amuck-landowner

Inertia Networks "mini" VPS

kaniini

Beware the bunny-rabbit!
Verified Provider
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

  • Cacti (with typical LAMP stack)
The Setup Process From Hell

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.
 
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kaniini

Beware the bunny-rabbit!
Verified Provider
Oh, apparently they have IPv6 and enabled it.  So, IPv6 is possible, but you have to open a ticket.
 

SeriesN

Active Member
Verified Provider
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.

Dacentec has one of the crappiest network I have ever experienced. Than again, for that price, you can't complain. One of the main reason why we closed down our Lenoir location. They have great support team, josh is a great person to work with but their network is meh and not mention, regular packet loss.
 
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InertiaNetworks-John

Inertia Networks, LLC
Verified Provider
Thanks for the criticism! As a hosting provider, we are always looking for ways to improve our quality of service that we offer. We are in the process of moving away from HostBill to a better, more stable billing software.

We are also looking into updating all of our templates to the most recent and we will do our best to make sure that they stay recent!

You also have brought up the fact that OpenVZ is very unsecured and we totally agree with you on this. All new nodes are using Xen virtualization, and we are in the process of phasing out our older OpenVZ nodes.

Once again... thanks for the review!

John
 

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
SolusVM doesn't come packaged with any templates apart from a basic CentOS one. Anything over and above that is down to the admin of the system.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

KuJoe

Well-Known Member
Verified Provider
The network tests should be similar to these:


# wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2013-11-26 08:13:03-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: “100mb.test”

100%[==================================>] 104,857,600 25.7M/s in 4.0s

2013-11-26 08:13:07 (25.2 MB/s) - “100mb.test” saved [104857600/104857600]

Code:
# ./speedtest_cli.py 
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Dacentec (x.x.x.x)...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Spirit Communications (Charlotte, NC) [104.75 km]: 12.0 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 274.88 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 76.20 Mbit/s
Not the best, but for the price it exceeds any expectations I had. Can't wait for nLayer to be added to the mix to replace Cogent as the primary carrier. :)

EDIT: I forgot I'm doing a Storage vMotion on here so these speed tests are not accurate since I'm using about 100Mbps for that on my port. Maybe somebody with an actual Inertia Networks VPS can post something.
 
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InertiaNetworks-John

Inertia Networks, LLC
Verified Provider
Was looking at your ad (semi managed vps) but the review does not sound like you can offer semi managed support.

@Inertia what does semi managed include?
Sorry for the late reply here!

Semi-managed basically means that we will try and support anything that you throw at us. We won't go into your VPS if you do not need it, but we are happy to help when it comes to troubleshooting, installing new software or even securing your server. Our goal is to be there for you, regardless of the problem.
 
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