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Will an Online.net dedibox be better than Vultr VPS?
So now I'm using Vultr's 4 core, 4GB, 90GB plan for 40 euros. I see that Online.net has an Atom box with 8 core, 16GB, 256GB plan for 15 euros and a Xeon box with 12 Thread, 32 GB, 512GB for 30 euros.
That's tremendeous difference on price.
So is it worth considering moving my stuff to Online.net?
PS: I'm running Nextcloud, OpenVPN (15 users), Wordpress, Telegram bot and couple other things. Vultr seems to do fine but I had to upgrade from their 20 euro plan because RAM was maxed with above use.
Comments
I see no reason why it would not be better. You will get a dedicated box with dedicated resources while comparing with VPS where the resources are shared among users.
I have one: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/104919/intel-atom-c2000-series-dying-at-18-months-due-to-fault#latest Don;t go for the 15euro/month server.
If you can manage your own dedi, move on
I moved from VPS hosting at Vultr and DO a couple of years ago, and got my self some servers at Kimsufi, OVH and Hetzner. The good thing with a dedicated server is that you are the only user. So you can max out any resources you want, without any other issues then a slow site. Nobody will kick you out.
But, a VPS can be faster then a dedicated server in the same price range. Still, it will only be faster if nobody else on the node is abusing the server, or the node has generally high load.
You loose good things like snapshots, backup, HA etc etc. So if you change to a dedicated server, have a good backup plan in place.
Your data will be stored on single drives, at the most a couple of drives.
Still for my sites, I'm sure I will not move back to VPS hosting again. I just have a i5 2400 CPU on my main server, but it's all mine, and my sites load fast and I can't complain. I have 16 GB of RAM, of course, I do not need 16 GB, but I have it. And 2 TB HDD. My sites is using 40 GB, still, I have the space.
Of course I do have a really good backup system in place, DNS failover service, several live backup servers, with rsync from the main server, and Navicat MySQL database manager for replicating my DBs from my main server to my backup servers.
Don't say you need all that, but some. In worst case your dedicated server can be down for days with a hardware failure, so plan out from that.
Beside of all that, go dedicated.
I moved 2 of my mongodb replicasets dedicated server to online.net's xeon d1531's and they have excellent price/performance. The SSD's are not that great (consumer grade) but they get the job done.
If you keep decent backups and can allow for a few days of downtime, I don't see why this is a big issue. Your hardware will be replaced, and probably pretty quickly.
Seems like vultr has no RAID (though i never heard horror stories, so they might have some RAID in place) - the dedi is obviously cheaper and more cores, while cores are faster with vultr and write/read speed will be better at vultr.
You're choice mate - in my opinion what you pay for at vultr is too expensive, you'd be fine on a small dedi
Even better, hardware replacements in Online.net is being done in a couple of hours or so, in case of failure. I had a memory module failure and a HDD malfunction (bad sectors in a rather new drive with less than 6000 hours) in two servers some time ago. In the first occasion, I didn't even notice the issue (frequent restarts) because the server was idle and did not monitor it. They found the issue with their monitoring system and they contacted my immediatelly asking me if it is ok to shut down the server to replace the dimm. So, as it seem from their blog post, if there is a cpu failure, they will replace it.
You will have a powerful server for your needs with absolutely dedicated recourses for your own. And a fully configurable and flexible environment. But you will have to maintain yourself the server (not only the vps) and, in any case, you need backups and failrpoof strategy, as of course you need it in any case.
Performance-wise, there's no comparison between renting one of Online's dedicated boxs and getting a VPS from Vultr. The dedicated hardware wins!
Network-wise, depending on your bandwidth usage and the location(s) of your connecting clients, you'll likely to experience better network performance at Vultr. At times, Online's peering is curiously slow while, at other times, the network speed is less than exciting. This is especially true for the server specials that appear to be given even less priority on the network.
Looking at your stated usage, I think it'll primarily be the Nextcloud and OpenVPN users that may feel some sluggishness.
The Atom cores are quite slow compared with Vultr cores, but you have 8 of them to yourself, so if your workload parallelizes you can do ok.
You can get the same server for a few more euro/month from Scalway (Online's cloud product) with no setup fee, and it's on hourly billing, so you can try it for a day or two at very little cost. That might help you decide.
Yes, Trump better than Obama
Are you a bot?
Atom vs. Xeon cores could certainly be such an answer...
Not always true. e.g., BuyVM slices. Even in Vultr/DO/AWS/Azure case, it's not like they're running stock OvZ. You can run your VM as hard as you want, though you won't get 100% of the core 24x7 of course.
Not sure that's the case...I've had cases where a good VPS beats a weak dedi like an Atom.
In this case, I suspect the OP is comparing SSD (Vultr) as well vs. SATA.
I also suspect you'll get much better network from a large provider like Vultr or DO that is selling a semi-premium service than online.net, which caters to the cheapest.
@tapirath - maxed RAM isn't necessarily bad if your apps are performing well. Vultr doesn't provision swap but you can also add a swap file.
Nope, just a guy who thinks he's funny but every single joke falls flat.
Seems oddly familiar.
Yes, absolutely, if you need single thread performance. An Atom core is around 1/4 the speed of an E3 core. But if you have a parallel workload, then an 8 core Atom dedi will always beat any single core anything. It will be more like 2 cores of a faster box.
I think that you guys are also forgetting that the OP also referenced a XEON server at Online. So we shouldn't just focus on the ATOM alone.
Oh yes, that's a D-1531, total performance is about the same as a fast E3. So yes it should beat the 4 core Vultr pretty well. OTOH it has a setup fee...
Sometimes was sarcastic
Not much as yours
As long as they replace it, it's not a problem for me
This is exactly what I'm afraid of. I have 15 family/friends using the VPN daily and I start to get calls when there is slow connection I would like to have a stable VPN connection. If Online.net is not up to Vultr's quality in that department, I should look elsewhere I think.
I've compared some network speed benchmarks now and yes Vultr looks like is better than Online.net. Thanks for letting me know.
So what other dedicated box possibilities are there around that will help me get that 40 euro/month down a little bit? Is Scaleway network comparable to Vultr?
Thanks
It should be the same as Online, but you can try it for yourself for a few cents an hour. You could also try SoYouStart if you think OVH's network might be better than Online's. I'm happy with Online so far but I have fairly easy requirements.
Another thing I've noticed is that OpenVPN can use AES-NI instruction set of the CPU. I think that will speed it up considerably. I'm not sure a VPS makes use of that. If not, switching to dedciated should see an increasu on output of OpenVPN.
This one looks nice https://www.soyoustart.com/ie/offers/e3-ssd-1.xml
Anything against it? As far as I see it's no setup fee as well
Looks good and it's even in stock. It's not clear to me if you get the OVH deal of extra IP's with no monthly cost (just a one-time setup fee for each one). You might want those for your VPN's. The E3-1225 is slower than the 1230/1245/etc but not by that much. I'm sure it will be fine, and anyway you can always upgrade.
I can't predict if the network will be better or worse than Online's.
SYS-IP-1S also looks good if you want SSD, though it's out of stock. SYS-IP-1 is available, same thing with HDD's.
I'd start with a smaller machine and upgrade only if necessary. As per your requirements, it doesn't seem like you need a huge CPU or a lot of RAM... A C2750 based server will probably be enough, then there is the question of the network: here you have to try. If the people using your VPN are on DSL lines in EU, online network will be more than fine. If they are on Gbit pipes in the US, well...
Starting small and upgrading is ok for VPS. Just a support ticket and it's upgraded. But for dedicated I don't think I would have the stamina to do a system reinstall everytime. Unless they migrate your stuff to the new server. Is there such a service?
With an Online dedi you can install Proxmox and run your stuff in a KVM under that. I don't know if that helps you migrate to another server though.
If you're just running vpn's I doubt you'll have to upgrade your dedi. System reinstall is no big deal anyway. It helps to automate your regular software installs with something like ansible though.
They don't, but you can keep both servers for a few days, to be able to copy your data and config files to the second server.
The C2750 is a pretty good CPU, as your bottleneck was RAM with vultr and you don't seem to need that much CPU + you run different services = should do pretty well with multiple smaller (and not that small!) cores - I don't think you'll have to upgrade at all.
@tapirath
The first question to always ask is connectivity in its major facettes, i.e. speed, resilience (multiple backend pipes).
The next question to ask is what do you need and where do you need it?
I just made an extensive review on 12 providers/DCs and their connectivity to 14 global targets and if I had to brute-force summarize it it would be this: "There is no perfect provider" ( I know of). Each one has weak points and all but one have strong points.
To give you an example: One would expect that nowadays connectivity to LON/AMS/PAR/FRA would be about the same. Well I saw a provider whose connectivity to those core locations was considerable different.
While I tend to agree with those here who feel that hardware/dedi is "naturally" better than virt/VPSs, I'd also remind you that there is more than hw performance. One issue that comes to mind is what each layer can and does perform: Can you perform proper monitoring? Do you have the muscles to make a colo guy jump to notice that your drive is soon to die and to replace it?
Most customers will have to answer "no"; they just apt-get or yum apache and mysql and maybe some colour dashboard creating log analyzers.
A VPS has a lot "built in"; the provider already took care of it (well, hopefully). Plus those farms tend to be more or less properly taken care of. dedis, however, often sit in rows of racks with providers who consider the business done as soon as you're online. For the rest, oh well, you can shout if your disk breaks.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in no way against dedis; actually I have one myself. I just want to say that things aren't as simple as they seem to be. With a dedi you get hardware; a disk drive for example. With a VPS you get disk space - and there's a major difference. Availablity of disk space isn't your problem with a halfway professional provider, working disks, however, can and will become your problem; it's you who will need to get attention and then someone to slide in a new disk and in case it's not raided, you're fucked, either because your server will need hours and hours for restoring or because you don't have a backup and are really fucked.
For reliability at a low price I'd always go with a good VPS provider.
P.S. I didn't test it (and don't really trust it) but there might be yet another option fpr you: dedicated slices like what BuyVM offers. Probably that would be my first advice for you: Go and look at BuyVM (or others offering dediSlices). And be sure to check their connectivity for the region you need as well as their network resiliency.