This is the first ever benchmark that I had run on a Virtual Private Server, or a VPS, back in July 2019. The VPS service by Inception Hosting in fact was my third VPS (if include NAT based VPS from Gullo’s) but it was an exciting time for me to test out the benhcmarking tools- YABS, nench.sh, and speedtest.
This was my first “Toy” to play around with- a trial VPS for ten days. I ended up getting a refund, only to top up my account again. IntoVPS have a good service, they seem to be stable provider. Read my experience with them below. If you would prefer to dive straight into the mini-review, you can skip this section and head straight to the “Nuts and Bolts” segment**
The Long Story Short : How I ended up Testing the VPS
Sometimes, long time plans do not work out, and often they get replaced with some unexpected developments. Yesterday (Friday) was no different.
I was originally planning to work from home, ended up working from my coworking space instead. That’s when I learnt that there was a session on growth “hacking” by someone whose work I admire. Therefore, ended up staying back till 6 PM. Which meant that when my wife and I traveled back together, we faced the Friday evening rush hour. Which *also* meant that my plans of having a beer or two with schoolmates did not materialize. For the record, I do not like the term, “hacking” but running out of words here – maybe some time later.
A casual glance on LET showed a post by IntoVPS about their new facility in Cluj, Romania. Interesting place, I thought- and looked it up on google maps. (Note: the link shows a landmark from that town).
Screenshot of Fleio Control Panel
Now that my Friday evening plans were unmade, I thought what to do? After a quiet family dinner and some TV watching, I had made up my mind- to sleep over the temptation (or is it the urge?) to sign up for the IntoVPS plan. Early Saturday morning, between the whining protests of my dog, the decision turned into action. (I normally wake up at 4 AM, and at 4:01 AM Buddy decided that he had to go out an pee- Urgently). Long story short, Paypal made me poorer by $ 10, probably the similar amount I would have spent on beer the night before, and I was up and running.
Since IntoVPS has hourly billing plan, probably the 10 US Dollars would be used over a longer period of time…Or maybe not, if I decide to cancel. Time will tell.
The Nuts and Bolts
Most of you might be interested in this section than the prelude, so here goes:
The sign up process was quite easy- I followed the link from this discussion thread on LET, and selected the $ 3 plan, and clicked “sign up”. It led me to a page that actually showed $ 10 in the shopping cart: the discussion on LET has some explanation on that so I will not get into it here. I was okay with the pricing : at worst, I could cancel and ask the folks at IntoVPS for a refund. At best, I get a new virtual toy to play with for minimum three months. No biggie, but it might not be up to everyone’s palette. Hope that IntoVPS fix this soon.
Anyways, back to the discussion. Payment made, my account page led me to something called fleio. I guessed that was the panel for creating the VPS instance, and indeed that was the case. A couple of minutes later, I was in business. On my Mac, the “Spice” terminal that opened up on my browser looked quite ugly, and the text wasn’t rendering properly (Firefox Quantum, 68.0 – now updated to 68.0.1) . So, I fired up the terminal in mac, and a few seconds later, I was in business.
Under The Hood
The Debian instance that I chose came with the following:
>ssh [email protected] -p xxxx
>[email protected]'s password:
>Linux gaatha-test1 4.9.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.168-1+deb9u3 (2019-06-16) x86_64The basic hygiene factor steps completed (disable root login etc..) it was time to get down to business, and launch the nench.sh and bench.sh tests.
From my ISP (ACT Internet, Bengaluru) – the speeds were probably less than desirable. There have been some speed and service related issues thanks to a clampdown on overhead Internet cables and the monsoons- but that is seasonal I hope and soon we will be back to business.
I am still learning the values and significance testing speeds or benchmarks, and therefore do understand most of the terms (yet) but since many folks are interested, I have added some screenshots.
My current Peeve
I am getting a constant “The Connection to 185.250.xxx.xxx closed by remote host.” with a ten second threshold. That is, every ten seconds of inactivity is leading to a remote disconnect. And believe me, that is my only peeve for now. Easily fixable, but that is now my major worry right now. It is 6:15 AM, that is a non-negotiable time for my walk with that dog. So if any other info or details are needed, they will have to wait.
Conclusion:
But for some scheduled interruptions by Buddy, the overall experience was good. Since the monthly billing had not been set up yet, I will raise a ticket, and in the meantime, decided to delete the VPS. That made me poorer by 0.02 US cents. So far, so good. I might go the whole hog, as they say – monthly plan + DirectAdmin, and set up a test site on this for a project I am taking up. But more on that later.
Hope you find this mini-review a worthwhile read. This was my first of hopefully many, and for any comments, feedback or questions, do drop me a note.
This post is a part of the series of Benchmarks and reviews I have done for multiple providers and Virtual Private Servers.You can review the entire list by clicking here. This post was updated in Feb ’23 and has been archived.
This post was updated on 2022-03-07