Provider: Inertia Networks (http://www.inertianetworks.com)
Plan: Mini
Plan location: Dacentec (some hillbilly town in North Carolina named Lenoir)
Price: $9
Purchased: August 28, 2013
Virtualization method: OpenVZ / SolusVM / HostBill module
Hardware Information
/proc/cpuinfo:
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 2500.067
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
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 lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 5000.13
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 2500.067
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 1
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 4
initial apicid : 4
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 lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4999.30
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
/proc/meminfo:
MemTotal: 524288 kB
MemFree: 126376 kB
Cached: 336860 kB
Active: 165600 kB
Inactive: 217720 kB
Active(anon): 40012 kB
Inactive(anon): 6448 kB
Active(file): 125588 kB
Inactive(file): 211272 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 524288 kB
SwapFree: 517076 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 46460 kB
Shmem: 2884 kB
Slab: 14576 kB
SReclaimable: 9700 kB
SUnreclaim: 4876 kB
/proc/user_beancounters:
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
131: kmemsize 14914961 16756736 268435456 268435456 0
lockedpages 0 8 65536 65536 0
privvmpages 99098 197488 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
shmpages 721 733 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numproc 43 66 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
physpages 99476 131072 0 131072 0
vmguarpages 0 0 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
oomguarpages 13418 36297 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numtcpsock 6 23 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numflock 8 14 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numpty 1 1 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numsiginfo 0 33 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
tcpsndbuf 111312 407792 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
tcprcvbuf 98304 1614400 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
othersockbuf 34680 99464 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dgramrcvbuf 0 9248 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numothersock 62 86 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dcachesize 9929210 10157739 134217728 134217728 0
numfile 461 650 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numiptent 24 24 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
meaningless dd test:
nope:~ # 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, 21.2225 s, 50.6 MB/s
wget from cachefly:
Services running
Let me tell you. The templates distributed with SolusVM these days are complete and utter gobshite, and it shows with the templates you get on Inertia Networks. The Debian templates were entirely unusable because the package manager was left in an inconsistent state, so I decided to use OpenSUSE.
Well, the OpenSUSE template is 12.1, which is not an LTS version and hasn't been supported for many months. The good news is that it's ABI-compatible with OpenSUSE 11.4, so you can use the OpenSUSE 11.4 repositories for addons like Nagios and Cacti.
But before all of that, I had a snafu with changing the root password to something I could actually type in. Either SolusVM, HostBill or the HostBill SolusVM module like to create bad initial passwords, that are inconvenient to type in by hand (lots of punctuation and such, look, I already have an RSI, I don't need to make it any worse). So, I changed the password to something easier, i.e. "correcthorsebatterystaple" (it was a temporary password to let me in so I could disable password auth and use solely SSH keys, and of course I have changed the password anyway). But, this feature is broken on their configuration. The workaround is to use 'rebuild' to reimage the VPS. I opened a ticket asking for them to check why this was not working and they just told me 'my password was indeed correct according to the client area'. I should have known this was going to be a source of major pain at that point.
Having not used SuSE for many years (I used to swear by it, and then at it, and then I switched to Debian, and then followed that family tree into Alpine), I found that they had a useful guide for getting Cacti up and running. Awesome!
Following that guide was pretty straightforward, and since then, the VPS has been basically doing what it's supposed to do.
Thoughts
The datacenter used by Inertia Networks (Dacentec) has kind of a crappy network. The mix is very favored to Cogent. It seems any network which shares Cogent as a common carrier will use Cogent as the carrier for interconnection. There is no IPv6, and since it's OpenVZ, there's no ability to have a tunnel.
Since it's OpenVZ, I wouldn't run anything I would be too mad if it got compromised, of course. Compromise on OpenVZ can even happen without you knowing it, since your filesystem lives in /vz/private/CTID. Well, you lot already know all of that. I am not sure I would be too dependent on the support team -- they seem like the type who like to stay in the world of GUI control panels instead of down hacking away at sysadmin tasks in the trenches. But, for what it is, it's not horrible. And at least it's priced at something realistic for a small-scale provider instead of an unsustainable $15/year. Unfortunately, the SolusVM and HostBill stack is about equally buggy to the SolusVM and WHMCS stack.
So, that's pretty much it. You can use cacti.tortois.es for validation that this is a real server being reviewed.
Plan: Mini
Plan location: Dacentec (some hillbilly town in North Carolina named Lenoir)
Price: $9
Purchased: August 28, 2013
Virtualization method: OpenVZ / SolusVM / HostBill module
Hardware Information
/proc/cpuinfo:
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 2500.067
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
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 lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 5000.13
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 2500.067
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 1
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 4
initial apicid : 4
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 lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4999.30
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
/proc/meminfo:
MemTotal: 524288 kB
MemFree: 126376 kB
Cached: 336860 kB
Active: 165600 kB
Inactive: 217720 kB
Active(anon): 40012 kB
Inactive(anon): 6448 kB
Active(file): 125588 kB
Inactive(file): 211272 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 524288 kB
SwapFree: 517076 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 46460 kB
Shmem: 2884 kB
Slab: 14576 kB
SReclaimable: 9700 kB
SUnreclaim: 4876 kB
/proc/user_beancounters:
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
131: kmemsize 14914961 16756736 268435456 268435456 0
lockedpages 0 8 65536 65536 0
privvmpages 99098 197488 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
shmpages 721 733 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numproc 43 66 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
physpages 99476 131072 0 131072 0
vmguarpages 0 0 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
oomguarpages 13418 36297 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numtcpsock 6 23 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numflock 8 14 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numpty 1 1 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numsiginfo 0 33 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
tcpsndbuf 111312 407792 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
tcprcvbuf 98304 1614400 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
othersockbuf 34680 99464 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dgramrcvbuf 0 9248 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
numothersock 62 86 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dcachesize 9929210 10157739 134217728 134217728 0
numfile 461 650 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numiptent 24 24 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775807 0
meaningless dd test:
nope:~ # 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, 21.2225 s, 50.6 MB/s
wget from cachefly:
Services running
- Cacti (with typical LAMP stack)
Let me tell you. The templates distributed with SolusVM these days are complete and utter gobshite, and it shows with the templates you get on Inertia Networks. The Debian templates were entirely unusable because the package manager was left in an inconsistent state, so I decided to use OpenSUSE.
Well, the OpenSUSE template is 12.1, which is not an LTS version and hasn't been supported for many months. The good news is that it's ABI-compatible with OpenSUSE 11.4, so you can use the OpenSUSE 11.4 repositories for addons like Nagios and Cacti.
But before all of that, I had a snafu with changing the root password to something I could actually type in. Either SolusVM, HostBill or the HostBill SolusVM module like to create bad initial passwords, that are inconvenient to type in by hand (lots of punctuation and such, look, I already have an RSI, I don't need to make it any worse). So, I changed the password to something easier, i.e. "correcthorsebatterystaple" (it was a temporary password to let me in so I could disable password auth and use solely SSH keys, and of course I have changed the password anyway). But, this feature is broken on their configuration. The workaround is to use 'rebuild' to reimage the VPS. I opened a ticket asking for them to check why this was not working and they just told me 'my password was indeed correct according to the client area'. I should have known this was going to be a source of major pain at that point.
Having not used SuSE for many years (I used to swear by it, and then at it, and then I switched to Debian, and then followed that family tree into Alpine), I found that they had a useful guide for getting Cacti up and running. Awesome!
Following that guide was pretty straightforward, and since then, the VPS has been basically doing what it's supposed to do.
Thoughts
The datacenter used by Inertia Networks (Dacentec) has kind of a crappy network. The mix is very favored to Cogent. It seems any network which shares Cogent as a common carrier will use Cogent as the carrier for interconnection. There is no IPv6, and since it's OpenVZ, there's no ability to have a tunnel.
Since it's OpenVZ, I wouldn't run anything I would be too mad if it got compromised, of course. Compromise on OpenVZ can even happen without you knowing it, since your filesystem lives in /vz/private/CTID. Well, you lot already know all of that. I am not sure I would be too dependent on the support team -- they seem like the type who like to stay in the world of GUI control panels instead of down hacking away at sysadmin tasks in the trenches. But, for what it is, it's not horrible. And at least it's priced at something realistic for a small-scale provider instead of an unsustainable $15/year. Unfortunately, the SolusVM and HostBill stack is about equally buggy to the SolusVM and WHMCS stack.
So, that's pretty much it. You can use cacti.tortois.es for validation that this is a real server being reviewed.
Last edited by a moderator:
