Incero Review - AVOID

[shovenose]

Short version if you don't want to read: don't sign up with this horrible company run by arrogant management.

The service itself is fine, but if you ask a question regarding some network performance they will terminate your server, take all of your customers offline immediately with no warning or time to back up your critical customer data (if the data was not important I would not have chosen to pay for a server with hardware RAID10 and a BBU).

I'm going to post a detailed version later I am just so angry I cannot even type right now. But yes, if you were a BetterVPS customer your data has now been deleted simply because of the below support ticket response. Sure, I said shit, but come on get a life.

Well, I've done some testing and your theory is BS. Here's why:
Test server #1: my Incero dedicated server mango.bettervps.com
Test server #2: a CatalystHost VPS: 162.212.57.119?

disk benchmark of #1 at time of testing: 252 MB/s (2016Mb/s)
disk benchmark of #2 at time of testing: 106 MB/s (848Mb/s)

scp a 100mbps test file from #1 to #2: 25MB/s (200Mbps)
scp the same 100mbps test file from #2 to #1: 14.3MB/s (114.4Mbps)

This disproves your theory of disk bottleneck. Additionally, it proves that it is not transferring filese at Gigabit speeds, even in the internally and according to a previous response from you "on the same switch as ryan arp."

Clearly you are not giving me the "dedicated 1Gbps" I was told would come with this server. It's working fine otherwise and my clients are happy. But I am not. I expect to get those speeds always. Clearly your "~27gbit/second spare capacity" is not working.

Additionally, I do not appreciate your condescending and rude attitude. I understand it's an unmanaged service however I am paying for the hardware and network and I am not getting what I paid for. I don't care if I pay $18/month, $180/month, or $1800/month, I am a client that does not deserve to be treated like or spoken to as a piece of shit.

 

[drmike]

Ouch.

Gordon (Incero) is a good guy, but he doesn't put up with much nonsense.  Great guy actually, but more than a few people have met his other side.  Shame that this ended this way.  It is a good location and his gear is pretty beefy.

Definitely have some performance issues going on with that server.

Am I correct that you were SCP'ing from Catalyst and to Catalyst from your server in the same facility?  Should be like 1ms away.

SCP does have crypto overhead, and unsure about CPU workloads.

cp a 100mbps test file from #1 to #2: 25MB/s (200Mbps)
scp the same 100mbps test file from #2 to #1: 14.3MB/s (114.4Mbps)

These speeds are paltry.  Nowhere near gigabit and especially where same facility.

Did you test something speed wise without using crypto overhead and send the file to null to avoid any disk io thrashing/queuing/competition?

Me personally, I slap two Nginx servers up in a scenario like this and put a big test file on each instance and test with wget -O /dev/null.   That eliminates crypto issues, removes disk IO issues and gives you pure network throughput.

Finally, did you work with the Catalyst folks to debug the slowness on the network side?   (I'd test known speedtests on your sever and their VPS ndoe)

 

[bzImage]

While I am personally not happy with how long it took us to resolve our own networking issues, we at least admited to them, It's a shame not all providers can admit their weaknesses, though thankfully we finally resolved our own.

Just in my mailbox:

"Hello Rob,

I want to get an update on the 10gig port please

Bob has finished my new router and I must say, it's one sexy beast.

Francisco"

 

[kaniini]

Short version if you don't want to read: don't sign up with this horrible company run by arrogant management.


The service itself is fine, but if you ask a question regarding some network performance they will terminate your server, take all of your customers offline immediately with no warning or time to back up your critical customer data (if the data was not important I would not have chosen to pay for a server with hardware RAID10 and a BBU).


I'm going to post a detailed version later I am just so angry I cannot even type right now. But yes, if you were a BetterVPS customer your data has now been deleted simply because of the below support ticket response. Sure, I said shit, but come on get a life.

Well, I've done some testing and your theory is BS. Here's why:


Test server #1: my Incero dedicated server mango.bettervps.com


Test server #2: a CatalystHost VPS: 162.212.57.119?


disk benchmark of #1 at time of testing: 252 MB/s (2016Mb/s)


disk benchmark of #2 at time of testing: 106 MB/s (848Mb/s)


scp a 100mbps test file from #1 to #2: 25MB/s (200Mbps)


scp the same 100mbps test file from #2 to #1: 14.3MB/s (114.4Mbps)


This disproves your theory of disk bottleneck. Additionally, it proves that it is not transferring filese at Gigabit speeds, even in the internally and according to a previous response from you "on the same switch as ryan arp."


Clearly you are not giving me the "dedicated 1Gbps" I was told would come with this server. It's working fine otherwise and my clients are happy. But I am not. I expect to get those speeds always. Clearly your "~27gbit/second spare capacity" is not working.


Additionally, I do not appreciate your condescending and rude attitude. I understand it's an unmanaged service however I am paying for the hardware and network and I am not getting what I paid for. I don't care if I pay $18/month, $180/month, or $1800/month, I am a client that does not deserve to be treated like or spoken to as a piece of shit.

Three thoughts:

1.  TCP throughput degrades significantly with increases in latency due to windowing.  There's a bunch of tweaks that can be made to improve throughput.  (This is why large test files show a better picture than small test files on file downloads).

2. SCP performance should not be considered a real-world network performance measurement.  There are many design flaws in the SSH protocol which make it suboptimal for highspeed file transfers.  The OpenSSH-HPN (High Performance Networking) patch fixes a lot of these flaws and allows for line-rate gbps SCP.  Effectively the problem here is that SSH has it's own RWIN that colludes with the TCP RWIN to give you doubly bad performance.

3. Incero is probably not the best choice for people wanting a performance network.  To be frank, there is a rather embarassing thread on WebHostingTalk where he makes claims about nLayer which allegedly do not hold true.  Either way, it shows that his understanding of network engineering is less than it should be at the "running a DC" level.

Also, does this mean I should disable the probe monitoring the latency to BetterVPS?

 

[Marc M.]

Yep, looks like this was handled in a very professional manner.

 

[shovenose]

To add some information. I ran various speedtests using wget, speedtest-cli, etc. and all had varying horrible results. I'm editing out personal/private/password info from the ticket and will be posting it shortly. He made several claims that were not true.

 

[drmike]

I think I am going to get some popcorn for this thread

I can't believe you were shitcanned @shovenose... Did he say for using the shit word or something else?   I have wussy babies in support who cancel for profanity.  It comes with the job ladies.  Things aren't happy, in comes a thunderstorm and a moaning customer.

 

[shovenose]

I think I am going to get some popcorn for this thread

I can't believe you were shitcanned @shovenose... Did he say for using the shit word or something else?   I have wussy babies in support who cancel for profanity.  It comes with the job ladies.  Things aren't happy, in comes a thunderstorm and a moaning customer.

The worst things I said were "BS" and "shit" you'll see though, about to post the ticket.

 

[drmike]

The worst things I said were "BS" and "shit"

Wow, those are pretty, normal words... Half of us use worse when communicating in friendly terms

I recommend using buffaloshit instead.  Some sort of cow discrimination racket.

 

[Marc M.]

@shovenose short of threatening someone over there at Incero that you would tie them behind your and drag them down the freeway, they had no right to just cancel you. Just looked at their website... wait, what weibsite ?!

I hope that you at least got your moeny back.

 

[TheLinuxBug]

Short version if you don't want to read: don't sign up with this horrible company run by arrogant management.

First off, seriously?  You should have known by Gordon's interactions on LET that he is a bit arrogant. Also, I believe on the one occasion I am thinking of, I pointed out their routes to EU pretty much suck most of the time.   Their network is decent inside the US, but as you noticed your not gonna get a lot of high rate sustained transfers to many places with them.  However, I will say this, I have noticed recently a few different people whining like little girls when they pick shared gigabit and don't get over 20M/sec. In my experience if you are getting 20M/sec on most shared Giabit your doing pretty good.  I am not saying that you shouldn't be able to burst now and again, but those of you thinking you will be pushing sustained 60M/sec+ transfers on shared gigabit have another thing coming to you.

If you truly want to see a a full Gigabit, you should expect to purchase dedicated gigabit to your server.  Most of the time when you are on share gigabit they have ~20 people sharing a 10Gbit back-end, in essence overselling 2:1. So actually purchasing dedicated Gigabit will mean you get a 1 to 1 commit, meaning you will get full gigabit. 

I am going to bet in this case you have a shared gigabit connect and your expecting to use the whole thing all the time.  If you truly want dedicated gigabit, then pay for it, and then when they don't deliver I will be first in line behind you with the pitchfork.  Until then, learn to pick your fights. Obviously, for what you are paying, they didn't find your account and putting up with you worth the money.

Cheers! 

 

[SeriesN]

First CC, now Incero. Don't you think you need to be more professional when you are dealing with providers, the same way you treat your clients? I do not have any service with any of your company's but judging by the public appearance of you and your commander in charge, I as a person wouldn't touch your service with a 100 mile pole.

 

[shovenose]

First off, seriously?  You should have known by Gordon's interactions on LET that he is a bit arrogant. Also, I believe on the one occasion I am thinking of, I pointed out their routes to EU pretty much suck most of the time.   Their network is decent inside the US, but as you noticed your not gonna get a lot of high rate sustained transfers to many places with them.  However, I will say this, I have noticed recently a few different people whining like little girls when they pick shared gigabit and don't get over 20M/sec. In my experience if you are getting 20M/sec on most shared Giabit your doing pretty good.  I am not saying that you shouldn't be able to burst now and again, but those of you thinking you will be pushing sustained 60M/sec+ transfers on shared gigabit have another thing coming to you.

If you truly want to see a a full Gigabit, you should expect to purchase dedicated gigabit to your server.  Most of the time when you are on share gigabit they have ~20 people sharing a 10Gbit back-end, in essence overselling 2:1. So actually purchasing dedicated Gigabit will mean you get a 1 to 1 commit, meaning you will get full gigabit. 

I am going to bet in this case you have a shared gigabit connect and your expecting to use the whole thing all the time.  If you truly want dedicated gigabit, then pay for it, and then when they don't deliver I will be first in line behind you with the pitchfork.  Until then, learn to pick your fights. Obviously, for what you are paying, they didn't find your account and putting up with you worth the money.

Cheers! 

First off, he promised me that it was a "dedicated gigabit"

Second, even a cheap $35/month DataShack dedicated server can kick ass of the speeds I got from Incero.

Anyway, here is the entire ticket. Last response from him was pasted in email. I'm lucky I still had the tab open from before  because he blocked me from his entire ticket system via firewall.

http://i.imgur.com/7ycfy0M.jpg

 

[Marc M.]

You should have known by Gordon's interactions on LET that he is a bit arrogant

If a business person / owner is arrogant and full of himslef, acting in a mysoginistic and hateful manner towards his customers then he doesn't deserve his customers. I wonder how arrogance pays the bills every month? I guess that this guy can send out a few pictures of his middle finger in the upright position every month with his bills instead of actual checks. I mean, who really knows... opcorn:

 

[SeriesN]

6/2, "I am clueless about how kvm works", less then 2 week later, " BetterVps, enterprise managed kvm". Yepp yepp.

 

[Marc M.]

6/2, "I am clueless about how kvm works", less then 2 week later, " BetterVps, enterprise managed kvm". Yepp yepp.

@SeriesN lol, how does one go from no clue to Enterprise in 2 weeks? I wonder what I/O scheduler he configured for best perfomance on his KVM node(s)?

 

[SeriesN]

@SeriesN lol, how does one go from no clue to Enterprise in 2 weeks? I wonder what I/O scheduler he configured for best perfomance on his KVM node(s)?

It IZ INTERNAT! It took me six month of planning and tweaking before my kvm went live.

God bless solus.

 

[TheLinuxBug]

If a business person / owner is arrogant and full of himslef, acting in a mysoginistic and hateful manner towards his customers then he doesn't deserve his customers. I wonder how arrogance pays the bills every month? I guess that this guy can send out a few pictures of his middle finger in the upright position every month with his bills instead of actual checks. I mean, who really knows...

First off,I do not have anything personal against Gordon. It has been my experience, however,  that if your patient and work with him, he will work with you.  Though, as some  others have mentioned, if your a dick (or he thinks you are being so) he will quickly toss you aside like yesterdays used underwear.  My bet is he already knew @shovenose reputation and wasn't willing to deal with his whining and neediness.  That being said, I have never found their network that great.  

So I am curious, did he give you a good deal on this dedicated gigabit?  If you were paying under $500.00/month for your server+commit, then let me tell you, it wasn't a dedicated commit.  Maybe you had a dedicated 1Gbit port, but I am betting you were on a shared network connect. As I said, on "premium" shared networks it isn't abnormal to average around 20M/sec for sustained transfers. 

P.S. in my opinion, if you had hopes of ever having a server there with them again or getting your server back online, you ruined that hope the second you made this thread.

Cheers!

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

wasn't willing to deal with his whining and neediness

To be 100% honest... if that ticket were with us, it would've never made it past the price bickering.

As far as losing customer data... the last date on that ticket on setup looked to be the 17th.  You only had a server up for 3 days in a new deployment, and didn't do extensive testing to make sure it passed spec before you started loading clients on it?

 

[SeriesN]

"Enterprise Managed KVM YO!".

To be 100% honest... if that ticket were with us, it would've never made it past the price bickering.

As far as losing customer data... the last date on that ticket on setup looked to be the 17th. You only had a server up for 3 days in a new deployment, and didn't do extensive testing to make sure it passed spec before you started loading clients on it?

As soon as someone posts on a pre sales ticket " I am not very good with linux", my first response has always been, " Are you looking for full managed vps or do you have server admin available?".