Thursday, 27 November 2014

Vultr.com 6 Months Review: Blazing Fast SSD Cloud VPS for Just $5/m

Short story, in May 2014 I started looking for a good vps provider to host my game server, as well as my personal VPN. I wanted to go with vps that has fast disk I/O and has great connectivity to my home.

So, I found Vultr.com and signed up for their smallest plan at their Los Angeles location on May 7, 2014. Here is the server specs:

  • 768MB RAM
  • 15GB SSD
  • 1TB bandwidth
  • 1Gbps port speed
  • 1 IPv4 free
  • KVM virtualization
At the time, they double first payment up to $100.

Here is my 6 months review of Vultr.com

Vultr.com Review

Vultr.com Registration Process

Registration process is very simple. I only need to type my email address and my desired password into the form and click "Deploy Now". That's all!

vultr.com registration form

Vultr.com Billing and Control Panel

They have nice control panel, it is not the usual WHMCS+SolusVM, but all are integrated. Ticketing, billing, server information, starting stopping and such, all in one.

They accept credit card, PayPal and BitCoin as payment methods.

vultr.com control panel

Vultr.com Cloud VPS Plans

They have 3 product line: Popular SSD Cloud Server Plans, Multi Core Plans and SATA Storage Plans. Starting from $0.007/hour or $5/month.

Vultr.com Server Deployment

I decided to deploy Ubuntu. My server was deployed within minutes. It’s really simple as you can see in the picture below, you only have to select locations, package, and OS, then your server is online.

vultr.com deploy server in minutes

Vultr.com Server Performance

My VPS running very fast and stable. Network always great even during peak hour. I can't say there's been no down time, but they were all announced and gave me plenty of time to run an extra back up (just in case).

Vultr.com Server Benchmark

Here is some benchmarks from my Vultr.com VPS

Checking the Processor

The CPU is 1 core Intel @ 3.49Ghz

root@vultr-la:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 60
model name      : Vultr Virtual CPU 2
stepping        : 1
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 3491.930
cache size      : 4096 KB

Checking the I/O (Input Output ratio)

3 dd test result: Input Output ratio is very high arrond 450 MB/s

root@vultr-la:~# 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, 2.28262 s, 470 MB/s
root@vultr-la:~# 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, 2.45345 s, 438 MB/s
root@vultr-la:~# 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, 2.34682 s, 458 MB/s

Checking the Download Speed of the VPS Using wget

The speed is REALLY GREAT at 112MB/sec

root@108:~# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2014-03-05 15:55:29--  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  112M/s   in 0.9s    

2014-03-05 15:55:30 (112 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]

freevps.us Benchmark

CPU model :  Vultr Virtual CPU 2
Number of cores : 1
CPU frequency :  3392.144 MHz
Total amount of ram : 748 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime :   183 days, 11:20,       
Download speed from CacheFly: 70,0MB/s 
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 99,1MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 63,0MB/s 
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 10,6MB/s 
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 7,87MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 57,3MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 6,77MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 25,6MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 25,4MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 71,8MB/s 
I/O speed :  443 MB/s

Other Benchmarks

PHP 5.5.11 compiled

1m50.630s

PHP source directory compressed (tar zcf)

0m7.649s

PHP source tar.gz decompressed (tar zxf)

0m1.735s

Vultr.com Support

I have had lots of contact with their support staff, and it’s seems like they have several support staff and they seems pretty knowledgeable. Responses have always been polite and prompt. Most support tickets are responded to within only a few hours. Quite fast for budget vps host.

Conclusion

If you look at the speed of the SSD disks and the upload and download speeds and compare it with the price you are getting a great deal. I am extremely satisfied with the performance, stability and price point of my vps.

If you decided to give them a try, just create account Vultr.com account here and you will receive $5 credit instantly.