How much VirMach is reliable?

nabin

When I tried to ssh my VPS on VirMach, I got this notification

And Doing some research about VirMach, I found some bad reviews. Can anyone with VirMach experience suggest me whether I host some really valuable stuffs on there VPS or not.

Thanks in Advance.

brueggus

nabin said: When I tried to ssh my VPS on VirMach, I got this notification

@ @ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!

And Doing some research about VirMach, I found some bad reviews.

I'd suggest to do some research about SSH error messages instead.

Virmach is one of the most reliable providers around here btw.

imok

They are good.

nabin said: WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!

Did you reinstall the server?

ben47955

I think Virmach is one of the favorite provider from LET, guess what that mean ...
For the message, it's perfectly normal if it's first time you connect to your vps.( including after reinstall)

nabin

@imok said:

Did you reinstall the server?

No, I have not done anything to the server. Before few days everything was OK.

MasonR

I typically run into that error when reusing an old hostname for a new vps. For example if I cancel a vps and change a hostname's IP in my hosts file to a new vps, then you'll get that error when you first ssh to it.

Anyways, the issue likely lies on your machine, rather than the vps itself. VirMach is solid.

nabin said: Doing some research about VirMach, I found some bad reviews.

Do some research on any company and you'll find some bad reviews.

nabin

@brueggus said:
I'd suggest to do some research about SSH error messages instead.

I know the circumstances of SSH error

Virmach is one of the most reliable providers around here btw.

Thank you for pointing out this to me. I too thought that VirMach is a reliable provider and I signup there. But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

ehab

ehab

@nabin said: But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

what/where are they?

nabin

@MasonR said: Do some research on any company and you'll find some bad reviews.

Its true man.

mksh

@ehab said:

@nabin said: But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

what/where are they?

Just a bunch of people saying Virmach snuck into their VPS and changed ssh keys. Nothing out of the ordinary.

benj0x

@MasonR said:
Anyways, the issue likely lies on your machine, rather than the vps itself. VirMach is solid.

Can't we say they're rocksolid? Only their IPv6 issue and ColoCrossing sucks.

BrianSuharisman

Yeah, problem is from your own local machine.

nabin

@mksh said:

@ehab said:

@nabin said: But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

what/where are they?

Just a bunch of people saying Virmach snuck into their VPS and changed ssh keys. Nothing out of the ordinary.

That made me to think the same, so to clear my doubt I post this discussion.

mksh

@nabin said:

@mksh said:

@ehab said:

@nabin said: But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

what/where are they?

Just a bunch of people saying Virmach snuck into their VPS and changed ssh keys. Nothing out of the ordinary.

That made me to think the same, so to clear my doubt I post this discussion.

Links?

ehab

@mksh said:
Just a bunch of people saying Virmach snuck into their VPS and changed ssh keys. Nothing out of the ordinary.

it wasn't virmach it was @WSS he sneaks into everyone's pants ah vps.

nabin

@brueggus @mksh @ehab @MasonR
why no one is focusing on my second part?

Can anyone with VirMach experience suggest me whether I host some really valuable stuffs on there VPS or not.

MasonR

@nabin said:
@brueggus @mksh @ehab @MasonR
why no one is focusing on my second part?

Can anyone with VirMach experience suggest me whether I host some really valuable stuffs on there VPS or not.

Will they sneak into your server and steal your shit? No.

Should you secure your VPS and keep regular backups? Yes

mksh

@nabin said:
@brueggus @mksh @ehab @MasonR
why no one is focusing on my second part?

Can anyone with VirMach experience suggest me whether I host some really valuable stuffs on there VPS or not.

Define really valuable. I would not host state secrets on a 4$/y VPS. But then i would not do that regardless of provider.

nabin

@MasonR said:

Will they sneak into your server and steal your shit? No.

Should you secure your VPS and keep regular backups? Yes

Ok, I will look at their backup policy now.

MasonR

@nabin said:

@MasonR said:

Will they sneak into your server and steal your shit? No.

Should you secure your VPS and keep regular backups? Yes

Ok, I will look at their backup policy now.

Don't rely on a provider (no matter how reputable they are) to maintain backups for you. You'll really want to set up some offsite backups -- either locally at your home, on a different provider, or on some cloud storage service.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

nabin

@mksh said:
Define really valuable. I would not host state secrets on a 4$/y VPS. But then i would not do that regardless of provider.

You made my Day.

WSS

Saragoldfarb

They're surprisingly stable. They've been around for quite some time. How they do it is beyond me. Don't expect them to go above and beyond bfor you when you're in trouble but definitely usable for less important stuff.

huntercop

Reliable? Riddled with fees like Spirit airlines.

bitswitch

@brueggus said:

I'd suggest to do some research about SSH error messages instead.

Well, the message should be quite clear, the SSH keys changed. Why is a different issue. Unless the OP changed them, set the machine up from scratch, or did anything else that could tamper with them there is in fact a possible chance someone from outside changed anything. I specifically do not want to allude that the provider did that but just want to point out that such a scenario cannot be ruled out entirely either. Personally I wouldnt assume however that they were the reason for it. If the OP could clarify the circumstances it would certainly help.

As for Virmach, they are pretty alright, their first level support is unfortunately pretty useless however.

MikePT

@cheapwebdev said:
Reliable? Riddled with fees like Spirit airlines.

Maybe because their price point is already low?

raindog308

nabin said: Ok, I will look at their backup policy now.

You completely missed the point.

ben47955 said: I think Virmach is one of the favorite provider from LET, guess what that mean

It means they're cheap. That's all it means.

cheapwebdev said: Reliable? Riddled with fees like Spirit airlines.

No shit: https://virmach.com/terms-conditions/#tab2

mksh said: Just a bunch of people saying Virmach snuck into their VPS and changed ssh keys. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Link?

nabin said: suggest me whether I host some really valuable stuffs on there VPS or not

Depends:

(1) Your only copy? You're insane. They're a LowEndProvider

(2) Something that would ruin your life if it was leaked? You're insane. They're a LowEndProvider.

VirMach

ehab said: @nabin said: But this morning I read some bad reviews about them and my bad luck on the same day I got this issue, so I was compelled to ask.

what/where are they?

Most the bad reviews are from unreasonable customers & abusers, but you can decide for yourself. Here are the most 10 recent bad reviews on TrustPilot.

• 1. Customer lives in China. He ordered a VPS in Buffalo, NY, instead of Los Angeles, CA, and complains about an "extremely poor connection." Got extremely upset when we denied his refund 6 months into his annual term.
• 2. Customer is upset he received a broken VM. The most common error involves a customer rebooting their VPS while it's installing Windows. Other than that, there are some rare cases of VMs not generating perfectly by the automated system. Instead of having us generate it properly, he was upset he was asked to create a ticket when he requested a refund.
• 3. Customer complains about abuse on our nodes, because our abuse script caught him using high amounts of CPU and I/O for extended periods of time. His claim was that because we caught his service abusing (hackers/spammers), there were other people abusing the server and as a result left a bad review.
• 4. Customer complains about his VPS needing to constantly be re-installed and freeing/crashing. Customer closed his ticket for technical support, and closed his ticket for a refund. Customer still has his service today. I'm assuming the issue was located by the customer within his VM but the review never retracted.
• 5. Customer's order was not automatically approved by our fraud system. The most common reasons are using a VPN, traveling, or incorrectly inputting billing information.
• 6. Customer has been trying to cancel his service for 5 months, but is unable to locate the red "cancel" button on the service details page. Instead of contacting our support, he leaves a bad review.
• 7. Customer's service was nullrouted by the data-center for sending excessive e-mails. Customer complained that his service was suspended. In this case, it may have been a false positive but the issue was resolved and nullroute removed.
• 8. Customer's account was allegedly shut down "out of the blue" for fraudulent activity. We send several warnings if there are payment issues before suspending services, and then give more time to pay before terminating.
• 9. Customer's money was not refunded because he did not properly request a refund within our 7 day refund policy.
• 10. Customer's service was suspended for high I/O usage. To be clear, this was done after (5) warnings the customer ignored. Customer did not contact us in any case, even after suspension, for assistance. He would have been helped & unsuspended if he did.

cheapwebdev said: Reliable? Riddled with fees like Spirit airlines.

The fees are for optional services that we're not obligated to provide, and the only way we can provide them at this time is if we charge for them. Otherwise, we would just not offer the additional services. In any case, we do not really profit from these fees and they are a very small portion of our revenue.

• IP changes are $3. Many providers do not even offer IP changes, and there's a lot of abuse & manual work that has to be dealt with when changing IP addresses. There's also some custom requirements in which case we charge an additional $2. In many cases this ends up costing us a lot more than $5 to perform, for example, if a customer needs an IP not blocked by their ISP in China. Changes are free if you receive a blacklisted IP and report it to us immediately.
• Custom Panel & OS installs on unmanaged dedicated servers has a fee because it takes a while to perform. This is also on an unmanaged server, so again, we could just not offer this at all but it's an additional service we offer for those interested.
• Migrations take a while to complete. Again, when you're selecting a service in a specific location, we're not obligated to move you to another location for free. This also involves an IP change, and if the migration fails we have to troubleshoot. Migrations have to be manually completed and you have to be placed on a node that can accommodate you properly, so before migrations each agent has to take a look at our resource monitors and assess the situation. We believe this a reasonable fee, again, for something we're not required to offer.
• Premium Support / Management option has a fee to receive full management for 2 hours per month. This is an extremely affordable rate compared to hiring your own L3/Sys Admin support for your server, and we complete everything for you within your service. We simply cannot provide full management for every service for free at our price-points.
• Custom Upgrade/Downgrade. Once again, another item that not many other providers offer and we shouldn't really be obligated to offer for free. At any time, you can customize your package how you want by modifying it. You still have the option to upgrade for free to an existing plan, but there's a fee to customize it as someone has to go through the changes, quote you, and modify your package.
• Datacenter hands rate is pretty self-explanatory. If you want something done that requires the DC to step in, we need to charge you. We cover this if you have a managed dedicated server, in almost all situations.
• Backup retrieval fee - we back up your service at no additional charge. In fact, we're doing this retroactively. However, a sys admin has to be involved to retrieve the backup and that does cost some time & money. If we offered this for free, we would have several dozen requests for backups per day. We cannot currently do that, and again, we're not even charging for the backups. It's only meant to be there as an added security measure and not a full-fledged feature at this time until we can automate retrievals.
• Custom billing fee is there for any requests beyond one would expect from normal billing support. We change your term for free, process refunds for free, prorate/change your due period for free, as well as enabling/disabling automatic payments, and pretty much everything any other company does as a "standard" level of support. On top of that, we let you also customize what you want done for a small fee.

Everything else on the fee schedule is adding CPU/bandwidth/RAM/IP addresses, and overages. We do also have administration fees that take place to handle abuse, chargebacks, and other problems.

We provide everything "standard" with most packages. Re-installs are free, even if they have to be manually processed. There's also no charge for rDNS, ISO mounts, general technical support, and all the billing items mentioned above. Otherwise if your plan comes with no support, and you selected no support, expect no support. Most our standard plans other than the $1-1.25/mo range come with support. Customers are in no way obligated to purchase a package without support, and are in no way obligated to purchase the custom additional services. We believe everyone can use their service properly without free IP changes, migrations, etc. Customers are free to cancel the service and re-order a new one in a new location with a new IP address every month/term.

I really don't like us being compared to cheap airlines.

• We don't cancel your service with no reasoning 30 minutes before departure.
• We don't make you pay extra to actually use the disk space you have, like they charge for using overhead bins.
• We don't charge you for your invoices/payment processing.
• We don't sell more seats than are available, unless it's specifically designated a pre-order or backorder.
• We don't cram everyone in with no legroom. Nearly all servers have a lot of resources left over.
• You're allowed to cancel your service for a refund on your first flight, and you're allowed to modify your ticket.

If you're comparing us to an airline, it would be your pretty standard level of service. Maybe some free snacks (general technical support) and free luggage with enough legroom (can burst, use full memory & disk, free backups taken), but you can also upgrade to first class (dedicated CPU/IO and premium management), change your flight for a small fee (changing locations), and maybe buy a few alcoholic beverages (custom upgrades.)

ehab

@VirMach , from my side i have no complaints and i can only recommend you.

one thing i can advise if you are reading this, please ask the first support response not to reply with " an admin will contact you soon" or any thing that ends with soon e.g: your service will be deployed soon....

instead "an admin/service will be contacted/delivered between 30 mins to 48 hours within our business hours etc.."

its better to estimate even longer and wait rather than use the "soon".

regards and respect to all the virmach team.

bitswitch

@ehab said:
one thing i can advise if you are reading this, please ask the first support response not to reply with " an admin will contact you soon"

I'd general vote for better training of their first-level support. That still seems to be a bit of a weak point.