy service. Here are some benchmarks.
Code:
./bench.sh
CPU model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5660 @ 2.80GHz
Number of cores : 3
CPU frequency : 2800.124 MHz
Total amount of ram : 512 MB
Total amount of swap : 512 MB
System uptime : 50 days, 9:38,
Download speed from CacheFly: 430KB/s <- Not sure what's up here, considering the others
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 69.2MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 63.4MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 1.10MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 4.13MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 18.9MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 8.40MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 23.5MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 26.0MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 73.0MB/s
