

VPS Classic: The most afforable VPS - gionn
http://www.ovh.ie/vps/vps-classic.xml

======
scrollaway
OVH is an absolutely horrible company.

I was in business with them years ago and they kept my account all that time.
When they got hacked a couple years ago (or was it last year?), I remembered I
had an account with them and asked them to delete it.

I had to go back and forth with their customer service, and in the end, they
asked me to send them a signed letter to their offices in France for them to
even consider deleting my account.

Arseholes. I couldn't be bothered to take this anywhere, but damn it I hope
they get hell for this.

I can't comment on their actual services at present myself - all I have is
negative hearsay (nothing positive anyway).

~~~
aragot
Same bad experience here.

I have 2Mo/s on my hard drives and they claim everything is normal on their
side. I could trigger an investigation but if it comes from my config, they'll
charge it on me. I don't know how I could have configured my disks to output
2Mo/s, but more important, I don't want to drop a single extra penny to that
company.

And support takes around 30hrs to answer.

~~~
kbar13
what is Mo/s?

~~~
gregholmberg
French networking / disk throughput terminology ...

    
    
        Mo: un méga-octet, un million d'octets
      Mo/s: méga-octet par seconde
    

meaning "Megabyte per second". OVH is based in Montréal, Québec. [or not,
actually]

~~~
samuel1604
noip, it's based in the north of france (one gray and shitty area)

------
spyder
Some alternatives with SSD:

[http://vexxhost.com/cloud_servers#pricing](http://vexxhost.com/cloud_servers#pricing)

[http://www.servermania.com/ssd-linux-vps-
hosting.htm](http://www.servermania.com/ssd-linux-vps-hosting.htm)

[http://www.atlantic.net/vps/linux-vps-
hosting/](http://www.atlantic.net/vps/linux-vps-hosting/)

[http://ssdvps.com/](http://ssdvps.com/)

[https://www.ubiquityhosting.com/cloud](https://www.ubiquityhosting.com/cloud)

------
legierski
One of the best things about DigitalOcean is that they charge per hour, which
means I can spin up several servers, test things out and then tear them down,
incurring just a few cents of costs in total. OVH asks me to pay for 12 months
up front.

Also, their support is awfully slow. I'm in the slow process of moving to
another host/registrar.

~~~
jafaku
You shouldn't let the same company be both your host and registrar.

------
dkoch
DigitalOcean's big selling point for me is SSD disk. I don't see that listed
on the OVH offering.

~~~
lingben
SSD isn't some magical word or feature - case in point, linode's non-ssd
offering beats the pants off DO's ssd

~~~
dkoch
Linode may outperform a similar DO box CPU-wise, but IO is no contest:

Here's a 512MB DO writing a large file:

    
    
      dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/out bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/out
      4096+0 records in
      4096+0 records out
      4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 16.1503 s, 266 MB/s
    

A 2GB Linode of mine doing the same:

    
    
      dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/output
      4096+0 records in
      4096+0 records out
      4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 36.4609 seconds, 118 MB/s

------
gdeglin
It's nice that all these hosting companies are dropping their prices so much.
However, I've found it extremely hard to compare them against each other.

I wish someone would put together a site that compared each cloud provider
when it comes to specific workloads -- for instance: Postgres and Mysql
performance, Redis and Memcached performance, apache-bench, and so on. Even
the performance of each virtual CPU is unclear.

Does anything like this exist?

~~~
mtrimpe
I think you're looking for ServerBear:
[http://serverbear.com/](http://serverbear.com/)

------
spindritf
Someone already pointed out that DO's selling point are SSD drives. There's
also a difference in the underlying technology. OVH uses OpenVZ, which are
containers more than VMs, whereas DO is based on KVM.

~~~
workhere-io
_Someone already pointed out that DO 's selling point are SSD drives._

Yet Linode's non-SSD drives seem to beat Digital Ocean's SSD drives "in just
about every area and not by a small margin"
([http://irj972.co.uk/articles/VPS-disk-perf-
cont](http://irj972.co.uk/articles/VPS-disk-perf-cont))

I don't know anything about OVH's performance - all I'm saying is that having
SSD drives doesn't necessarily mean superb performance - there are other
factors involved.

~~~
vilda
Those tests smell fishy. If they use classic disks then typical average seek
time is 8ms. Yet they measured 0,2ms which is ridiculous. My guess is that
they used small virtual disks and measured page cache of the underlying host.
128MB limit for random read tests is also horribly wrong to make any
conclusion.

------
tomphoolery
You get what you pay for. Oh, and by the way, this isn't the most affordable
VPS. CloudAtCost's cheapest plan is $1.00/month, and in USD, VPS Classic/OVH
is around $2.75, give or take
([http://www.cloudatcost.com/](http://www.cloudatcost.com/)). (current
exchange:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%82%AC1.99+in+us+dollars&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%82%AC1.99+in+us+dollars&oq=%E2%82%AC1.99+in+us+dollars&aqs=chrome..69i57.2691j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8))

However, you do get what you pay for. I'm a CloudAtCost customer, paid for
their $35 one-time fee because I figured it would be nice to not have to worry
about yet another recurring payment (however small) for stupid things like
having a Linux machine to test new apps on and run my IRC bouncer. When they
had some downtime, they did alert us but I didn't find out my server had
failed to power back on until I opened my laptop one day and couldn't connect
to IRC. Given their impossibly-low prices[1] and lack of history in our
community, I'm probably always gonna be a little paranoid that my server is
just going to die one day and there's nothing I'll be able to do about it.

That said, I think OVH is in a similar boat. Crappy customer service, but low
prices, so my advice for anyone wanting to take a gamble on this is to
definitely NOT host anything important on these low-cost VPS services. They're
really best for staging and light internal use, and they're not to be trusted
with the architecture of your whole company.

[1]: CloudAtCost is essentially a big Canadian ISP's server hosting brand.
Basically, their parent company owns the datacenter they're hosting you in, so
the service they're offering is practically cost-free to them. If this is
true, the money they get from you must be 100% profit, or they wouldn't be
able to keep themselves in business.
([http://www.cloudatcost.com/aboutus.php](http://www.cloudatcost.com/aboutus.php))
Go ask a record label owner sometime about how profit margins on the fraction
of a dollar, even when new sales come in every day, work out for his bottom
line ;)

------
momerath
Chunkhost has the same specs at the $9 price point as DO, though they claim 2
cpus (obviously could be apples and oranges). It's Xen, like DO and EC2, and
they use ECC ram.

They also have this "hardware upgrade" thing that might make it cheaper at the
higher price points, depending on how long you use it, and when each provider
eventually upgrades its offerings.

I use them for my personal mail+whatever server, and have been quite happy,
for about a year.

------
middleclick
Personally, I am still sticking with Linode. I absolutely love their support.
I contacted them today and got an answer in minutes. This is a Sunday, mind
you.

Sure the low prices on OVH and DigitalOcean seem lucrative and I have used
DigitalOcean for a while, but I still came back to Linode. The Linode
interface is another thing that I cannot do without especially when you see
the alternatives.

YMMV.

------
adrenalinup
An Anti-DDoS protection ! That's a god-send ! I had a terrible experience
recently with Digital-Ocean. A VPS of mine with a fresh launched project was
knocked down with some basic ddos attack. The support nodded and pointed to
use CloudFlare. My server was down and they didn't do anything, that really
sucks, you can't use a VPS without a DDos protection for anything serious. It
can go down anytime when some script-kiddie opens a hunder of sockets.

It's really sad that DDoS protection didn't become ubiquitous yet. It's
unacceptable that you can get down a server, even VPS with not-so-much
bandwidth. All VPS have limited number of sockets and resources and it's
trivial to knock them down. Absence of a DDoS protection makes them extremely
vulnerable.

~~~
nwh
What do you believe "DDoS protection" entails? You got referred to cloudflare,
a free* reverse proxy is as good as it's going to get. I can't imagine being
attacked like that is anything like the norm.

~~~
adrenalinup
Cloudflare is only for HTTP and internet is more than just HTTP.

I had a irc server for my friends, one of not-so-friendly visitors told me
that the server will get down, and it went down. I lost ping to my server, CPU
& the bandwidth were all at 100%. The support told me that I should use
another company. I went to a company that has DDoS protection
[http://www.online.net/](http://www.online.net/)

I find it unacceptable that you can be DDoSed so easily, it's like we're still
in 90'.. DDoS protection should be something ubiquitous for small power
servers like VPS, otherwise it's trivial to get them down.

~~~
nwh
> _I find it unacceptable that you can be DDoSed so easily, it 's like we're
> still in 90'.._

You can't stop resource exhaustion attacks no matter what you do. There's
always someone with a bigger pipe. I'm still baffled that it's 2014 and I
can't flush my gumboots down my toilet yet, shouldn't we have solved that
already?

> _I went to a company that has DDoS protection_

What exactly does that entail, technically? Smells like snake oil to me.

~~~
larsmak
OVH got a pretty good write-up on their blog[1], well worth a read. It looks
as if their solution should be able to mitigate layer 3/4 attacks. From the
blog: "Our surplus network has a capacity over 2 Tbps. We have three VAC in
production, so we can manage up to 480 Gbps/480 Mpps." Cloud-flare took on the
larges DDoS ever seen not to long ago, I think it peaked around 400Gbps.

1) [http://www.ovh.com/us/blog/a1171.protection-anti-ddos-
servic...](http://www.ovh.com/us/blog/a1171.protection-anti-ddos-service-
standard)

------
jedrek
I set up a cheap dedicated server with OVH a few months ago. it took 48 days
to get it set up and the OVH flavor of linux I went with was some bastardized
version of gentoo so inbred that after two weeks of trying to get it upgraded
to a sane version I just canceled my account.

------
Joeboy
If you're after bargain basement VDSes, as far as I know the place to look is
[http://lowendbox.com/](http://lowendbox.com/)

~~~
joshmn
A lot of those providers aren't very reputable at all. Very few are in fact.
Off a glance, RamNode is the only one which I'd trust.

If you're <not> after bargin-basement VDSes or VPSes,
[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104)
is your friend.

~~~
axaxs
Careful with ramnode. I love their speed, and do have good uptime. That said,
I've had service with them for months, generally using next to no resources.
Decided to compile qt5 one day, and after about 45 mins of high CPU, they were
opening a ticket to take the VPS down due to instability. Honestly, I don't
know the policy at other providers, but feel that spiking CPU for an hour once
in months shouldn't take the box offline...

------
amar_c
It's OpenVZ.. IMO you can't compare KVM with OpenVZ, even tho DO thin
provisioning of their KVM is far away from "true KVM" (own ISO installs etc..)

------
zakelfassi
Sometimes it's not about the prices. Most of the time. Always, actually.
Especially when it comes to web hosting.

~~~
yeukhon
Totally agree. These days I want great customer service and reliability. I can
pay $20 for Google knowing Google will be around much longer and should come
with a reasonable retiring/deprecation/shutdown policy. I chose DO for a
similar reason. I know it will be around for a while and I have nothing to
lose since I have access to my source code. I can migrate to another provider
if I have to.

Also, DO is pretty fast at deploying and enabling new VM. I didn't know OVH
until today. Sometimes advertising works well :/

~~~
jafaku
> I can pay $20 for Google knowing Google will be around much longer

Not the best example IMO...

~~~
zakelfassi
They cause more product genocides per year than all startups combined.

------
wzy
For me, the main reason DO beats other VPS providers is its large collection
of tutorials. For people new to managing their own web server, these tutorials
are a major asset. I even went back to their tutorials section when i was
testing the service of one of their competitors

~~~
jafaku
I learned a lot from OVH's guides too, but they vary from language to
language. Some guides might be completely missing.

------
digitalnalogika
Over time, I realized I don't really want to manage services needed to run my
apps on a VPS, like Apache, nginx or MySQL configuration and upgrades.

Is there anything like WebFaction, but cheaper, that can handle sysadmining
for me?

~~~
cbr
Does AppEngine or Heroku work for you?

~~~
RyanZAG
Just dealing with AppEngine's yearly API rewrites and general flakiness is far
more difficult than any potential problems you'd have just running it
yourself. AppEngine is probably the most hassle you can get from 'commercial'
hosting.

Heroku is pretty hassle free though, so it's a good choice. I think people
overestimate the amount of work it takes to maintain a basic server though.
It's generally on the order of max 1hr/month. Considering the premium you pay
for managed hosting, most people don't make the $500/hr that would make hosted
worthwhile...

Plus the freedom that comes from not being locked into a managed solution
often saves you days of aggravation down the line.

~~~
mianos
100% agree here. The negatives of app engine vastly outweigh the positives.
Being a python shop you would think otherwise but there is only so much you
can do before you hit the wall of limitations. A native vhost means no lock-on
too.

------
iSloth
Why go for a VPS when you can get dedicated hardware for a similar and
sometimes better price -
[http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/](http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/)

~~~
cbg0
Non-ECC RAM? Okay for testing stuff but wouldn't put it in production.

~~~
jafaku
What kinds of issues can you run into with non-ECC RAM? I thought it was more
of a nearly theoretical thing, that only critical systems should worry about.

------
nixgeek
This really isn't news, OpenVZ isn't the same virtualisation as DigitalOcean
are using and you're effectively tied to a kernel provided by OVH. It also
isn't SSD-based.

------
frade33
But I had heard, the only catch is that, they are using 'desktop grade'
hardware.

~~~
iSloth
So do Google :)

~~~
_wmd
IIRC Google gave up on non-ECC RAM a long time ago, so this is only partially
true (ECC RAM constrains motherboard chipset and CPU family (e.g. Core i7 and
suchlike don't support it))

~~~
rgbrenner
From Google 2009:

DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study
[http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf)

------
ing33k
OVH is not bad, I had some dedis with them few years ago. it just works.

~~~
Kudos
> It just works.

I have found this to not be the case.

