amuck-landowner

FAPVPS 2GB KVM

acd

New Member
Provider: FAPVPS

Plan: KVM 2GB VPS

Normal Price: 20 USD/month

Location: Dacentec, Lenoir, NC.

Received: 2013-06-23

 

Full disclosure, I received this VM gratis. I realize at 20 USD/month it's not a typical low-end review but it's what I was given to play around with.

 

/proc/cpuinfo:



root@ad:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 2
model name      : QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.0
stepping        : 3
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 2266.746
cache size      : 4096 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 3
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 3
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 4
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx lm rep_good nopl pni cx16 popcnt hypervisor lahf_lm
bogomips        : 4533.49
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
Since this is a 2GB plan, there are 3 cpu threads attached, but I've only included the first. Notably missing are SSE4.{1,2} features of the L5520 in this HN, but I rarely use those. I more miss the AESNI bells and whistles of newer silicon.

 

/proc/meminfo:



root@ad:~# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        2061052 kB
MemFree:         1429964 kB
Buffers:           37924 kB
Cached:           504748 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:           283568 kB
Inactive:         270800 kB
Active(anon):      11740 kB
Inactive(anon):      152 kB
Active(file):     271828 kB
Inactive(file):   270648 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:       2096124 kB
SwapFree:        2096124 kB
Dirty:                 0 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:         11708 kB
Mapped:             7944 kB
Shmem:               184 kB
Slab:              51592 kB
SReclaimable:      42936 kB
SUnreclaim:         8656 kB
KernelStack:         664 kB
PageTables:         1860 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:     3126648 kB
Committed_AS:      58584 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:       17332 kB
VmallocChunk:   34359718980 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:         0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:       51188 kB
DirectMap2M:     2045952 kB

Running in x86_64 mode because it's a 2GB vps, and why not.

 

dd test:


Code:
root@ad:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && unlink test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 7.99866 s, 134 MB/s
This is one of their rotational disk backed systems, which does not have SSD caching.

 


wget test:


tw@ad:~$ wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test -O /dev/null
--2013-06-24 15:21:33--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `/dev/null'

100%[===========================================================================================>] 104,857,600 4.84M/s   in 14s

2013-06-24 15:21:48 (7.14 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
Services running:

znc

sshd

ipsec

tw's ping/trace bot

CPU limited avconv

 

Unexpected funkiness.

 

Looks like FAPVPS offers 2 virtualized disks to their VMs, their default image using the smaller of the two for swap, though there is nothing keeping you from partitioning off some space on vda for similar purpose. I'm wondering if both disks are backed by the same array or separate disks. I can see how this might be advantageous to the HN, allowing it to use different caching strategies, but I honestly couldn't say to what end it is set up as it is.



root@ad:/boot/grub# cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name
 254        0   52428800 vda
 254        1   52427776 vda1
 254       16    2097152 vdb
 254       17    2096128 vdb1
  11        0    1048575 sr0

root@ad:/boot/grub# mount
...
/dev/disk/by-uuid/924c36e3-297b-4f6e-9993-0e1b08f6183c on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
...

root@ad:/boot/grub# ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/924c36e3-297b-4f6e-9993-0e1b08f6183c
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 23 23:15 /dev/disk/by-uuid/924c36e3-297b-4f6e-9993-0e1b08f6183c -> ../../vda1

root@ad:/boot/grub# cat /proc/swaps
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/vdb1                               partition       2096124 0       -1

 

Here are some common MTRs I use.


Code:
tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 8.8.8.8
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    4.9   1.6   1.0   4.9   1.2
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    0.6   3.1   0.4   9.8   3.7
  3.|-- te3-4.ccr01.clt01.atlas.c  0.0%    10   21.5  51.4  20.6 182.1  58.0
  4.|-- te0-5-0-6.mpd21.dca01.atl  0.0%    10   16.4  16.5  16.3  16.8   0.1
  5.|-- te0-0-0-1.mpd21.iad02.atl  0.0%    10   19.4  20.0  18.2  23.0   1.9
  6.|-- 38.122.62.74               0.0%    10   16.6  16.9  16.6  19.1   0.8
  7.|-- 209.85.252.46              0.0%    10   22.9  19.6  19.0  22.9   1.2
  8.|-- 72.14.236.98               0.0%    10   18.0  18.2  18.0  19.4   0.4
  9.|-- 66.249.95.231              0.0%    10   26.7  26.7  26.4  28.5   0.6
 10.|-- 72.14.234.65               0.0%    10   26.0  26.2  25.8  28.2   0.7
 11.|-- ???                       100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
 12.|-- google-public-dns-a.googl  0.0%    10   26.6  26.6  26.5  26.8   0.1

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 4.4.2.2
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    1.2   1.2   1.1   1.3   0.1
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    5.0   3.2   0.5   8.7   3.4
  3.|-- te3-4.ccr01.clt01.atlas.c  0.0%    10  128.3  74.6  19.5 226.9  76.1
  4.|-- te0-3-0-0.ccr21.atl01.atl  0.0%    10   26.8  24.2  21.1  28.9   2.9
  5.|-- be2034.ccr21.atl04.atlas.  0.0%    10   21.3  21.2  21.1  21.3   0.1
  6.|-- ???                       100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 205.185.112.1
[sudo] password for tw:
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    1.2   1.1   1.1   1.2   0.0
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    2.6   3.1   0.5  10.7   3.7
  3.|-- dct-cr03--v51.dacentec.co  0.0%    10    9.2   9.2   9.0  10.6   0.5
  4.|-- 10gigabitethernet1-3.core  0.0%    10   12.5  11.0   9.2  17.8   3.1
  5.|-- 10gigabitethernet10-4.cor  0.0%    10   31.8  32.2  29.1  39.8   3.9
  6.|-- 10gigabitethernet3-2.core  0.0%    10   52.9  56.2  52.9  62.1   3.6
  7.|-- 10gigabitethernet1-2.core  0.0%    10   68.1  67.9  64.9  76.2   4.2
  8.|-- 10gigabitethernet1-1.core  0.0%    10   74.3  74.7  74.1  78.0   1.2
  9.|-- vegasnap-llc.10gigabiteth  0.0%    10   97.8  97.7  97.6  97.8   0.1
 10.|-- 205.185.112.1              0.0%    10   98.1  98.0  97.8  98.3   0.2

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 199.195.255.1
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    1.2   1.3   1.1   2.0   0.3
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10   10.3   2.5   0.5  10.3   3.3
  3.|-- dct-cr03--v51.dacentec.co  0.0%    10    9.1   9.1   9.0   9.2   0.0
  4.|-- atl-bb1-link.telia.net     0.0%    10    9.1   9.2   9.1   9.2   0.0
  5.|-- ash-bb3-link.telia.net     0.0%    10   22.9  35.7  22.8  79.7  23.0
  6.|-- nyk-bb1-link.telia.net    40.0%    10   27.6  28.3  27.6  29.8   0.8
  7.|-- buf-b1-link.telia.net     50.0%    10   38.8  38.8  38.5  39.1   0.2
  8.|-- giglinx-ic-155660-buf-b1. 50.0%    10   50.2  50.3  50.1  50.5   0.2
  9.|-- 199.195.255.1             20.0%    10   37.0  37.6  36.9  38.7   0.7

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 199.241.28.6
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    1.2   1.2   1.1   1.3   0.0
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    4.8   3.0   0.5   8.5   3.4
  3.|-- te3-4.ccr01.clt01.atlas.c  0.0%    10   23.3  89.0  23.3 184.7  63.0
  4.|-- te0-0-0-5.mpd22.dca01.atl  0.0%    10   16.2  16.4  16.2  16.5   0.1
  5.|-- te0-1-0-5.mpd22.iad02.atl  0.0%    10   27.0  27.8  19.0  33.6   4.1
  6.|-- tiscali.iad01.atlas.cogen  0.0%    10   17.4  21.5  17.3  46.8   9.6
  7.|-- xe-9-2-0.atl11.ip4.tinet.  0.0%    10   52.8  51.5  51.3  52.8   0.4
  8.|-- ramnode-gw.ip4.tinet.net   0.0%    10   35.7  38.1  35.7  44.2   3.2
  9.|-- 192.249.58.56              0.0%    10   35.6  35.7  35.6  36.1   0.1
 10.|-- test.atl.ramnode.com       0.0%    10   35.7  35.6  35.5  35.7   0.1

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report 192.249.60.11
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    1.2   1.3   1.1   2.1   0.3
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    0.7   2.1   0.6   8.9   2.8
  3.|-- te3-4.ccr01.clt01.atlas.c  0.0%    10   24.9  24.6  20.2  30.4   3.6
  4.|-- te0-0-0-5.mpd22.dca01.atl  0.0%    10   16.8  16.4  16.3  16.8   0.2
  5.|-- te0-7-0-35.mpd22.iad02.at  0.0%    10   17.7  16.7  16.3  17.7   0.5
  6.|-- tiscali.iad01.atlas.cogen  0.0%    10   17.5  23.1  16.0  80.5  20.2
    |  `|-- 154.54.12.118
  7.|-- xe-3-3-0.sea21.ip4.tinet.  0.0%    10  107.0 108.8 107.0 124.1   5.4
  8.|-- icastcenter-gw.ip4.tinet.  0.0%    10  105.9 108.0 105.7 113.4   3.2
  9.|-- 192.249.62.12              0.0%    10  105.8 105.7 105.6 105.8   0.1
 10.|-- 192.249.60.11             10.0%    10  105.8 105.9 105.8 106.0   0.1

tw@ad:~$ sudo mtr --report bhs.proof.ovh.net
HOST: ########################### Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 192.111.X.Y                0.0%    10    2.5   1.7   1.1   5.1   1.2
  2.|-- 199.191.57.193             0.0%    10    0.7   3.1   0.5  10.4   3.8
  3.|-- dct-cr03--v51.dacentec.co  0.0%    10    9.2   9.1   9.0   9.2   0.1
  4.|-- 198.32.132.110             0.0%    10    9.4   9.4   9.2   9.6   0.1
  5.|-- ash-1-6k.va.us             0.0%    10   21.6  21.9  21.6  24.0   0.7
  6.|-- ???                       100.0    10    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
  7.|-- bhs-g2-6k.qc.ca           70.0%    10   36.1  42.7  36.1  56.0  11.5
  8.|-- bhs-s3-6k.qc.ca            0.0%    10   36.1  36.2  36.1  36.4   0.1
  9.|-- 198.27.85.58               0.0%    10   36.0  36.1  36.0  36.4   0.1
 

These are the hardware specs I was given by FAPVPS:


Code:
2x Xeon L5520
36 GB of DDR 3 @ 1066 Triple Channel
LSI 9260-8I HW RAID controller + BBU
4X Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0001 1TB 7200 RPM RAID 10
Experience so far:

FAPVPS is a new provider. They manually provision all of their VMs so it takes some time to get set up. They need to work on automating this process as much as possible, and they know about that problem. The panel is VirtualMin/CloudMin, which for someone from Solus (and solus-like) land, this panel seemed a bit counterintuitive. FAPVPS's OS selection is based on restoring an image to the disk, as opposed to manual installation via CDROM/VNC, which had been my experience thus far. The Control Panel allows you to shell in to the system as root from the page without asking for my root password. This sets off some alarm bells in my head and I immediately used passwd from the shell to disable that functionality. Also a bit irritating but not show stopping is the inability for the user to select an ISO image and reboot to it. Any ISO mounting or unmounting must be done by FAPVPS on your behalf. The same is true of RDNS. In addition, the virtual console used does not present the IP and port or opportunity to change VNC password to use an external client in the event that java is not available on the client system.

 

Their billing/manage system is a classic tandem setup with WHMCS for billing and CloudMin for management. As of now, FAPVPS does not offer any addon services or upgrades for VPSes templated in WHMCS, though if you need something, you can probably ticket to get it added; small hosts tend to be more flexible. The only VPS management feature WHMCS offers is "cancel" which is about par for the course.

 

These guys have a different than average bandwidth/disk/RAM/CPU ratio, giving more CPU time and RAM allocation than their similarly priced peers. My 2GB RAM has 50GB disk, 2TB of transit and 3 cores whereas an equivalent cost VM from BuyVM or RamNode would run half as much ram, 50% more transit, and a fair chunk of disk more. CPU allocation would be about even, though I couldn't make an appropriate loading comparison.

 

As far as ticketing friendliness and technical aptitude of the owner/operators, it seems pretty good on both parts. Even without ssd caching, the setup seems pretty solid. They might not have 10 years of virtualization experience, but if I use an industry term, they know what it means. A little time and some panel fixups and they could be a nice little host.

So far I've only been playing around with it a bit, and it seems to hold up pretty well to my light loading. I'll update this thread with any changes or updates I might note.
 

D. Strout

Resident IPv6 Proponent
Good review, thanks for pointing out some of the quirks for prospective clients. Good to hear they're using a different panel, though there are drawbacks to whatever panel is used. The note about no mounting of ISOs is definitely worth keeping in mind.
 

D. Strout

Resident IPv6 Proponent
Gonna take me a while to get over the name...
Yeah, TBH that's a big minus in my book. I appreciate the desire to be somewhat humorous (and I know FVPS has come up with some that "FAP" stands for), but naming the company something so un-professional means a big red flag for me. 
 

Marc M.

Phoenix VPS
Verified Provider
I realize at 20 USD/month it's not a typical low-end review but it's what I was given to play around with.
...and vpsBoard is not a forum / discussion board dedicated to the low end market. There is LET for for that...

[edit]

About the name: since FAPVPS is a new providers he could and should change his name. Short and memorable is the way to go. Don't shy away from TLDs like .io, .sh and so on. They're cool.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Marc M.

Phoenix VPS
Verified Provider
$20/month for a chunk of an .. L5520, no SSD cache and a mediocre network? I dunno about this.
@manacit The pricing isn't bad at all. You can always get 12.5% (as the Rackspace sales guy said) of an AMD core and 2GB RAM for $80 ... at Rackspace. Seriously, other than the name being what it is I don't really see anything wrong here.
 

MannDude

Just a dude
vpsBoard Founder
Moderator
Thank you for the detailed review. We were just talking in IRC last night (I believe) about FAPVPS and how everyone is talking about the name, though have not heard anything about the actual service yet. Glad to see this review here.
 

Marc M.

Phoenix VPS
Verified Provider
Thank you for the detailed review. We were just talking in IRC last night (I believe) about FAPVPS and how everyone is talking about the name, though have not heard anything about the actual service yet. Glad to see this review here.
@MannDude maybe it's some new ingenious marketing tactic ;-) I mean it gets people talking, doesn't it?

[edit]

Saw this offer on LET:

FAPVPS KVM SSD VPS - Let us give you a helping hand. $4.19/Month

I'd say that the owner named his company like that on purpose.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

manacit

New Member
@manacit The pricing isn't bad at all. You can always get 12.5% (as the Rackspace sales guy said) of an AMD core and 2GB RAM for $80 ... at Rackspace. Seriously, other than the name being what it is I don't really see anything wrong here.
The issue is that it's $20 per month for a VPS on four year old hardware in an extremely budget datacenter from someone who's liable to be a summerhost. I think that about covers it
 

Marc M.

Phoenix VPS
Verified Provider
The issue is that it's $20 per month for a VPS on four year old hardware in an extremely budget datacenter from someone who's liable to be a summerhost. I think that about covers it
@manacit oh hell, you don't get a $2 plan from a summer host and put your data on it, let alone a $20 plan. That being said... what makes you think that this is a summer host?
 

lv-matt

New Member
root@ad:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && unlink test 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 7.99866 s, 134 MB/s
I hate to break it to you, but there is no way on earth that this setup:

LSI 9260-8I HW RAID controller + BBU

4X Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0001 1TB 7200 RPM RAID 10

Heck it looks more like a:

1X Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0001 1TB 7200 RPM

or 2X Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0001 1TB 7200 RPM RAID 1

Either the node is overloaded or someone is hogging IO or they are flat out lying to you regarding the spec, that however is the performance of a single disk. I can assure you that, file a ticket and see whats up, its in your interest that you get this sorted, and its in the hosts interests that its investigated, incase of a failed drive.

With a much worse RAID card and no BBU you should be pushing 200+MB/s on that spec, so something is wrong somewhere. We used to run RAID 1 on our nodes, and well that was a mistake in all honesty.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Ash

New Member
Look at Matt raining down on his KVM competitors again. I wish the mods would put a stop to this.
 

fapvps

New Member
Verified Provider
Here is the MegaCli output from this node:


Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)
Name :
RAID Level : Primary-1, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-0
Size : 1.816 TB
Sector Size : 512
Mirror Data : 1.816 TB
State : Optimal
Strip Size : 1.0 MB
Number Of Drives per span:2
Span Depth : 2
Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAheadNone, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAheadNone, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Default Access Policy: Read/Write
Current Access Policy: Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disabled
Encryption Type : None
Is VD Cached: No

Here is the dd output from the node itself:


dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && unlink test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 6.19075 s, 173 MB/s

I don't expect a VPS to have 100% of the speed.

This is a RAID 10 setup with 7200 RPM drives so it will not write faster than the speed of 2 of the drives and that is also not 100% efficient. The speed of 1 of these drives is about ~90 MB /s so how exactly is it supposed to get 200+ MB /s during writes?

Here is a serverbear link to a test on a similar node:

http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2013/06/08/NcCP96N1DiUVD3AE

Here is the BBU status:


BBU status for Adapter: 0

BatteryType: iBBU08
Voltage: 4000 mV
Current: 0 mA
Temperature: 41 C
Battery State: Optimal
Design Mode : 12+ Hrs retention with a transparent learn cycle and best service life.

BBU Firmware Status:

Charging Status : None
Voltage : OK
Temperature : OK
Learn Cycle Requested : No
Learn Cycle Active : No
Learn Cycle Status : OK
Learn Cycle Timeout : No
I2c Errors Detected : No
Battery Pack Missing : No
Battery Replacement required : No
Remaining Capacity Low : No
Periodic Learn Required : No
Transparent Learn : No
No space to cache offload : No
Pack is about to fail & should be replaced : No
Cache Offload premium feature required : No
Module microcode update required : No

BBU GasGauge Status: 0x0180
Relative State of Charge: 89 %
Charger System State: 1
Charger System Ctrl: 0
Charging current: 0 mA
Absolute state of charge: 74 %
Max Error: 0 %
Battery backup charge time : 48 hours +

BBU Capacity Info for Adapter: 0

Relative State of Charge: 89 %
Absolute State of charge: 74 %
Remaining Capacity: 1115 mAh
Full Charge Capacity: 1261 mAh
Run time to empty: Battery is not being charged.
Average time to empty: 2 Hour, 14 Min.
Estimated Time to full recharge: Battery is not being charged.
Cycle Count: 4

BBU Design Info for Adapter: 0

Date of Manufacture: 01/05, 2012
Design Capacity: 1500 mAh
Design Voltage: 4100 mV
Specification Info: 0
Serial Number: 10118
Pack Stat Configuration: 0x0000
Manufacture Name: LS36691
Firmware Version :
Device Name: bq27541
Device Chemistry: LION
Battery FRU: N/A
Transparent Learn = 1
App Data = 0

BBU Properties for Adapter: 0

Auto Learn Period: 28 Days
Next Learn time: None Learn Delay Interval:0 Hours
Auto-Learn Mode: Disabled
BBU Mode = 1

Exit Code: 0x00

We have absolutely nothing to hide.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Ash

New Member
A mod told me to post this :)

Specifically:

"Call him out". So yeh.
It's always somebody else telling you to do something, what are you the peoples puppet?


Can this mod pop in and confirm then because if this is true then vpsBoard is about to head down the same route as LET.
 
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amuck-landowner